Time haggles with Apple over iPad subscriptions
Magazine publisher Time, Inc. is having a very hard time reaching a deal with Apple about iPad subscription apps because both parties want to own and control subscriber information.
Magazines are not appearing in droves in the app store for the iPad, even though that device appears perfect for the electronic digestion of magazines. The basic deal-breaker, apparently, is that magazine publishers feel that their most important asset is the ownership of information about its subscribers. Apple feels much the same way about any content that appears on its mobile devices. So far, none of the major publishers have been able to successfully negotiate the customer information rights that they all want from Apple for iPad subscriptions. According to a CNET article, that is the reason that there are still so few magazines available in the App store.
Subscriptions have always been the bread and butter at the table of magazine publishers, and their pheasant under glass as well. It is important, of course, that subscriptions provide a regular, long-lasting revenue stream, but apparently the customer data that comes along with subscriptions is at least as important as the revenue stream. Steve Jobs and Apple apparently feel the same way about the same data, setting up a continuing squabble over who gets what when an iPad magazine subscription is sold. Apparently Apple’s rejection of the Time, Inc. Sports Illustrated subscription app is keeping Time, or any other publisher, from submitting more magazine apps.
Apple’s rejection of the Sports Illustrated app, which would certainly have been a big seller in the App Store, seems to have been a watershed event in the course of magazine e-subscriptions. Apple has historically kept all customer information for App Store sales, and 30 percent of the revenue from such transactions. Both of those are huge sticking points with the publishers of magazines, and the resulting failed negotiations between Apple and publishers are the reason that the promise of magazines for the iPad has not yet been fulfilled. Both sides seem fully entrenched, and there is not much of a reason to expect a solution any time soon.
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July 29th, 2010
there is a finite window of opportunity to take advantage of any new technology before people using it come up with ways around any roadblock. if the magazine publishers aren’t careful they will lose out as iPad (and other devices when they finally turn up) users decide they don’t want to wait any longer to pay for a $5 copy of Sports Illustrated each month, when they can go online and get 80% of the content for free. I wonder if the publishers will stand around and blame someone other than themselves for their lack of presence on the tablet platform. it’s not print media that is dying (paper books will probably never die I’m glad to say because there will always be a desire to feel a page under your fingers sometimes – maybe when they shoehorn interactive screens into something that feels like paper the differences will disappear though), it’s the belief that the consumer will wait and take what is presented to them when and how the publishers decide, that is dying. add that to the growing desire people have that unknown companies NOT have access to data about yourself (I know, Apple is another anonymous company but they’re pretty, and they’re good a positively marketing themselves… well, mostly.. certainly better than Microsoft these days since they forgot the “MS-DOS vs Apple Mac” lesson
), and you’ve got Apple still not providing information to the magazine publishers, but only because the information consumer got tired of waiting and listening to the arguing and just found other ways to consume the same information for free.