The New York Times is starting to charge for digital access on March 28 (they're using Canada to beta test). Here are the rates and an faq. I'm fine with them wanting to charge customers to use the product they produce. And they seem to be considering the web in that access to articles from search engines will work and visitors can read 20 articles a calendar month for free (I assume they'll track ip addresses). Links from search and social sites count towards your 20 but even after that you'll be able to follow links from those sites. Visitors also get "unrestricted access to browse the home page, section fronts, blog fronts and classifieds."
The part I don't get is the pricing. $3.75 a week to access the web site and use a smart phone app. But if you have a tablet and want to use their app instead (which is fantastic on the iPad) that's $5 a week. And if you want access from a browser, phone and tablet, that's $8.75 a week.
It's the same digital content. It cost the same to write and it's the same bandwidth costs for them to send over their pipes. Why differentiate this way? Let me either pay for your content or not. I know, an economist will tell me the price is based on what people are willing to pay and by tiering prices you can get more from those wiling to pay more while still getting some from those willing to pay less. And if you have more than one device, you're probably willing to pay more and that tablet probably cost more than your smartphone so tablet owners are probably willing to pay more for the news. And yeah, I did say the iPad reader was fantastic.
It still seems like gouging.
Update: According to this, they'll be using Apple's in app subscription service so 30% goes to Apple. Maybe that's why tablet's pay more? Though it should be the same 30% for phone.
Update: I wasn't sure what the cover price was. I last remembered it as 35 cents wondered if it was up to a dollar yet. I see it's actually $2 for mon-sat and $6 for sunday. So yeah, $5 a week is a deal.
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