Apple Impasse With Magazines Over Subscriber Data

Pickens writes "Peter Kafka reports at All Things Digital that Apple and the publishing industry haven't been able to come to terms over magazine app subscriptions. Publishers want the ability to sell the subscriptions themselves, or at least the opportunity to hang on to subscribers' personal data, and Steve Jobs won't let them. Publishers also don't like the 30 percent cut that Apple wants to take in the iTunes store, but their real hang-up is lack of access to credit card and personal data. It's valuable to them for marketing because the demographic data helps magazines sell advertising, and without it they can't offer print/digital bundles. All Apple is willing to offer is an opt-in form for subscribers that would ask them for a limited amount of information: name, mailing address, email address."

Comments

Credit Card data?

[Yvan256]

They want access to the personnal and credit card data? If I buy a magazine at a kiosk, the guy takes my money, period. Apple is just a digital kiosk.

If their business model requires both to sell me the magazine AND have access to my data to be able to get money from ads on top of that, too bad for them.

Re:Credit Card data?

[Tharsman]

Well Apple already has all of that data, so to get anti-corporation about your personal data is a little silly.

Here is the deal, though: most (sensible) anti-corporation people that complain about personal data do so precisely because they dislike their data being shared afterwards. Apple is doing precisely what I want any company I entrust with my data to do: refuse sharing it.

Re:Credit Card data?

[sexconker]

Ever wonder why most magazines cost $5-9 at a newsstand, but you can often get a year's subscription to the same magazine for $2-4 per issue? Hint: they're not just making money off of the subscription. The types of magazines a person is interested in can tell marketers quite a bit about their interests, and there's good money to be made in consumer profiling.

No. It's because 12 * 3 > 4 * 5 .
Someone who buys at a newsstand will, on average, NOT buy anywhere near the full year's worth of issues. They'll buy, on average, 3 or 4 issues over the entire year.

And when you buy from a newsstand, the newsstand makes a profit (shocking, I know!). And if you think that's a razor-thin profit, think again. At one point the Sunday Los Angeles Times cost me 37.5 cents a paper, while I turned around and sold it for the newsstand price of $1.50.

And by "me" I mean "me". That is to say, I've done this before and I know what I'm talking about.

Re:Credit Card data?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why went droid, google is the best advertiser, they make sure companies get access to my data

Good for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I cancelled my subscriptions to Make Magazine and Utne Reader for exactly that reason - the asshats couldn't stop themselves from selling my personal data to advertisers. Within two months, I was getting both paper and email spam from all over the place because of them. I know it was them because I always use custom email addresses and custom misspellings of my name to track how companies use my data.

bummer

[bigmo]

I feel so dirty when I agree with Steve Jobs.

Deal with the devil

[Solandri]

The publishing industry, being the sole supplier of many popular magazines and newspapers, refused to release those magazines and newspapers in ebook format until a hardware manufacturer agreed to all their onerous DRM requirements. Apple was the only one who took them up on the offer, and the iPad was the result. Now they're finding out some of the problems that come with having to deal with a sole supplier (in this case, for the hardware platform on which your electronic publications are distributed). Serves them right I say. Pot, meet kettle.