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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#241

Post by querez »

intrasight wrote: post #58
jimnotgym wrote: post #14

More thoughts. I dabble with publications 1) I subscribe to the Guardian atm even though it is free to read 2) I tried to restart subscriptions with the Financial Times and Economist recently and gave up on both due to shitty behaviour, shitty terms, shitty UI. It is not all about price

I've subscribed to The Economist for 25 years. Has been interesting to see it's transformations. Not only the transition to digital but also the topics they choose to cover - or not. I currently consume on my iPhone. Mostly I listen to it but do occasionally read. Before that I used Android. Certainly some usability issues that are annoying but most apps are worse.

As someone who's only subscribed since recently: could you talk more about this? What observations have you made?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#242

Post by vorpalhex »

rmtech wrote: post #233

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 SE…

> as long as the banks allow you to "subscribe" in a way that makes it really, really hard to "unsubscribe"

I am very quick to subscribe to patreon and through Google Play because I know I can unsubscribe through those platforms. I won't touch newspapers unless they're through another subscription provider.

> I don't want to have to keep re-selling myself if I can possibly avoid it.

It's time efficient to switch to basically rent seeking. Sometimes that makes sense - I have content creators who I consume so regularly I have no issue giving them a few dollars on the month with the caveat that they are active.

On the other hand, for someone who is new to content creation they are never going to get a subscription from me because it's too risky that they decide to stop quietly and I'm out my entertainment budget money.

Subscriptions only work when I trust you both as a payment processor (so that excludes newspapers) and if you're already established as a trustable content creator.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#243

Post by albumsrexp »

anentropic wrote: post #199
ako wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading the best news. I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify, and i don't limit myself to the news of one publisher.

> I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify this is a bizarre analogy no one had to limit themselves to listening to only one band before Spotify

Back in the days of buying albums, comparable to the newsstand days, was certainly a lot more expensive to listen to multiple albums. There was the radio, but you weren't in control of that. You could make mix tapes, in the 90s. But you might have more of a tendency to prefer sticking to one band since you couldn't preview their albums before buying, other than getting lucky hearing a tune in the radio.

Seems like a good analogy to me.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#244

Post by antepodius »

apetresc wrote: post #171
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...

Uh, I'm almost certain they see themselves as providing more value than Netflix.

The highest-brow 'orange man bad'.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#245

Post by lowdose »

jmkd wrote: post #186
ako wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading the best news. I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify, and i don't limit myself to the news of one publisher.

This. Many readers enjoy gaining multiple perspectives on the same news story from which to draw their own conclusions. This behaviour is scarcely catered for today.

Google News app offers multiple perspectives around news events under a button. Fox, WSJ, CNN and Bloomberg coverage on the last Trump rally.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#246

Post by CivBase »

I wonder if there's any opportunity for a "YouTube Red" of journalism where users are charged a monthly subscription for access to many content networks and the revenue from their subscription is distributed to the networks based on which ones the users engaged with most. I'm not sure how you could measure that engagement, though.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#247

Post by johannes1234321 »

jmkd wrote: post #186
ako wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading the best news. I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify, and i don't limit myself to the news of one publisher.

This. Many readers enjoy gaining multiple perspectives on the same news story from which to draw their own conclusions. This behaviour is scarcely catered for today.

Really? Isn't that only a small number of people? Most have their trusted news source and come by others only when printed out at Facebook (while their most read only headline and comments and don't click the link)

Going back to pre Internet: Even then most people got one newspaper and be done. (I myself grew up with in a household with a daily newspaper and two weekly, in addition to subscriptions to physics and computing magazines, but that was an exception, in most of my friend's places there was at most one) And TV channels there was one news program one watched (and still only few people switch between news channels)

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#248

Post by rcarmo »

Here's a suggestion: "Paid Reader Mode" in which you can preview a third or so of the article in Reader Mode (without any clutter) and then choose whether or not you want to pay a pre-determined amount (capped by your browser settings) to obtain a _complete_, _unfettered_ version of the article as self-contained HTML, EPUB (or PDF) that you can save on your computer (or add to a site-independent library, something like a cross between Pocket and iBooks on the Mac).

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#249

Post by golemotron »

cableshaft wrote: post #206
xorfish wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an easy solution for this problem. Everyone with the link can access the article. Everyone who subscribes can access the links for the articles and share them.

It's an interesting idea, but seems easily gamed. One person subscribes, and posts all the links to other link sites (like Reddit, HackerNews). Maybe there's a /r/xNewspaper that anyone can go to that posts links to every article from that newspaper.

You need to build the loss into the model (or not even see it as loss). Many streaming services don't seem to mind when you share your username and password with another household. It doesn't happen often enough for them to care.

How much money you would make if everyone did the right thing is a number that is not as real as the actual amount of money you make. Seeing things that way seems important.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#250

Post by jedimastert »

> Part of the calculation includes the fact that most of us are lazy and administratively incompetent and just won’t get around to unsubscribing, even if we want to.

I think the author's giving too much leeway to the fact that many publications (and services in general) intentionally make unsubscribing far more difficult that it needs to be

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