Fixing the price of music
Media businesses have long operated from the premise of inherent value — that each media property has some fixed and immutable appeal based on its particular inputs.
In its first major venture of the Bezos era, the Washington Post launches national subscription partnership
In one of the first tangible signs of new owner Jeff Bezos’ influence on its strategic thinking, the Washington Post has launched an ambitious national partnership aimed at expanding its digital subscriber base at relatively low cost
TV not going anywhere
Perhaps the toughest finding for pay-TV providers in the Digitalsmiths survey is that the most prominent reasons respondents cited for preferring OTT and third-party services are not things operators can do much about.
With $14 million raised, Oyster plans to expand its Netflix-for-books offerings
Offering a library of books for $9.95 per month, Oyster will get an expansion thanks to a big influx of cash.
The New York Times is running hard, but staying in the same place — and ads are a big part of the problem
The New York Times is seeing continued growth in subscription revenue thanks to its paywall, but at the same time its advertising revenue is still falling, both in print and online.
The Amazon newsstand
Amazon knows far more about its customers than most magazine publishers know about their readers, and more than most direct marketers know about the lists they’re targeting.
Gumroad wants to make selling content as easy as sharing content
Gumroad — which lets users sell magazines, music, comic books, items for fan clubs and other digital content — is expanding its simple payments platform to include subscriptions.
Bundles of joy
A report released by Needham & Co. senior entertainment and internet analyst Laura Martin argues not only that the current, multichannel pay-TV bundle is a good deal for consumers but that eliminating it by offering channels ala carte would be catastrophic for the TV ecosystem.
Apple and ad-skipping
Lots of TV viewers skip ads now; all that’s needed is a DVR. So it’s hard to see why that capability would be considered a “premium” feature.
Shotgun wedding on the set-top
As viewers rely on a growing number of screens and devices for consuming video, the source of the programming becomes ever-less relevant to the experience of watching it, particularly as OTT services like Netflix become a more important source of original programming.