Apple offers past Apple News+ subscribers another free month
Apple is offering a free month of service to users who tried Apple News+ but have since canceled their subscriptions.
Credit: Apple
The $9.99-a-month Apple News subscription service, which offers users a range of magazines and premium media content, first launched in March 2019. The service is said to be struggling in terms of gaining new customers while at the same time appeasing participating publishers.
It now appears that Apple is launching a new promotion that will let users who have previously canceled their Apple News+ subscriptions get another month for free. The offer was spotted by 9to5Mac.
The promotion comes ahead of a potential launch of an Apple News+ audio component, which was first rumored in May and corroborated by icons found in an iOS 13.5.5 beta.
In late June, The New York Times announced that it would be pulling out of Apple News due to the fact that the platform provided "little in the way of direct relationships with readers and little control over the business."
At its latest earnings call, Apple announced that Apple News has 125 million overall users -- which includes both the free standard component of the app and the Apple News+ subscription.
Apple in June also sent out emails to past Apple Arcade subscribers inviting them back for another free month. Those emails came just before a report of Apple Arcade shifting its strategy to focus on games with higher "engagement."
Credit: Apple
The $9.99-a-month Apple News subscription service, which offers users a range of magazines and premium media content, first launched in March 2019. The service is said to be struggling in terms of gaining new customers while at the same time appeasing participating publishers.
It now appears that Apple is launching a new promotion that will let users who have previously canceled their Apple News+ subscriptions get another month for free. The offer was spotted by 9to5Mac.
The promotion comes ahead of a potential launch of an Apple News+ audio component, which was first rumored in May and corroborated by icons found in an iOS 13.5.5 beta.
In late June, The New York Times announced that it would be pulling out of Apple News due to the fact that the platform provided "little in the way of direct relationships with readers and little control over the business."
At its latest earnings call, Apple announced that Apple News has 125 million overall users -- which includes both the free standard component of the app and the Apple News+ subscription.
Apple in June also sent out emails to past Apple Arcade subscribers inviting them back for another free month. Those emails came just before a report of Apple Arcade shifting its strategy to focus on games with higher "engagement."
Comments
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/06/media/new-york-times-q1-2020-earnings/index.html
https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/02/the-wall-street-journal-joins-the-new-york-times-in-the-2-million-digital-subscriber-club/
I think Apple's branding for this service is underselling the most appealing aspect, which is magazines. News sounds like it's just newspaper content. The parts listed in the box is what comes extra with the subscription:
People love the free part but the extras with the paid part can't be offering enough value to justify $10/month. There have been some issues described with it like not getting full access to everything, some of the content quality not being optimized for digital displays, still showing ads:
https://www.engadget.com/2019-03-26-apple-news-plus-hands-on.html
If I was unfamiliar with Apple News+ and I saw an ad with that brand, there's no way I'd know that magazines like Men's Health, National Geographic, fashion magazines, gaming magazines were in there. But also, magazines are best viewed on platforms with big displays, that's iPad and Mac users.
Maybe they can offer cheaper subscription tiers where people choose the magazines they want to subscribe to like 5 magazines for $2.99/month, 20 magazines for $4.99/month, all magazines for $9.99/month. Then I think they could do with putting out some ads that let people know that some really popular magazines are in there. There's a lot of ways they can boost that service with it being digital like health magazines can have celebrity workouts and diets linking with apps like the fitness trackers and cooking/shopping apps. Fashion magazines can link with product sites. Music magazines can have audio tracks from musicians that can be added to iTunes libraries. Then celebrities can be recommending the service.
So many companies have had a go at this. No one is interested. Most people just don’t like to consume news / magazines this way.
People will pay for any kind of premium content as long as it is seen to have value. Most news these days is pretty low value and doesn't feel worth reading at all let alone paying for it. Special interest publications can still do high quality work though and it's a case of getting the best providers, packaging their work up into a platform that matches the potential buyer's expectations.
I think a part of the problem is the reading platform. News articles can be easily consumed on the iPhone because it's mostly just text. Premium content like magazines are best consumed on bigger screens like the iPad and Mac. That audience is much smaller than the iPhone. When the iPhone audience represents 125 million, the addressable audience for Mac and iPad would be around 20 million for free users. Paid users is going to be a small fraction of that. This is an example of a service that would be boosted considerably by supporting Windows just due to volume.
But there are other options to try. Subscription volume scales considerably with lower prices. That in turn creates some word of mouth and people will start to see the value on offer. I think it would help if they rebranded it from News+ to Magazines, Publications or similar because the magazines are the premium content, not some pretentious news bloggers trying to dress up their meaningless drivel into something payment-worthy. Photos, videos, quality editorial. It doesn't fit the brand "news" because that means current affairs, things that are hot off the press. Quality editorial is different from news and people need to know that's what the subscription represents.
That $30/yr is not reality, especially if you actually look for deals on magazines online. Depends on what you read, but I find tremendous deals on what I read, and I've seen some of what I "need" isn't offered on Apple News+.
That's because given current events, America offers the most entertainment for your dollar (or whatever your currency is). It's plain crazy over here!
On the Apple Arcade front, I’ll admit I expected better. 9 months in and I’ve only just sampled less than a handful of titles I found appealing. Which half of them turned out not to be as entertaining as I first thought!
I’ll bear through the rest of this year. But if game developers don’t deliver, I’ll search for better value to my hard earned money.
Anyone that lets someone else decide what news they see deserves what they get.
That doesn't bother me at all. I always look at the source and ask two questions: