Apple Impasse With Magazines Over Subscriber Data 243
Pickens writes "Peter Kafka reports at All Things Digital that Apple and the publishing industry haven't been able to come to terms over magazine app subscriptions. Publishers want the ability to sell the subscriptions themselves, or at least the opportunity to hang on to subscribers' personal data, and Steve Jobs won't let them. Publishers also don't like the 30 percent cut that Apple wants to take in the iTunes store, but their real hang-up is lack of access to credit card and personal data. It's valuable to them for marketing because the demographic data helps magazines sell advertising, and without it they can't offer print/digital bundles. All Apple is willing to offer is an opt-in form for subscribers that would ask them for a limited amount of information: name, mailing address, email address."
Re:Credit Card data? (Score:4, Informative)
People like you don't matter to the magazine publishers. Indeed, magazine publishers could do just fine without the newsstand vending because that's not where the bulk of their subscribers come from. The only thing newsstand vending does for them, really, is get new subscribers to sell ads for.
Indeed, the vast bulk of the money they make is from advertisers, not from the subscriptions. The subscriptions are gravy.
So yes, this is a very big deal for them to not get demographics. Without it, you'd see Newsweek, Time, etc., at 8 bucks/week to make up for the advertising loss.
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BMO