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Finding the right point on the supply-demand curve is key to this. Their current strategy is trying to have their cake and eat it too. What I'm arguing they nee

Finding the right point on the supply-demand curve is key to this. Their current strategy is trying to have their cake and eat it too. What I'm arguing they need to do is stop playing games trying to charge the few people who don't care about cost more and focus on the much larger market of people who are happy to pay what they feel is a fair rate for quality product. Apple nailed this when they priced songs and TV shows at 99¢. Amazon is killing it with affordable kindle offerings. The formula is pretty simple: good content, convenient access, and affordable pricing that feels fair to the consumer. The NY Times is succeeding at the first two and blowing it at the last one. As a result they are failing to capitalize on the broader market.

cwyers 12y ago
They have two problems here. One, they already have an option for price-sensitive consumers: free. They toyed with a full-on paywall, but that didn't work for a number of reasons (there's a lot of competition, and people LIKE sharing articles, so the ability to share articles with friends who don't have a Times subscription is actually an important feature for the website). Chasing after them with a low-cost subscription is a sucker's bet, since a lot of them won't budge from free, especially since the Times' limits on free articles per month is trivially circumvented. Two, there's a gap between what people feel is a "fair rate" for the Times and what is actually a fair rate for the Times. People in this thread find it "violently offensive" that the print edition of the Times costs less than the digital-only version, despite the fact that if you look at the ad spending on each, it absolutely makes sense for the Times to charge you less if you buy the more fully ad-subsidized print version. And all of your comparisons (iTunes, Kindle) are third-party sellers of other people's works. They don't care if the writers or musicians make money or not. iTunes/Kindle also aren't the only source of income for those writers and musicians. The New York Times is responsible for providing its own content, and they need to make enough money to pay for that content.

cwyers 12y ago

They have two problems here. One, they already have an option for price-sensitive consumers: free. They toyed with a full-on paywall, but that didn't work for a number of reasons (there's a lot of competition, and people LIKE sharing articles, so the ability to share articles with friends who don't have a Times subscription is actually an important feature for the website). Chasing after them with a low-cost subscription is a sucker's bet, since a lot of them won't budge from free, especially since the Times' limits on free articles per month is trivially circumvented. Two, there's a gap between what people feel is a "fair rate" for the Times and what is actually a fair rate for the Times. People in this thread find it "violently offensive" that the print edition of the Times costs less than the digital-only version, despite the fact that if you look at the ad spending on each, it absolutely makes sense for the Times to charge you less if you buy the more fully ad-subsidized print version. And all of your comparisons (iTunes, Kindle) are third-party sellers of other people's works. They don't care if the writers or musicians make money or not. iTunes/Kindle also aren't the only source of income for those writers and musicians. The New York Times is responsible for providing its own content, and they need to make enough money to pay for that content.