Apple discusses with major newspapers its membership to its subscription service

Earlier this year, Apple entered the magazine business by buying a distributor of digital magazines. Now he wants to add daily news to the mix.

Apple has discussed with some of the largest US newspapers the addition of their articles to Texture, Apple's app purchased in March. Apple officials, led by content manager Eddy Cue, have contacted The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post about their adherence to the app, according to people familiar with the conversations, who have started this summer.

The discussions are taking place as Apple is increasingly interested in content sales and subscriptions. It's putting at least $ 1 billion into a series of television shows it plans to broadcast next year, and many people think Apple would like to market an oversized subscription offering that includes music, videos and information.

An Apple representative declined to comment.

Texture – often described as a Netflix or Hulu for magazines – currently allows consumers to read as many stories as they want from dozens of magazines for a monthly subscription of $ 10. It is unclear whether Apple executives want to add articles from the three daily newspapers to the same subscription service or market the articles as an add-on.

But no matter how Apple structures the proposal, it can be difficult to sell for all newspapers, which already have their own large subscription companies and who would be concerned about cannibalizing their own sales.

The Washington Post sells a fully digital basic subscription for $ 10 a month; The Times sells $ 15 a month and the base price of the newspaper is $ 37 a month. Texture pays its content providers – before the acquisition of Apple this spring, it belonged to a consortium of publishers, including Conde Nast and Hearst – depending on the use generated by their titles. So, a newspaper that joined Texture would definitely see a much lower redistribution rate than a subscriber's texture than a subscriber who directly subscribed to one of the articles.

According to a conversation manager, an additional concern for articles is that being part of a set of publications is less interesting than an individual relationship with subscribers. This also leaves open the possibility that Apple will drop them from the package eventually.

The flip side: Apple has a huge user base – the company said its users had 1.3 billion active devices last January – and could dramatically increase the reach of newspapers. In comparison, the Times, fueled in part by the interest in news after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, has 2.9 million digital subscribers.

Another point in favor of Apple: it has demonstrated its ability to turn its hardware customers into digital subscribers. Its Apple Music service, launched in 2015 for unenthusiastic magazines, has since acquired 50 million subscribers by offering free trials of three months to all iPhone users.

And another: Apple has done everything possible to position itself as a stimulant for news agencies – partly as a counterpoint to Facebook, which has frustrated many news publishers by changing its approach to distributing information to multiple times. "We are committed to quality journalism," Cue said in a press release announcing the acquisition of Texture.

The Post and the Journal are already selling subscriptions via Apple News, Apple's integrated news distribution app. And the three articles distribute at least some of their stories via the app.

Earlier this summer, Apple hired Liz Schimel, former executive of Conde Nast and Comcast, to head the news sector.