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Comment by bytesmith | Hacker News Reader

That’s basically the model of Apple News Plus, although it’s Apple ecosystem-specific. Users pay 10$ a month to get access to selected publishers via the Apple News app and then Apple takes 50% of the subscription revenue and splits the rest with publishers based on the number of times an article is read[0]. I don’t think it got any significant traction though as I haven’t really heard anything about it since it was launched 4 years ago.

[0] https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/7-facts-publishers-should-k...

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It seems hard to justify a 50% take rate for this kind of service. I guess 50% is better than nothing, but it's still kind of shit. If apple is trying to be an aggregator (ie. drive traffic) it makes more sense, but for most news services IMO they don't need an aggregator - they just need some kind of payment arrangement, presumably with a much lower take rate (on the order of 5% or somesuch)

Anyone who can build and market this kind of system would want way more than 5%.

Even the "Plus" articles are still crammed with ads by the publishers, which makes the experience categoricallly worse than just reading on the web with adblockers.

I see so many complaints here about adverts. How much extra would you pay to read news without any adverts? I guarantee that it isn't enough to offset lost revenue from adverts. This is the primary reason why online news has so many adverts.

In the U.K. sky charges its customers a subscription. They have adverts on top of that. Last time I read he financial report adverts accounted for 1/10th of subscription income

I.e instead of paying sky £30 a month and having 1/3rd of content adverts, you could pay £33 a month and have no adverts.

It’s similar with the underground in london. I pay £3 to take a journey and am plastered with adverts. Instead £3.30 and there would be no need for adverts

These companies don’t offer that as free experience though. With sky there are alternates (streaming, or if that falls to the advert curse then pirate bay), with the underground alas no alternatives.

How much extra would HN pay?

The answers in this thread are essentially all under $1. There seems to be not much rationale behind these numbers besides "it should be cheaper," so the anchor point is probably $0.

Well, I was ready to pay at least the $10/mo for Apple News+, but then I saw during the trial that everything still had ads, so I didn't.

Apple News Plus almost sort-of makes sense as part of a broader package that lumps a decent, though far from comprehensive news bundle in as part of a broader subscription offering. (Sort of like Prime though Prime doesn't have news, in that enough people just have to find one or two components they value.)

But, as you say, it really hasn't taken off. A few news pubs that apparently are doing OK aside, people are an endless font of excuses about why they won't pay (or they just don't) even though many people routinely subscribed to a newspaper and a bunch of magazines.

> people are an endless font of excuses about why they won't pay (or they just don't) even though many people routinely subscribed to a newspaper and a bunch of magazines.

That’s not really fair. Back when magazine subscriptions were a thing, you weren’t exposed as much to other magazines or newspapers you were not subscribed to, or if you were you could just read them. Cafés used to have newspapers, various places with waiting rooms used to have stacks of magazines and nobody tried to shame you for reading without paying.

As a matter or fact, I am subscribed to the Atlantic and 3 newspaper’s websites (in different languages), which is equivalent to what my parents did when I was a kid. But I am not going to get a subscription for the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Financial Times, or some random local news website every time someone links to a story there.

I don't really disagree you had your magazine and maybe newspaper subscriptions and otherwise you mostly went without other than occasionally going to the library, surfing in a waiting room, picking up a free newspaper, etc. If you didn't care enough about a publication to subscribe you mostly did without and you were generally fine with that because you were unaware that you were missing anything.

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