Trends in online content

Zino, the digital magazine newsstand has launched Z-Pass which lets subscribers read three different magazines for $5 per month. Pretty good deal considering they offer over 5500 different magazines. 

Newsweek relaunches its website and adds a meter. 

Liberal or Conservative, you have to agree with the NYT's editorial staff when they call out Holder as a hypocrite for speaking out loudly about the IRS investigation and refusing to talk about the AP spy scandal. First amendment be damned it seems. 

If you want to test building your own brand ala Andrew Sullivan, Jurnid has a super-cheap way for you to build your own paywall and test the relevancy of your content. 

I guess if you thought the Obama administration was going to be better to the Press than the Bush admiistration, you thought wrong. What an egregious abuse of power by the Dept. of Homeland Security. 

Here's another article about Piano that mentions our new product launch. 

Google is getting into the content subscription game, asking people to pony up $2 per month for access to some youtube channels. 

the NYT passes everyone in digital subscribers. 

Even with a "slower" paid subscription growth in the 1st quarter of 2013, the NYT's overall subscription revenue is 54% of the paper's overall revenue and climbing while advertising is only 40% and falling fast. 

The NYT is reporting a 45% year-on-year digital subscriber growth with their number at approx. 708K at quarter's end. Well done NYT!

Forbes traffic is up which is good news for Piano in Poland where Forbes is in our national system and will soon be releasing articles through Piano before they even hit the news stands!

New NYT CEO says launch of the paywall was the most imoprtant and successful business decision made by the NYT in years. It certainly helped move the US Newspaper business off the fence when it comes to subscriptions which is great. 

The third British News International product, and by far its most popular, the Sun tabloid, is putting up a £2/week paywall on Aug.1. Smart move as more and more UK publishers are looking for paid content sollutions (including some who are looking at Piano's Solo). 

The FT puts itself in a popular aggregator, but readers only get full access to content if they are already a paying subscriber. Good move by the FT to get its product out to the updated "lean-back" audience. 

Politico has figured out that free doesn't pay. So they are applying the meter. It's a test in a few states and for international readers, but my guess is it'll soon be applied site-wide for everyone. Digital advertising dimes continue to shrink. 

Piano gets a nice write-up from Rachel McAthy in journalism.co.uk. She interviews Piano's international sales leader Peter Richards who goes into depth about why Piano is now aggressively going after the western European Markets. A good read. 

Facebook is on track to do more than $1 billion in mobile ad revenue this year. Don't think they are sucking the wind out of local advertising along with Google and Facebook? Think again. 

The Boston Globe doubles digital subscribers in a year. Now they are raising the cover price of the paper to increase revenue. Seems like a smart move. 

Wondering if everyone thinks that twitter is a responsible place for "journalism." Would hate to be someone who lost his life's savings on a twitter rumor. 

the FT, Forbes and Gannett talk about disruption to the media industry. 

NYT is expanding their subscription to include a lower-tier and will include "most important" stories, games and packages tailored to users' interests. 

The NYT discovers editorial needs to understand its readers as much as the business side does. Why they didn't figure this out when they first set up their paywall is a mystery.