I am all for screening usage statistics and contact information from the digital media vultures, and I love the idea of a one-stop-shop to integrate and manage all my news subscriptions. A 50%...
I am all for screening usage statistics and contact information from the digital media vultures, and I love the idea of a one-stop-shop to integrate and manage all my news subscriptions. A 50% revenue split seems absurd, though. Apple is providing the platform here, but they're functionally just the newspaper delivery person. They're not adding nearly 50% of the value in the media supply chain. I'm guessing the 50% is just an opening salvo in what is going to be a negotiation, because that rate is just absurd.
The fear, though, is they'll wind up in a situation where they offer sweet-heart deals to widely circulated media, like the Times and the Journal, while independent media without that clout is stuck with the usurious 50% rate. We need MORE indie media out there, not less.
I also curious as to how good "time spent engaging with the content" is as a metric for determining payment rates. In theory it will privilege long-form, investigative articles over short and easily digestible meme formats the way clickbaity platforms do. This is good, I suppose. On the other hand, magazines like National Geographic or Vogue are all about the photography and no small amount of talent (photographers, writers, and models), editing, and layout go into putting those together. That seems like it should deserve at least as much compensation as a Vox explainer I would think?
This also kind of screws over what I like to call "aspirational" subscription media. I know lots of people who subscribe to The Economist. They hardly ever actually read the damn magazine, but they like the self-image of themselves as being the kinds of people who read The Economist. It's dumb, but it's a big part of their business strategy. The "time spent" deal would kind of screw them over. Arguably, this is a good thing and the "Planet Fitness model" of media subscription should go the way of the dinosaur, but it's bound to shake things up a bit.
Here is the original WSJ article, but it's paywalled and I don't want to make the main link to an article most people can't read... Anyway...50% of the revenue seems absolutely crazy to me. Even...
Here is the original WSJ article, but it's paywalled and I don't want to make the main link to an article most people can't read...
Anyway...50% of the revenue seems absolutely crazy to me. Even Apple's normal 70/30 split with app developers seems way too high.
Wow. I recall having written recently that we needed something like this, possibly here. Great news, but we'd need a non-Apple service to b/c most possibly they will only cater to their platforms....
Wow. I recall having written recently that we needed something like this, possibly here. Great news, but we'd need a non-Apple service to b/c most possibly they will only cater to their platforms. Nevertheless a great step forwards in making news services easy to buy again.
I can't really bother giving a thought to the pricing, it will settle as competitors pop up.
I am all for screening usage statistics and contact information from the digital media vultures, and I love the idea of a one-stop-shop to integrate and manage all my news subscriptions. A 50% revenue split seems absurd, though. Apple is providing the platform here, but they're functionally just the newspaper delivery person. They're not adding nearly 50% of the value in the media supply chain. I'm guessing the 50% is just an opening salvo in what is going to be a negotiation, because that rate is just absurd.
The fear, though, is they'll wind up in a situation where they offer sweet-heart deals to widely circulated media, like the Times and the Journal, while independent media without that clout is stuck with the usurious 50% rate. We need MORE indie media out there, not less.
I also curious as to how good "time spent engaging with the content" is as a metric for determining payment rates. In theory it will privilege long-form, investigative articles over short and easily digestible meme formats the way clickbaity platforms do. This is good, I suppose. On the other hand, magazines like National Geographic or Vogue are all about the photography and no small amount of talent (photographers, writers, and models), editing, and layout go into putting those together. That seems like it should deserve at least as much compensation as a Vox explainer I would think?
This also kind of screws over what I like to call "aspirational" subscription media. I know lots of people who subscribe to The Economist. They hardly ever actually read the damn magazine, but they like the self-image of themselves as being the kinds of people who read The Economist. It's dumb, but it's a big part of their business strategy. The "time spent" deal would kind of screw them over. Arguably, this is a good thing and the "Planet Fitness model" of media subscription should go the way of the dinosaur, but it's bound to shake things up a bit.
Here is the original WSJ article, but it's paywalled and I don't want to make the main link to an article most people can't read...
Anyway...50% of the revenue seems absolutely crazy to me. Even Apple's normal 70/30 split with app developers seems way too high.
Wow. I recall having written recently that we needed something like this, possibly here. Great news, but we'd need a non-Apple service to b/c most possibly they will only cater to their platforms. Nevertheless a great step forwards in making news services easy to buy again.
I can't really bother giving a thought to the pricing, it will settle as competitors pop up.
Can anyone explain why the WSJ has such a high price? Not bashing it or anything, just genuinely curious as to why they charge so much.
The answer is right there in the name. The Wall Street Journal. It's about their target market.