Friday, January 14, 2011

Wall St. Journal Validates Our Prediction: The year of the app-based subscription

In our first set of predictions for 2011, issued on Jan. 10 and available here, we predicted that 2011 would be the year of app-based media subscriptions, noting that a critical factor would be the establishment of a common approach to subscriptions.

Currently, access to content via apps is often purchased on a single-issue basis. To succeed in terms of generating consistent revenue, we've said that publishers need to offer annual subscriptions and a consistent way to purchase them -- something that currently does not exist.

Today's Wall St. Journal points to a potential change. Check out: "Selling Magazine Subscriptions on the iPad." The platform, developed by Urban Airship, Inc., will sell app-based media subscriptions for Newsweek, the Atlantic and the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper.

That's good news for publishers. Good news for people who want to access content on tablets. And that's good news for us, because that's a pretty quick validation of our one of our 12 predictions for 2011.

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