Tag: Subscription business model

Downstreaming: Amazon Prime Instant Video

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Amazon Prime
Image by zcopley via Flickr

Amazon Instant Video for Prime Subscribers is a great idea. Many think this is Amazon’s move to compete withNetflix and Hulu. Amazon already has a well-reviewed pay-per-view service and a rental service can get access to movies that a subscription service cannot.

Amazon Prime is a service that offers 2-day shipping on any Amazon purchase for $79 a year. Now, for that $6.58 a month, you get 500 TV Shows and 1800 movies. These are generally library titles, as opposed to first-run movies, but the selection will improve. And classics still have entertainment value.

Prime is a way to get $79 from their customers, but more importantly $79 that encourages people to buy Amazon products over other vendors. By adding video subscriptions, they make that more appetizing. We wouldn’t suggest you get the video without the two day shipping, but together, they are a compelling deal.

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15 Years Ago, the New York Times Online Began – Now You Will Have to Pay

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Logo of The New York Times.
Image via Wikipedia

Last week, we were complaining that traditional print media is missing the opportunities of putting a good quality version of their content online. If the electronic version of the New York Times is better than the Kindle version, and the electronic version is free, than the paper is missing its opportunity to get our money.

It was 15 years ago this week that the New York Times unveiled its website. Perhaps the Publisher described the mission statement best at the time. “We see our role on the Web as being similar to our traditional print role — to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust.” The media is about the name. They have built trust. A website can build trust over time just in the same way as a newspaper. And if we want or demand a certain level of quality, it is not unreasonable for it to be paid for, either through direct subscription or through advertising.

That said, after fifteen years, Bloomberg reports that the New York Times has decided its paid service will be less than the $19.95 charge for its Kindle Edition, although this may be a promotion during the stage of early adoption. Confirmed details are not yet out. The Times, like other newspapers, has yet to establish how much of their content will stay free, and how much will be paid for.

The Times seems set to move to a consumption based model, with a set number of articles free each month, and heavy users paying a subscription fee. Print subscribers will get full online access with no extra charge. So far, the paywall model has not been entirely successful at any of the newspapers which have implemented it. So the Times may be setting itself up for failure.

The Teleread article on the story had an interesting model suggestion in its comments. ‘Howard’ suggested that as paywalls have been less than successful, a micropayment system might be more effective, where people put money into an account and each time they access an article, money is deducted from that prepaid account.

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Traditional Print Media is Missing Online Opportunities

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Front page of The New York Times on Armistice ...
Image via Wikipedia

We’ve been in the midst of a free trial of the New York Times on the Amazon Kindle platform. We’ve looked at it both on the Amazon Kindle App for Android and on the Kindle itself. And it falls flat. But don’t take our word for it. The New York Times is the number 1 selling newspaper on the platform, and is offered at $19.99 a month. After the introductory offer of $5.70 a week, delivery of the actual Times is $11.70 a week in our neighborhood here in New York City.

If you explain the reduction in cost as being due to no printing or distribution costs, then this should be a phenomenal deal. But it is severely lacking. Many sections and features are missing from the Kindle edition. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Kevin C. Tofel, who is the mobile site editor for GigaOm, when we were complaining about this on Twitter, commented, “yup, after reading today’s NYT for Kindle on the plane home, I agree. More like a local web version than an ebook newspaper.”

Reading the Amazon reviews of the product, you see many people complaining about being unwilling to pay this price for partial news, and missing sections. Why would anyone pay $20 a month to get less than they can get on the New York Times website for free? Where is the value-added product? It is why, like many, we have no plans to continue our subscription past the free trial. Why is the New York Times putting out an inferior version of their product? There were similar complaints in other of the top papers and magazines. Missing content was the biggest complaint.

Most customers want a e-version of their newspaper to be a reproduction of the paper experience and to be formatted the same across multiple platforms(to the best extent possible). We can use the website, but the point of downloading a complete file is that we get everything without the need for constant connection. These issues are not limited to one platform.

Electronic subscriptions are up, but overall, subscriptions are down. If print media cannot put out its A game, then is it any surprise if it fails to succeed in paid digital subscriptions, and ultimately at preserving its relevance in a connected world.

Someone give us a top-quality electronic newspaper or magazine, or even just top quality online content packaged for our use. Give us something worth paying for, and people will pay for it. Not everyone, but those people unwilling to pay for content are not the target audience for newspapers or magazines.

What do you think?

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