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Media News Apple

Apple News+ Subscription Growth Blows Away Major Media Sites (cultofmac.com) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
David Snow reports via Cult of Mac: A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows Apple News+ growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites are. CIRP showed Apple increased its News+ subscriptions in the United States from 15% to 24% between 2020 to 2024, a 9% increase. In that same period, The New York Times and The Washington Post managed a 2% bump apiece and The Wall Street Journal managed a 3% increase. The results come from data measuring how many Apple product buyers say they subscribe to the News+ service.

CIRP also cited a report indicating that the Apple News+ partnership program is increasingly becoming a lifeline for news websites losing revenue, according to major publishers. And as far as the growth of Apple News+ subscription growth is concerned, it may keep growing as long as the user install base for devices keeps growing. "One-quarter of the U.S. base of Apple customers represents tens of millions of users, an enormous audience relative to what individual media outlets can expect on their own," CIRP noted.
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Apple News+ Subscription Growth Blows Away Major Media Sites More

Apple News+ Subscription Growth Blows Away Major Media Sites

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  • Like early Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vlad30 ( 44644 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @05:11AM (#64512485)
    Most of the news including magazines in one spot at a reasonable price and far fewer ads to deal with and so far zero junk/scam ads

    • Looking at your Sig, I think Friends/Foes was introduced in the late 1990s and I'm certain it was in place before 2009.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      Interestingly one of the reasons I don't use it is more adverts, not less. That's because on the web I can ad-block, but in the app I can't.
      • My adblocker is cranked up to "nuke from orbit", so a lot of news sites either block me or hassle me. News+ shows some ads, but it's nothing like the websites--and a lot of paywalled news outlets are on News+ also. I always feel like I'm getting my money's worth.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mccalli ( 323026 )
          I sympathise on the username - this is me too [slashdot.org], but I have no idea the email I used and likely don't have access anymore. Never received a single reply from the site each time I try to get hold of it again.
          • We're getting old. :-)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hawk ( 1151 )

              get off my lawn!

              [besides, I was here before the kids, but it took a while before I was willing to let it place a cookie. In those days, many of us had a folder for .cookies. Allowing cookies by site was years away.
              [until that tragic morning, we simply typed in our name when we posted!}

              • I was here for that too, not long after the switch from Chips & Dips. I resisted registering for a long time, preferring to post AC. Hot grits! But I was kind of old for that scene even then. Time catches up with us all ....
        • Nuke from orbit, It's the only way to be sure.

    • Most of the news including magazines in one spot at a reasonable price and far fewer ads to deal with and so far zero junk/scam ads

      I must admit, when bored, or on the can...I'll often open up Apple News.

      I've yet to really find a compelling reason to switch from the free to the paid version.

      I mean, even a lot of the paywall blocked articles they show you, you can just open up the web browser and search and usually find those articles for free on original website....

      So, it's not like you miss much on the

      • yep, that is what i do as well, and like you, I am satisfied with that work around.
      • I've been using Google's feed of articles but 80% are just dumping ads and popups on top of the content you can hardly read. My usual move is to open in Safari and use reader mode. Google doesn't offer anything like that, of course. News have fallen to the same level with porn sites in 2000's.
    • You pay and you still see ads, however, if youâ(TM)ve got at least DNS level adblocking in place, you will not see them on most things except for digital copies of print magazines, but Apple provides an index of legit articles which, if used, will skip them.

    • My wife pays for Apple News+, and I look at it fairly often. It seems less useful and less news-dense than I'd expected. As you scroll down the main page, you start to see a LOT of duplicated stories - which (if you're not looking very closely) gives the illusion that there's a lot of news coverage there.

      If you like magazines like the Atlantic, News+ is probably a better deal.

    • Like early Netflix . Most of the news including magazines in one spot at a reasonable price and far fewer ads to deal with and so far zero junk/scam ads

      Nope, its bundling. News is bundled with 2TB of cloud storage space, TV, Music, Fitness and Games.

  • No absolute numbers (Score:5, Informative)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @05:15AM (#64512487) Homepage
    If I grow my subscriber base from 1 to 2, and you grow your subscriber base from 10,000 to 10,001, then I've achieved 100% growth rate and you've only managed 0.01%. I win!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Puc Rotte ( 10386027 )
      “One-quarter of the US base of Apple customers represents tens of millions of users, an enormous audience relative to what individual media outlets can expect on their own,”

      So what the the actual article implies, is that we're talking about an increase from 15% to 24% of Apple customers in the US. Let's take just iPhone users. A quick Googling shows that there are some 135 million active iPhones in the US, meaning they would have about 32 million active subscribers to Apple News+. An increase

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mccalli ( 323026 )
        Exactly, yes - that last point is important. I have access to Apple News+, as do many others I know, and collectively I know only one person that uses it out of 20 or more eligible. Now ok, insert anecdote-not-data comment here, but even so...I have a difficult time imagining everyone who subscribes because they want the family iCloud storage plus Apple TV+ is necessarily going to be opening up Apple News+.
        • Exactly this - the news outlets should be thanking Apple for including News+ in its bundling. If I had to pay for it separately, it would be gone (too many clickbait headlines, recycled social media memes, and ads even in the paid version).

      • I actually use News+ because of apple one. I had no desire to pay for news, but I did want fitness+, 2TB of storage, music, and Apple TV. My wife did as well. So we bought apple one and then I started using news simply because I paid for it. It's pretty nice and it's now my goto for news aggregation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by N1AK ( 864906 )
          This is basically what I came to say. I've nothing against News+ and would probably be happy enough knowing £1-2 a month was going to funding news orgs I used but I'm subscribed because a family Apple One subscription makes sense for us and News+ is bundled with it. I expect a lot of News+ isers are the same.

      • You put your finger on the game right there.

        Subscribe to this all-encompassing service that rolls in your iCloud storage, Apple Music and AppleTV+ that you actually want, but also gives you Apple News+.

        Hey look we're booming in subscribers to Apple News+!!!

        Do most of those subscribers even open the Apple News app and use this? Or did they just subscribe to Apple One because it had 3 other services they actually want?

        This is the old bundling game from cable operators and media networks. Large cable compani

    • If Apple News+ grew from 15% to 24% that is not a 9% increase, it's a 9 percentage point increase but almost a 50% increase in absolute numbers assuming the number of Apple users was roughly constant. So the article is not even consistent using the meaningless relative numbers it gives.

      Of course what actually matters to these companies is the revenue they get from it. In this case a 2-3% increase in their own subscribers might be worth a lot more to them than some Apple system where Apple takes a large c
      • I believe that simple math problem is head and shoulders more complex than most journalists can even think about. Like you say, the actually meaningful number is the increase of about 60%. I wish journalists would bother, when reporting on a subject, to at least do some research on the subject, but, well.... it seems like many don't
  • ... small things grow faster than established big things, then?

  • In before it gets nerfed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @05:56AM (#64512515)
    Advervultures will be swooping in soon, just like cable tv and Windows.
  • It's always easy for a company to show fast growth in a fairly new product/service. You sold one last year, you sold 10 this year, sell 100 next year, wow, look at the percentage growth!
    • In your example ironically the percentage growth is the same each year ie 1000pc

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Targon ( 17348 )
        Right, but it still comes down to the same thing, percentage growth will be very high when you are starting with very low numbers. It can take decades before that growth levels out the way you see it for every established company in an industry.

  • Rewarding the paywall (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chainsaw1 ( 89967 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @07:10AM (#64512591)

    When I received my first iPhone, the News app was useful and had readable articles

    Nowadays, any new article mildly interesting that's not the top headline or the two underneath requires News+.

    I personally have found myself using it much less as a result...

    • you can select where you get the news from in News, they have all sorts of news sites, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, All across the political spectrum, as well as sports news sites. Like Cayenne8 (above) said, for the articles requiring a News+ subscription (like the Wall Street Journal) you can search on google for the article and you'll find it and on their own news site they allow you to read 4 articles/month for free, then you just change your device (iPhone/iPad/laptop/desktop) and you'll get 4 a

  • Why bother when its free everywhere else online.

  • news.google.com isn't loading for me today.

    • news.google.com came right up for me, and even includes my truly local news outlets like Lost Coast Outpost.

  • Quick! (Score:3)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @08:09AM (#64512693)
    Has the EU become outraged and want to fine Apple yet? Get on the phone, there's gold in them thar Apples!

    • That will depend. If Apple are playing by the rules established to allow free-market economics to operate then the EU will be fine with it. If they are trying to distort the market or socialise the costs of their operations then the EU will step in.

      • That will depend. If Apple are playing by the rules established to allow free-market economics to operate then the EU will be fine with it. If they are trying to distort the market or socialise the costs of their operations then the EU will step in.

        That's if you think that the EU is trying to regulate fairness. A differential analysis is that they are looking to profit off US businesses.

    • yes the persecution of poor innocent apple continues.
      How can you sleep at night knowing there is such injustice in the world?

      • yes the persecution of poor innocent apple continues. How can you sleep at night knowing there is such injustice in the world?

        The EU want's US businesses to demand money from. The EU isn't worried about fairness, they just want money. It beats the hell out of having to create things. Just stand at the finish line and demand tribute from the winners.

        If the EU was about fairness, they would say "Apple, you are not fair. You cannot sell any of your products in the EU". Full stop.You are hereby banned. Andf your justice is served - the good citizens of the EU are not bothered in any way by the Evil Americans and their immoral comp

  • I’m sure this will be cast as some evil Apple world domination plot by a great many people.

  • I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @08:59AM (#64512815)

    I have done free subscriptions to Apple News twice and cancelled after a week the first time, and an hour the second. I currently read NYT, NPR, and BBC, along with two local papers. Most recently I was curious about the WSJ, but found the selection of available articles to be pedestrian at best. I looked for papers with different biases than what I usually read, but found no quality. All I got was more ads that could not be blocked.

    I pay for subscriptions to NYT and the two local papers, and see far better value there.

    • My experience has been just like yours. Except I normally use Android and Ubuntu so I can't actually use Apple News even if I wanted to. Apple News requires Apple hardware. It doesn't work in a web browser** or on Android.

      It seems having Apple hardware is a requirement for using Apple News.

      Apple News sounds great on paper but in real life just sucks, ...except for those lucky few, the special ones. Surely some people don't mind paying, aren't annoyed by its limitations, and have OSX & 'supported hardwar

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