Followups: Apple News and paying dollars for cents
Very Brief Thoughts and Observations on Today’s ‘Show Time’ Apple Event
by John Gruber/Daring Fireball 2019.03.25
APPLE NEWS PLUS: Are magazines still a thing? Didn’t Apple go down this same path with Newsstand back when the iPad first launched? What’s the point of doing “magazines” if the articles you see in the News app are pulled from various publications? $10/month is good, but keep in mind that you don’t get the full Wall Street Journal at that price.
On the new news bundle (after the Apple News+ announcement)
by Peter Kafka/Recode (via Twitter) 2019.03.25
The cost of Apple’s Texture acquisition
by 9to5Mac 2019.04.10
Apple will have paid $485 million when it is all said and done for Texture [including] a $100 million up-front payment to the four publishers who initially started Texture: Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, and Rogers Media… a guaranteed payout minimum of $145 million for the first year for those publishers. In the second and third year, Apple guarantees a total payout of $240 million.
Apple signed up 200k subscribers to Apple News+ in its first two days, but has since struggled to add customers
by CNBC 2019.11.14
Apple is considering bundling News+, Apple TV+, and Apple Music as soon as 2020 to attract subscribers, meaning less money for News+ publishers
by Bloomberg 2019.11.11
Previously: Tim Cook suggests iPhone upgrade plans are akin to the idea of a “prime subscription” and says Apple sees it as a major growth area (CNBC)
The New York Times is opting out of Apple News
by Newsonomics (Nieman Lab) 2020.06.29
[NYT COO Meredith Levien said:] “At this moment, it doesn’t make sense for us to participate in Apple News anymore… It’s time to re-examine all of our relationships with the big platforms… And we’re reexamining them on three axes that are all interrelated, but different with each of the players [including]…
• “What role does the company play in helping bring audiences to the Times? Or said more technically, what role do they play in that funnel?”
• “What role does this company play in helping us do the main thing we’re trying to do? Which is scale direct relationships with people and get them to form a habit and ultimately pay.”
• “[What’s the value equation] recognizing that these companies get substantial value from our investment in original journalism”? […]
[And] no one else has been able to accomplish what the Times has: 6 million total subscribers, more than triple the number it had at the height of print, and on pace to reach its goal of 10 million in 2025.
The farther it finds itself along that road, the more confidence it has in its own capabilities. And the more readers and subscribers it has, the more data it can analyze to see what works with what sorts of readers. And that analysis proved this to the Times: Apple News was not a net plus.
N.B. The NYT never participated in Apple News+, so this decision is their choice to pull-out of Apple’s free service.
