7 ms·

Condé Nast to Put All Titles Behind Paywalls by Year End

29 points by smacktoward 8y ago

rzzzwilson 8y ago
Ironic that the article about Condé Nast putting articles behind a paywall is itself behind a paywall.
- joegahona 8y ago
  https://outline.com/8Da2Ta https://outline.com/8Da2Ta
  - thunderbong 8y ago
    That's ironic at the next level! Although, I do wonder if they will keep their sites open for search engines.
    - blakesterz 8y ago
      I thought sites had to serve the same pages to GoogleBot as they do to regular people?
ulfw 8y ago
Which will make me read no more Conde Nast articles. Cool.
- klingebeil 8y ago
  Those pesky journalists, wanting to get payed! Not something you wrote, but HNs relationship to journalism is weird. On the one hand there‘s an infinite stream of complains about clickbait and how advertising ruined the media. On the other no one is willing to pay for a more sustainable model.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    I, personally, can and do pay for a reliable and sustainable model. At least one of those is for a Condé Nast property. On days like this I find myself wondering why. For the rest, I think it's something like the Netflix problem. Netflix is great if that's all you ever want to use. However, if what you want is scattered across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, and other video services? Then you might be less sanguine about the situation. The costs add up, at $15 per month per service. Journalism, for all it's absolutely critical importance to freedom, democracy, and our shared hobby, is far more dispersed than that. How many different subscriptions would I need to have to read every article that graces the HN front page every day? At least a dozen, but perhaps more. That's going to add up too. WSJ wants $40/mo, Atlantic $80/yr, Economist is $180/yr, and that's just three. How much do you think each HN reader should be paying monthly for jornalism?
    - klingebeil 8y ago
      Good for you. And the answer should be, as with everything else: the amount everybody is willing to pay. I understand your criticism, but what we‘re seeing is the fall out of the disruption of the news industry. The old model (advertising) isn‘t working anymore, so companies are falling back on the subscription model. (Or memberships) And yes they are expensive. But what‘s the alternative?
      - Kalium 8y ago
        What I think you're seeing is that people are paying the amount they're willing to pay. When your choices are $40/mo or $0/mo for the WSJ and you average an article or two from them a week, a lot of people will opt for $0. Right now I'm led to think the answer might be consolidation. Or some other form of subscription intermediation. A dozen outlets is far more than I want to manage, especially when the price really has little correlation to how often I actually read an article from an outlet. That buying a subscription doesn't make ads go away is also not helping. I do not want to pay to support something so I can be the subject of behavioral targeting, thanks. With all that said, I do want to address one underlying point. "What's the alternative?", you ask. That's not my problem. That's your problem as a media professional. As a media consumer, I'm perfectly happy to watch the vast majority of media outlets dry up and blow away because they never figured out how to respect the people they purport to serve. I'll stick with the ones that provide me with value I find reasonable and treat me with a measure of respect. I refuse to accept that democracy can only survive at the price of listicles and privacy-invading ads.
wincy 8y ago
Does this include Arstechnica?
- CodeWriter23 8y ago
  Does it really matter at this point?
- RobAley 8y ago
  Yes. Unfortunately.
- xythum 8y ago
  According to their subscriber forums, their current subscription model counts as a 'paywall' as far as Conde Nast is concerned, and there are no plans to change that currently.
yabatopia 8y ago
Not only a strict paywall, they're also planning significant price increases for their subscriptions. I'm curious how this will work out in let's say two years and how this will reduce the current annual loss of 120 million. Desperate times, desperate measures.
- DannyB2 8y ago
  Condé Nast says: Data does not want to be free, it's his brother that wants to be free.
konschubert 8y ago
I think this is a good move, they need to make money to exist after all. I just hope they price their subscription reasonably.
- _the_inflator 8y ago
  Agree. And if we get better content instead of marketed content which is simply ads surrounded by cheap content, I think this is a cool move.
gregknicholson 8y ago
If they allow each person to view a few articles for free, the “paywall” is just an inconvenience: you can simply make sure you look like another person. Mozilla and Google have decided that clearing cookies and faking a referrer is illegal. Microsoft hasn't yet: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox I think the add-on author would meet less resistance from the browser oligarchy if they described the add-on as “Read news anonymously: this add-on clears your cookies and referral info on news sites, so you can read their content without being tracked”. Same thing, but avoids DMCA word-crime.
piokoch 8y ago
"Condé Nast is considering charging advertisers a premium for access to those subscribers, said Chris Mitchell, chief business officer for Condé Nast’s culture division, which includes the New Yorker, Wired and Vanity Fair." This one is interesting. So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway. For me one of the advantages of paying for something in the Internet is that my privacy is not violated and I will not have to see ads.
- devoply 8y ago
  Credit card companies charge you 20% but they also charge businesses another 3%. How do they get away with it when the interest rate they are borrowing at is 1/10 of that?
  - kayfox 8y ago
    They charge the merchant for the transaction and they charge you for interest on balances carried more than 30 days. If you pay them off promptly you don't get charged interest.
- nopriorarrests 8y ago
  >So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway. Allowing advertisers to target paid subscribers for some very high CPMs is not "selling their data to advertisers". In fact, it's not much different from ads in a printed version Vanity Fair or WSJ. You are being charged for a printed version of magazine and advertiser pays for having an ad in a said version.
  - blakesterz 8y ago
    > You are being charged for a printed version of magazine and advertiser pays for having an ad in a said version. I do get that, but this is not a printed magazine. This is the web, and I think I generally agree, especially with content like this, if I'm going to pay for something, I don't want ads there. Generally the web is free because of ads, and if I pay for something then I'm paying because there's not going to be ads, and especially not going to be trackers like most media sites pile on.
ArrayList 8y ago
Does this mean reddit is going to cost money now? /s
newscracker 8y ago
There isn’t a big enough audience that will pay periodic subscription fees for written content unless it’s niche and/or really great. With this move, Condé Nast is about to find out which of its properties are commodity content that usually find few takers who’d pay to go behind paywalls. It may then be forced to return to the ad supported model without a paywall unless it creates an innovative and usable solution for micropayments to allow people to pay (others have tried and some are still trying, but I haven’t seen a large enough success story). I wonder what Apple is going to announce (rumored to be in a couple of months) on the lines of an “all you can read” magazine and related content offering based on its acquisition of Texture, and how Condé Nast’s properties will figure in this offering.

29 points by smacktoward 8y ago

rzzzwilson 8y ago

Ironic that the article about Condé Nast putting articles behind a paywall is itself behind a paywall.

joegahona 8y ago
https://outline.com/8Da2Ta https://outline.com/8Da2Ta
- thunderbong 8y ago
  That's ironic at the next level! Although, I do wonder if they will keep their sites open for search engines.
  - blakesterz 8y ago
    I thought sites had to serve the same pages to GoogleBot as they do to regular people?

ulfw 8y ago

Which will make me read no more Conde Nast articles. Cool.

klingebeil 8y ago
Those pesky journalists, wanting to get payed! Not something you wrote, but HNs relationship to journalism is weird. On the one hand there‘s an infinite stream of complains about clickbait and how advertising ruined the media. On the other no one is willing to pay for a more sustainable model.
- Kalium 8y ago
  I, personally, can and do pay for a reliable and sustainable model. At least one of those is for a Condé Nast property. On days like this I find myself wondering why. For the rest, I think it's something like the Netflix problem. Netflix is great if that's all you ever want to use. However, if what you want is scattered across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, and other video services? Then you might be less sanguine about the situation. The costs add up, at $15 per month per service. Journalism, for all it's absolutely critical importance to freedom, democracy, and our shared hobby, is far more dispersed than that. How many different subscriptions would I need to have to read every article that graces the HN front page every day? At least a dozen, but perhaps more. That's going to add up too. WSJ wants $40/mo, Atlantic $80/yr, Economist is $180/yr, and that's just three. How much do you think each HN reader should be paying monthly for jornalism?
  - klingebeil 8y ago
    Good for you. And the answer should be, as with everything else: the amount everybody is willing to pay. I understand your criticism, but what we‘re seeing is the fall out of the disruption of the news industry. The old model (advertising) isn‘t working anymore, so companies are falling back on the subscription model. (Or memberships) And yes they are expensive. But what‘s the alternative?
    - Kalium 8y ago
      What I think you're seeing is that people are paying the amount they're willing to pay. When your choices are $40/mo or $0/mo for the WSJ and you average an article or two from them a week, a lot of people will opt for $0. Right now I'm led to think the answer might be consolidation. Or some other form of subscription intermediation. A dozen outlets is far more than I want to manage, especially when the price really has little correlation to how often I actually read an article from an outlet. That buying a subscription doesn't make ads go away is also not helping. I do not want to pay to support something so I can be the subject of behavioral targeting, thanks. With all that said, I do want to address one underlying point. "What's the alternative?", you ask. That's not my problem. That's your problem as a media professional. As a media consumer, I'm perfectly happy to watch the vast majority of media outlets dry up and blow away because they never figured out how to respect the people they purport to serve. I'll stick with the ones that provide me with value I find reasonable and treat me with a measure of respect. I refuse to accept that democracy can only survive at the price of listicles and privacy-invading ads.

wincy 8y ago

Does this include Arstechnica?

CodeWriter23 8y ago
Does it really matter at this point?
RobAley 8y ago
Yes. Unfortunately.
xythum 8y ago
According to their subscriber forums, their current subscription model counts as a 'paywall' as far as Conde Nast is concerned, and there are no plans to change that currently.

yabatopia 8y ago

Not only a strict paywall, they're also planning significant price increases for their subscriptions. I'm curious how this will work out in let's say two years and how this will reduce the current annual loss of 120 million. Desperate times, desperate measures.

DannyB2 8y ago
Condé Nast says: Data does not want to be free, it's his brother that wants to be free.

konschubert 8y ago

I think this is a good move, they need to make money to exist after all. I just hope they price their subscription reasonably.

_the_inflator 8y ago
Agree. And if we get better content instead of marketed content which is simply ads surrounded by cheap content, I think this is a cool move.

gregknicholson 8y ago

If they allow each person to view a few articles for free, the “paywall” is just an inconvenience: you can simply make sure you look like another person. Mozilla and Google have decided that clearing cookies and faking a referrer is illegal. Microsoft hasn't yet: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox I think the add-on author would meet less resistance from the browser oligarchy if they described the add-on as “Read news anonymously: this add-on clears your cookies and referral info on news sites, so you can read their content without being tracked”. Same thing, but avoids DMCA word-crime.

piokoch 8y ago

"Condé Nast is considering charging advertisers a premium for access to those subscribers, said Chris Mitchell, chief business officer for Condé Nast’s culture division, which includes the New Yorker, Wired and Vanity Fair." This one is interesting. So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway. For me one of the advantages of paying for something in the Internet is that my privacy is not violated and I will not have to see ads.

devoply 8y ago
Credit card companies charge you 20% but they also charge businesses another 3%. How do they get away with it when the interest rate they are borrowing at is 1/10 of that?
- kayfox 8y ago
  They charge the merchant for the transaction and they charge you for interest on balances carried more than 30 days. If you pay them off promptly you don't get charged interest.
nopriorarrests 8y ago
>So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway. Allowing advertisers to target paid subscribers for some very high CPMs is not "selling their data to advertisers". In fact, it's not much different from ads in a printed version Vanity Fair or WSJ. You are being charged for a printed version of magazine and advertiser pays for having an ad in a said version.
- blakesterz 8y ago
  > You are being charged for a printed version of magazine and advertiser pays for having an ad in a said version. I do get that, but this is not a printed magazine. This is the web, and I think I generally agree, especially with content like this, if I'm going to pay for something, I don't want ads there. Generally the web is free because of ads, and if I pay for something then I'm paying because there's not going to be ads, and especially not going to be trackers like most media sites pile on.

ArrayList 8y ago

Does this mean reddit is going to cost money now? /s

newscracker 8y ago

There isn’t a big enough audience that will pay periodic subscription fees for written content unless it’s niche and/or really great. With this move, Condé Nast is about to find out which of its properties are commodity content that usually find few takers who’d pay to go behind paywalls. It may then be forced to return to the ad supported model without a paywall unless it creates an innovative and usable solution for micropayments to allow people to pay (others have tried and some are still trying, but I haven’t seen a large enough success story). I wonder what Apple is going to announce (rumored to be in a couple of months) on the lines of an “all you can read” magazine and related content offering based on its acquisition of Texture, and how Condé Nast’s properties will figure in this offering.