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Publishers Chafe At Apple's Terms For 'Netflix For News' Subscription Service As It Demands a 50 Percent Revenue Cut (wsj.com)
Zorro shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Apple's plan to create a subscription service for news is running into resistance from major publishers over the tech giant's proposed financial terms (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), according to people familiar with the situation, complicating an initiative that is part of the company's efforts to offset slowing iPhone sales. In its pitch to some news organizations, the Cupertino, Calif., company has said it would keep about half of the subscription revenue from the service, the people said. The service, described by industry executives as a "Netflix for news," would allow users to read an unlimited amount of content from participating publishers for a monthly fee. It is expected to launch later this year as a paid tier of the Apple News app, the people said. The rest of the revenue would go into a pool that would be divided among publishers according to the amount of time users spend engaged with their articles, the people said. Representatives from Apple have told publishers that the subscription service could be priced at about $10 a month, similar to Apple's streaming music service, but the final price could change, some of the people said.
Another concern for some publishers is that they likely wouldn't get access to subscriber data, including credit-card information and email addresses, the people said. Credit-card information and email addresses are crucial for news organizations that seek to build their own customer databases and market their products to readers. Digital subscriptions are powering growth at big publishers including the Times, whose basic monthly subscription costs $15, the Post, which charges $10, and the Journal, which charges $39. Some of those companies are skeptical about giving up too much control to Apple, or cannibalizing their existing subscriptions to sign up lower-revenue Apple users, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another concern for some publishers is that they likely wouldn't get access to subscriber data, including credit-card information and email addresses, the people said. Credit-card information and email addresses are crucial for news organizations that seek to build their own customer databases and market their products to readers. Digital subscriptions are powering growth at big publishers including the Times, whose basic monthly subscription costs $15, the Post, which charges $10, and the Journal, which charges $39. Some of those companies are skeptical about giving up too much control to Apple, or cannibalizing their existing subscriptions to sign up lower-revenue Apple users, according to people familiar with the matter.
Why would we want "Netflix for news"?
Stephen Colbert and John Oliver are already our "news and chill."
Apple's plan to create a subscription service for news is running into resistance from major publishers over the tech giant's proposed financial terms (Warning: source may be paywalled)
For some reason that just made me laugh.
I think 50% is absurdly high, as a percentage for Apple.
But on the other hand, m as a consumer I cannot imagine a price above $0 I would be willing to pay for a "Netflix of News". I already place so little value on a wide range of news I can get for free, what value could this service possibly have? The only thing I can maybe see people getting this would before a slight reduction in the price of a WSJ and NYT together, maybe enough people want to do that Apple's service will be viable.
But I doubt it... since Apple News today is already free and I hardly use it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Back in the paper days we used to collect this information and sell it to third parties unbeknownst to subscribers. Also, we don't recognize the irony in writing about Facebook and privacy.
Welcome to the city.
50% to set up shop. Protected by the city walls.
Free speech is a sin.
Curation of news can happen.
No Taiwan flag. No Tiananmen square.
Nothing that is offensive to a Communist party.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...just like Google. This sounds like butthurt, same as the dinosaur news publications that want Google to cut them a check for daring the link to their stories....despite Google brining them an audience...
provide all the news I could ever care to consume.
I actually go out of my way to avoid any news not related to upcoming severe weather events and some sportsball information.
Don't get it. I can read all day. I subscribe to two major papers. Why pay Apple ?
Isn't that a bit dodgy?
Apple shouldn't even be storing the full credit card number.
Not if they force you to use Apple Pay as your digital wallet when signing up. Which I'm sure they do. However, the article does not say that Apple keeps the credit card number - only that they're not providing it to the newspapers.
I foresee a future where people are paid to view news. This is completely reasonable since news stopped being about informing people and became more about pushing an agenda. So it's pay me to occupy my brain with your viewpoint. Like a billboard.
Requiem for the American Dream
If we ignore for the moment the issue of Apple trying to get too big a piece of the revenue pie, the Netflix-for-news idea itself is actually rather good.
I read a lot of news, and I'd prefer to pay a reasonable amount of money and get quality content, over paying no money and getting ad-plastered click-bait.
The problem is that there are hundreds of newspapers out there, and my news feeds (Google News and Apple News) include articles from all of them, and most of them want me to sign up to pay them a small amount of money a week -- but I really don't want to set up a paying relationship with dozens or hundreds of different newspapers whose future articles I may or may not actually read. Therefore (with a few exceptions) I generally just ignore their pleas, and they are left to survive on advertising income alone, while I am often barraged by annoying advertisements that I'd prefer not to see.
So having a single place to send money, in return for quality content from a variety of sources, seems like a good idea. I'm not sure I'd trust Apple to be that single place, given their proto-monopolistic mindset, although their Apple News app is quite good IMO.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Use a gift card.
To pay 50%.
Then the full 100% to publisher get the Apple approved news displayed.
News is now cost 50% extra.
Publishers should learn to code their own pay wall sites. Keep 100% of the profit.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I don't see how Apple is going to pull off getting the valuable news sites onto their "Netflix for news' service. Since the WSJ now charges $39 per month, and Apple wants to charge only $10 for a blanket service, I don't see the WSJ going for it, unless Apple pays them a fortune up front.
Apple shouldn't (and almost certainly wouldn't, per PCI rules) store the full CC#. The CC information that the news outlets are wanting is likely everything other than the actual number - name and address in particular, as it's much harder to obtain a new (valid) credit card than it is to punch in a fake name or email address on a web form.
I'm not saying it isn't a bit sketchy, and I would hope Apple gives it the big old "nope", but it's probably not _as_ sketchy as it sounds on the surface.
Apple does not much, and for the most part focus the one ecosystem to ripp of hard working developers. Already for a lone developer 30% less income is a lot, for a larger team making quite some sales 30% is a quite hefty amount in the books. 50% is just a blatant rippof. Compensating for their failing, peak bug product lines. In my opinion 10% would be fair. And also open the market so vendors and users can choose alternative distribution models, ..! (Yes, currently migrating to Android: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...)
The days when Apple was in a position to dictate terms is gone, or going away fast.
What are the chances that someone just made that 50% up so that they can claim later that Apple was forced to back down to a more reasonable figure?
I subscribe to two major papers.
When a friend shares with you a link to an article from a paper other than those two, and you go to read it, the paper's publisher is likely to tell you that your subscription is no good there.
Publishers should learn to code their own pay wall sites.
The problem with each publisher coding its own paywall comes when I want to read only one article or a handful of articles from a given publisher. Because of the roughly 0.30 USD transaction fee that credit card processors charge on top of their 3% cut, news publishers are unlikely to offer articles a la carte.[1] Instead, each publication requires readers to purchase a month's subscription to that publication or perhaps a pack of 100 page views from that publication. But once I've read the three articles that interest me, I can't resell the other 97 page views or 29 days of a subscription or use them with a different publication.
[1] I'm referring to news and news-based editorial, not closed-access academic journals, which tend to charge tens of dollars for a copy of a single article.
Another concern for some publishers is that they likely wouldn't get access to subscriber data, including credit-card information and email addresses
Boo-fucking-hoo
Tim Cook's ' More for Less' gangster strategy at its simplest reflects a globalist's mindspeak from an abundance of eyeballs it thinks it owns; hence the offer publishers can't refuse giving up ½ of their revenue.
The monopoly is eyeballs not context or distribution!
Your content isn't worth the trouble. Toss me an add and let me see the content.
Some sites don't even toss me an ad. They toss me the URL of a third-party proprietary computer program written in JavaScript that surveils my browsing history across multiple websites and uses the battery life and Internet bandwidth that I pay for to choose an ad from one of a dozen or more ad networks. And if I say no to proprietary software or no to surveillance, these sites are incapable of falling back to a publisher-hosted ad like those seen on Daring Fireball and Read the Docs because interest-based ads pay three times the CPM.
At some level you can only keep up with so many subscriptions. Individuals maybe subscribe to 2 or 3 paywalls. I've moved away from the Bay Area and like those 2 - 3 Baywalls. Keep my couple online paywalls and need national paywalls to keep the pucker-brush from growing between my synapses. SO... needs exist that go beyond mere curiosity, luxury and convenience.
News aggregators feed into paywalls which 'Netflix for news' solves to the degree aggregators feed the monster paywall in the cloud.
PCI rules have some insane requirements if you need to keep the whole card number, but it's not outright banned. Digital wallets need more than just a single-vendor token.