“Apple says it wants to help save journalism,” Peter Kafka writes for Recode. “All it wants in return is half of all the revenue journalists make when they sell their stuff through a forthcoming new Apple subscription service. Cue internet outrage.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Internet outrage” is redundant.
“So what is Apple thinking now?” Kafka writes. “Here’s the short answer, which I’ve cobbled together by talking to industry sources: Apple has already signed many publishers to deals where they’ll get 50 percent of the revenue Apple generates through subscriptions to its news service, which is currently called Texture and will be relaunched as a premium version of Apple News this spring. And some publishers are happy to do it, because they think Apple will sign up many millions of people to the new service. And they’d rather have a smaller percentage of a bigger number than a bigger chunk of a smaller number.”
Kafka writes, “In the words of a publishing executive who is optimistic about Apple’s plans: ‘It’s the absolute dollars paid out that matters, not the percentage.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s an even shorter explanation for the headline: Basic math.
SEE ALSO:
Apple plans star-studded March 25th event to unveil video and news subscription services – February 13, 2019
Apple to hold special media event on March 25th – February 12, 2019
Publishers chafe at Apple’s terms for subscription news service – February 12, 2019
Apple to relaunch Texture magazine subscription service as soon as spring 2019 – December 12, 2018
Apple to shut down Texture’s Windows app in July – May 4, 2018
Amazon considered buying Texture before Apple bit – March 13, 2018
Apple pushes deeper into news – March 13, 2018
Apple to acquire Next Issue Media and its digital magazine-subscription service Texture – March 12, 2018
Because Cue and Cook are nice guys?
😐
….and because neither are product guys, so $$ becomes the “product.”
I’m all for making a profit–just noting the paradigm shift.
Yeah, who wants to pay Apple to curate and deliver news to them? In this era of divisiveness and propaganda and “fake news”, you can either cede the role of thought police to Apple or another corporation, or you can learn how to find and consume news from the variety of uncensored sources and be a well-informed citizen.
Apple’s foray into curated (propagandized) and censored news is only for sheep who don’t want to think for themselves. Journalists who think that Apple is in this to save “journalism” are deluded.
Uhm, if it works like how Apple News works now, then, you can read the articles that it curates, OR you can click on any source you want, the NYTs, the Economist, Breitbart news. I’ve got over 60 sources or topics selected that I can click on at any time.
It’s weird that people would comment on things they don’t seem to have actually tried.
Actually, KenC, very few of the new sources I currently read, or the independent journalists I follow are funneled through Apple News. So yeah, I’ve tried and rejected Apple News. It pretty much is a fishbowl app, meaning that if I like living in a fishbowl news world, I would use it. I tend to follow a lot of independent and foreign journalists who will never be found in Apple’s fish bowl.
Nor do I like the idea of tagging news with likes or dislikes. This just further insulates me from being exposed to new and controversial ideas that challenge my biases. Tagging news also contributes information back to Apple and the news source about my, which can then be used to profile me for targeted ads. I don’t believe for a minute that Apple’s algorithms won’t be used to profit off of my news choices.
So I keep my news reading anonymous, and I read voluminously now that I am semi-retired. And I avoid at all costs any sort of aggregator like Apple News that will restrict my wide ranging exposure to uncurated news.
As long as I can get the news for free, why would I pay for it? I might consider paying, if I never saw another ad!
just a random thought, but i note with interest the following passages
“And some publishers are happy to do it, because they think Apple will sign up many millions of people to the new service. And they’d rather have a smaller percentage of a bigger number than a bigger chunk of a smaller number.”
Kafka writes, “In the words of a publishing executive who is optimistic about Apple’s plans: ‘It’s the absolute dollars paid out that matters, not the percentage.’”
gee, i wonder if that is what the music and record industry thought a number of years ago until the figured out their arrangement with mr. apple didn’t work out quite so well for them as they had anticipated.
they were mighty gun-shy after that.
I believe one of the requirements for being ‘paid’ is the amount of time a subscriber ‘veiws’ any article. In other words each publishers’ share becomes a percentage portion relative to the total views all articles in the service have been viewed for whatever time period Apple chooses (weekly, monthly, etc.). For smaller publishers it may be a good deal considering very few would have viewed in the first place. For larger publishers it becomes a race to which of the ‘big fish’ can get a larger share of the 50%.
“Greed…..is good”