“When Apple announced its new subscription billing system for iPhone and iPad apps earlier this year, apps from newspaper and magazine publishers were expected to be the major focus,” Stuart Dredge reports for The Guardian. “However, publishers have been fretting ever since about the terms and conditions.”
“It’s not so much the 30% revenue share taken by Apple that’s the problem as it is the question of how data on subscribers is shared. Publishers used to having the names and addresses of their print subscribers balked at the idea of that data remaining with Apple,” Dredge reports. “New announcements from Hearst Magazines and Telegraph Media Group, who are both adopting the new subscription billing, hint that the answer may be less about browbeating Apple into sharing this data, and more about simply asking subscribers for it.”
“This agreement is an opt-in process by which subscribers will be asked for their email addresses and postcodes – a feature that all publishers can include in their apps, seemingly with Apple’s approval,” Dredge reports. “This morning, Telegraph Media Group relaunched the iPad app for its Telegraph newspaper with a similar feature. The app offers a daily electronic edition of the paper for £1.19 an issue, but also offers a £9.99 monthly subscription option. Existing print subscribers get free access by entering their subscriber numbers and postcodes when asked.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Just to be clear (unlike the silly NY Post which is erroneously claiming that “Steve Jobs blinked”), Apple’s subscription rules seem to be unchanged within these agreements. As Apple stated in their original Feb. 15. 2011 statement on iTunes subscriptions: “Protecting customer privacy is a key feature of all App Store transactions. Customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe. The use of such information will be governed by the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s. Publishers may seek additional information from App Store customers provided those customers are given a clear choice, and are informed that any additional information will be handled under the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s.”
