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(Reuters) – Apple Inc.'s new Apple News + service bundles subscriptions to popular newspapers and magazines, which may be more appealing to occasional readers with subscription abuse than long-time fans of certain publications.
Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers a speech at a special event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, United States, March 25, 2019. REUTERS / Stephen Lam
Readers eager for magazines such as The New Yorker or newspapers like the Wall Street Journal can still keep individual subscriptions for full access to the archives or to offer direct support to their favorite publications.
But at $ 10 a month, Apple's service may be of interest to casual readers who want to read a few articles each month from a variety of sources.
The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times will be part of the service, Apple announced Monday. The Wall Street Journal, which specializes in financial matters, will hire journalists to produce more general content, the newspaper reported. A monthly digital subscription to the Wall Street Journal costs $ 39 a month.
Conde Nast and Hearst magazines, including The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, are also part of Apple's new news offering. They will be part of the 300 magazines available with Apple News +, as well as Wired and National Geographic.
Both publishing houses, as well as Meredith Corp, which publishes the magazines People and InStyle, have created an unlimited magazine reading app called Texture, purchased by Apple in March 2018.
It was unclear whether Apple News + would include both digital and print content from participating magazines, or full access to newspaper content.
The costs of subscribing to a magazine vary considerably. An annual digital subscription to the New Yorker costs $ 100, while a digital subscription to Vanity Fair costs $ 20. Apple said that subscribing to all publications separately would cost $ 8,000 a year to a reader.
The New York Times, the largest US newspaper published by subscribers, will probably not be part of Apple's news service.
Apple said the service would not allow advertisers to track what users were reading, and Apple itself will not have that data. The protection of privacy follows many data scandals in the technology sector over the past year.
New York Times CEO Mark Thompson had previously told Reuters that the company was "suspicious" about consumers reading his journalism on other platforms and warned publishers of how Netflix had disrupted the news. film studio sector and leveraged by taking control of the distribution.
New York Time subscription revenues increased by 3% in 2018 compared to the previous year, while advertising revenues stagnated. The Facebook companies of Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc have obtained a quasi-duopoly on digital advertising.
A monthly digital subscription to the Times costs $ 15, which the company is not willing to give up to be part of other platforms, Thompson said.
Reportage of Sheila Dang; Edited by Meredith Mazzilli
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