Apple may launch premium Apple News subscriptions in spring, but getting weak publisher re...
Apple is reportedly aiming to relaunch Texture as a premium subscription option within Apple News, possibly as soon this spring, but is encountering stiff reactions from publishers.
Some industry executives are concerned that Apple's service -- which in its current form as Texture, lets people read a wide range of magazines for $9.99 per month -- will rob them of subscribers since Texture/Apple News will be cheaper, according to Bloomberg. One person likened Apple's approach to journalism as loving a toy so much they break it.
An Apple team headed by VP Eddy Cue and former Conde Nast executive Liz Schimel has been meeting with media executives in the past few months to try to convince them otherwise, one source said. The argument is that subscriber growth with Texture/Apple News could actually surpass what publications achieve on their own, and may replicate the success of Apple Music.
Publishers are expected to be paid based on how much time readers spend with their articles. Aesthetically, those articles will take on a conventional online format, rather than the recreation of print Texture currently uses.
Apple is trying to lure prominent newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg sources added, backing outside reports.
The Texture buyout was a surprise announcement ahead of Cue's appearance at SXSW in March. Since then Apple has done relatively little with it beyond changing to a flat pricing scheme and shutting down a native Windows app, forcing people to turn to iOS or Android.
Some industry executives are concerned that Apple's service -- which in its current form as Texture, lets people read a wide range of magazines for $9.99 per month -- will rob them of subscribers since Texture/Apple News will be cheaper, according to Bloomberg. One person likened Apple's approach to journalism as loving a toy so much they break it.
An Apple team headed by VP Eddy Cue and former Conde Nast executive Liz Schimel has been meeting with media executives in the past few months to try to convince them otherwise, one source said. The argument is that subscriber growth with Texture/Apple News could actually surpass what publications achieve on their own, and may replicate the success of Apple Music.
Publishers are expected to be paid based on how much time readers spend with their articles. Aesthetically, those articles will take on a conventional online format, rather than the recreation of print Texture currently uses.
Apple is trying to lure prominent newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg sources added, backing outside reports.
The Texture buyout was a surprise announcement ahead of Cue's appearance at SXSW in March. Since then Apple has done relatively little with it beyond changing to a flat pricing scheme and shutting down a native Windows app, forcing people to turn to iOS or Android.
Comments
Apple is a dilettante when it comes to news. It's just not that invested in sticking with it, but rather making great noises every six months or so to give the appearance of treating news like it does music. The original Newsstand was good that failed because Apple didn't care about it too much and it withered on the vine. Then we were all supposed to be wowed by Apple News which is just a big RSS feed whose biggest selling point was "how beautiful it looked." If you have an Apple News channel, you still need to use a browser to upload stories. There is no native app on macOS or iOS. Hell, you can't even *schedule* a story being posted.
News outlets are right to be wary. Tech companies and news have proven to be oil and water, as you have a generation of young know-nothings who sneer at journalism and print media but insist they have the answer to save both (a topic that is now over a decade old with no end in sight.) And it seems to be eluding people (particularly techie boyz) that journalism is not only hard, but takes resources and goes far beyond mere political punditry.
Otherwise, I'm fairly indifferent to Apple News.
Read the story again. It doesn't say that Bloomberg is being considered.
And while we're here; Bloomberg is the outfit reporting, so how much of it is true is anyone's guess.
The NYT was going broke giving away the website for free with ads and is now profitable and growing behind a paywall. The Wall Street Journal was the first in the US to do that. The same was true later of the WaPo after Bezos rescued them from oblivion. Most of the rest of America's papers do not have content to justify a similar price as they are mostly wire service. The NYT, WaPo and WSJ are mostly content original to them.
$10 a month is not going to get it. My NYT digital sub is $20 a month. A basic digital subscription to the Financial Times is $6.45 a week and the full one is $10.75 a week. The Economist is $152 a year after the teaser rate expires. Bloomberg Digital is $34.99 a month after the teaser rate expires.
Apple may launch premium Apple News subscriptions in spring, but getting weak publisher re...
Presumably that last word is “response”?
Who are these executives? Why aren't they quoted directly? I call as much bullshit on this as I do on the supply chain reports about the XS and XR.
If a big publisher wants to put an article there, they can, but no ads.
If Apple is going to make the News app a subscription service, the only way to do that right is to fund a news service itself. Like, buy Reuter’s, a sports news service, an entertainment news service, and whatever to provide content.
If they are going offer a subscription, I’d only do it if all the ads go away, at minimum.
I tried texture on trial and found it wanting at $6.95/mo. This will obviously vary with different individuals, but I wasn't willing to pay $9.95, and adding News to it doesn't really sweeten the deal for me. I'm not particularly fond of subscriptions, so that doesn't help.
I set it up so I get news on Python and Swift programming, though I occasionally get stories about large snakes being found in bathrooms.