New York Times Content Eases Toward Paid Subscription: How long can newspapers risk cannibalizing print subscription revenues for the wonders of Web traffic? On the other hand, how long would new Web advertising revenue grow?or even persist ?if newspaper content became hidden from the open Web? Therein lies the eternal struggle. Sometime this September, probably the nation?s foremost brand name in news content?The New York Times (aka NYTimes.com)?will find out as it launches TimesSelect, a $49.95 per year subscription service. Once in place, only TimesSelect subscribers will have daily access to the copy from 22 prominent columnists from The Times and the International Herald Tribune (IHT). Even more interesting for many information professionals, however, TimesSelect subscribers will also have unfettered access to 25 years of New York Times? archived articles. Comparing that $49.95 annual subscription fee with the standard $2.95-per-article fee charged by services such as Factiva or ProQuest or the $1.50-per-article fee often charged by other newspaper archives, this would mean that after the first 17 (or 34) articles used in a year, TimesSelect would open up access to The New York Times? archives.
Paid Content on the Rise in U.K.: A survey by the UK Online Publishers Association (AOP) shows that 63 percent of its members -- all creators of original, quality, branded content -- now charge for content online, compared with 58 percent in 2004. This is despite the fact that the largest source of revenue for the online publishers' grouping is still display advertising [...]
The findings also reveal a decline in one-off (micro) payments, and an increase in subscription models.
