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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#231

Post by stkdump »

podgib wrote: post #175
grumple wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These prices are just crazy compared to their old model. Do these papers really think they are providing as much value as Netflix (or more)? Even ignoring journalistic quality...

I get a lot more value out of my Economist subscription than my Netflix one.

But the average netflix subscriber? I maybe watch one movie per week or biweekly, and netflix currently is the cheapest way to get that. Previously it was video rental at 10-20% the price, but of course I had to walk around the block and return it after watching at night, otherwise the price would be double. The internet made everything more convenient/quicker but also massively more expensive, due to the monopoly building nature it has.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#232

Post by Spivak »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #229
pmontra wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that. Am I going to pay twice if I reload the page / close and reopen the browser / reboot the computer / view the same article in another browser or my phone / read it again tomorrow / etc?

Given that the implementation seems to be "constant drain of money per time open" then reading it twice costs twice, and the only way to read at your leisure without throwing away money is to paste the text into Notepad.

I expect a browser extension to emerge immediately that transparently clones pages and views them locally.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#233

Post by rmtech »

This article is self-refuting. People are creatures of habit, and as long as the banks allow you to "subscribe" in a way that makes it really, really hard to "unsubscribe", the subscription model will continue winning.

The very idea of a subscription needs to die in order for content to be sold piecemeal.

Having said that, I am about to start a substack to get my own crowd of subscribers. BECAUSE IT MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE TO DO SO - I don't want to have to keep re-selling myself if I can possibly avoid it.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#234

Post by sjy »

hnhnsomething12 wrote: post #59

What exactly are the news publishers even providing these days? They aren't a trust authority and they aren't a distribution platform. The internet undermined the first and replaced the latter. The future could be readers having a direct relationship with authors, and necessary infrastructure "unbundled" as it were. Author pays a non-partisan fact check service to accredit what they say. With proper accreditation the…

I still trust some news publishers as reliable sources, and so does Wikipedia [1]. If I see an interesting headline on social media which I know will be covered elsewhere, I’ll Google it and read an article from a trustworthy source rather than wasting my time on poorly-written or plagiarised writing. Relying on a trustworthy author is even better, but I don’t know the best authors on every subject I’m interested in, nor do I trust the authors I know and like to write on every topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#New...

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#235

Post by Spivak »

znpy wrote: post #207
Nextgrid wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> newspapers can't live from small payments on popular articles only Printed newspapers were surviving just fine despite selling for a few bucks despite it being a physical piece of paper that needed to be printed & delivered on very tight schedules. The same model should be applied for the web - the price point is already proven to be affordable enough for the majority of the market, and the lack of logistics would…

> Printed newspapers were surviving just fine Oh boy, that's so not the case. My previous job was still in IT but the company had a strong foothold in the news&media sector. Most newsroom are struggling and have been for at least the last ten years. Digital content has eroded newspapers' income very very much.

> Digital content has eroded newspapers' income very very much.

This is the concept I don't think people get when they say "clearly newspapers used to be sustain themselves in the past" -- the market has fundamentally changed and now newspapers and magazines aren't the only game in town competing for people's passive entertainment time.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#236

Post by Spivak »

znpy wrote: post #211
mnky9800n wrote: post #133

What's strange is it used to be you would pick up a newspaper at a stand for the day, pay a dollar or whatever, and then have quite a lot of articles to read for that day. But now, it is impossible, the only way is to lock-in. And that may be for the rest of your life if the complaints about the labirynth you may navigate to unsubscribe the nytimes is to be believed. If there was some sort of daily access pass that d…

Ironically enough, buying a physical copy of a newspaper is quite literally "a daily pass", and you get to keep the newspaper in case you want to re-read an article tomorrow, want to dig deeper or share it with somebody else in the house/office. Here in .it most newspapers cost less than 2.50-3€, and you get a physical good. I just checked on one of the most relevant newspapers in Italy (IlSole24Ore) and if you want…

I'm kinda surprised that "newsstand" isn't a popular payment strategy. You just have an account with WaPo and when you want to read the paper you pay $1.50 and get the "digital print edition" which has all the articles published today organized into neat little sections.

Newspapers don't have to become Spotify; iTunes is also good.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#237

Post by silverlake »

MattieTK wrote: post #62
wdrw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do you get new loyal readers, if not by repeatedly proving your value to new occasional readers?

Something the New York Times have talked about recently is how they repositioned their subscription offers in the opposite direction to Tim's suggestion recently to great success. The whole idea is to offer long trials at reduced prices, and I presume push this offer harder and harder to users that keep visiting regularly enough to look like potential subscribers. Once a user hits subscribe, a bunch of other systems…

This worked on me. I did the trial. I called to cancel (they make it difficult) and they offered to continue the trial rate for 6 months. Now I'm hooked and pay the full rate because it's proven very useful for me.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#238

Post by UweSchmidt »

Subscription can work if the content is high quality and unique, the experience as a reader is great (namely a clean and distraction free web design) and the entire process is BS free.

I signed up for The Athletic again and it's just that; when I cancelled during the NFL offseason I remember that to be fast and simple.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#239

Post by onion2k »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #219
onion2k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if, out of every 100 people who buy the article for $1, a single one of them would have otherwise become a subscriber (if the micropayment option weren’t available), then the paper lost money on net. I don't think Tim Bray is suggesting removing the subscription option. The point is that there could be a price for an individual article as well as the subscription option. If that 1 person would subscribe anyway th…

No, it might be undercutting the subscription as well. If nobody ever subscribes any more, and they just choose the articles which interest them and pay, the newspaper may decrease the amount of revenue it gets.

That's an unknown though. Saying it might be undercutting subs is true, but it has no more or less validity than saying it wouldn't. It depends on the number of people who subscribe (could be 1 in 100, but it could be 1 in 10,000), and the number of people who'd pay for an article, and the optimum price they'd pay at, and so on.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#240

Post by whatatita »

Kosirich wrote: post #178

What the author didn't mention explicitly is the obvious sludge techniques used in media subscription models. ( https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclope... ) In case of The Economist, to which I'm subscribed, you have to call them...on a phone...like it's the 80s The worst offender of the type is scribed.com that has a fake "we're sorry to see you leave" page before you actually hit the final "yes…

How do you pay that doesn't just let you cancel the payments on your end via your bank's/service's website? I'm no very familiar with this problem but I'd expect I could just tell my bank to stop honoring the subscription.
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