MetaFilter posts tagged with subscriptions

Goodbye Krugman, Friedman, et c.

zpousman — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 12:14:13 -0800

NY Times will be going pay-only for access to columns by Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd. On the 19th of Sept! And I assume the others like Herbert and Frank will drop behind the iron curtain as well. These are obviously some of the most blogged about and emailed content on the NYT site. Do you think it will be worth $49.95 year (it does come with 100 archive articles, which is admittedly pretty sweet)? Do you think that bloggers will stop linking to those columnists? Is this the end of free?

Information (from 1945) wants to be free

DrJohnEvans — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:20:11 -0800

Pages of the Past The Toronto Star has digitized each of its issues from 1892-2001. And they're searchable. And they're online. Unfortunately, access starts at about a buck an hour—but 1945 is free!

dissemination

four panels — Wed, 26 May 2004 06:15:40 -0800

Salon offers free subscription to military personnel.

Information wants to be free!

josh — Wed, 19 May 2004 07:57:17 -0800

I'm done with The Onion. I trusted The Onion and read their comedy for free for years -- but after hundreds of issues of unbelievable comedy The Onion is now a "pay site" that charges $30 a year for earlier access to each week's issue, plus awesome-sounding online news radio and special election coverage! I'm mad! Oh yeah!!!

There is such a Thing as a Free Magazine

Carlos Quevedo — Fri, 25 Apr 2003 20:08:49 -0800

We Have ~~Cameras~~ Magazines: Why is Maxim offering a free, no-catches 2 years subscription to anyone who can be bothered to give them one of their spamsucker e-mail addresses? Hey, I hate Maxim but I'd take one if I lived in the U.S, if only to keep the postal service busy and ingratiate myself with my nephews. Will all magazines - at least the shittiest ones - be free in the future? Subscription rates, sales and advertising revenues keep falling and it seems the only bargaining chip magazines have left (to solicit advertisements) is circulation. And still new mags, like Radar, keep popping up. Good thing? Bad thing? You tell me.

chainring — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 10:50:24 -0800

FullAudio and ClearChannel Radio form alliance to bring subscription music services to consumers. Another lame attempt to understand music consumers.The truth is buried in a faq section. Can I listen to tracks on my MP3 player? No. Can I convert my tracks to MP3 format? No. What's the point of this service?

MiguelCardoso — Fri, 15 Feb 2002 08:35:46 -0800

Why Are So Many Americans Cancelling Their Subscriptions To "The London Review of Books"? This letter from Paul Genova rings true - and touché - to this European at least. Ever since the very respectable LRB published its issue on the September 11 attacks, American readers(and some notable contributors) have been writing in droves to cancel their subscriptions and connections to the journal. Mary Beard's article(op.cit.) aroused most of the fury, though others are arguably just as outrageous. In the pages of this most lively of letter sections - graciously available online - this particular correspondence seems to demonstrate an ever-sharpening divide between American and European intellectuals. Are Paul Genova's and other readers' disgusted reactions justified? Are they specific to the WTC attacks or, more worryingly, representative of a wider separation?

xammerboy — Sun, 03 Feb 2002 09:53:35 -0800

A Poll on Fark asks its members whether or not they would pay 5$ a month to belong to thier discussion group. How many of you would pay for MeFi? Do you any of you feel that there would be benefits to having MeFi become a pay for service? I do, and I'm out of work!

geoff. — Fri, 23 Nov 2001 15:44:46 -0800

With Amazon now selling magazines it became slightly easier to buy them. They also can be the gift that keeps on giving. What's everyone's favorite magazine(s), and why?

mrbula — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 19:19:53 -0800

There's now an electronic version of The New York Times for people who like to read the paper version of The New York Times on their computer. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Is this really necessary? Who would use such a service, much less pay 65¢ an issue for it?

y6y6y6 — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 07:26:22 -0800

Slashdot introduces paid subscriptions. - "I hope you can understand the expensive reality associated with making this site happen every day" We've talked about paid memberships for Metafilter before, and I'd happily pay, but if all of the sites I go to everyday start doing this I'll have to make some hard choices.

Is there any talk about some sort of membership "package"? Sort of like the cable model? I pay one fee and get member access to several websites? How could something like this be organized?

mmarcos — Fri, 28 Sep 2001 06:32:07 -0800

Subscription-based web tools: another nail in the coffin of free web services? Yahoo is apparently testing the waters for a subscription-based web Office app. I use their (free) email, notepad, bookmark and briefcase tools on occasion. Nice to have, but you have to wonder how long they can remain free. Don't know if I would pay for them, depends on what service level guarantees they would offer in return. How would people would react if they suddenly started charging for these things? Is it still too unrealistic to wonder how long till our operating system needs a local drive only to boot up?

mathowie — Tue, 25 Sep 2001 09:53:53 -0800

Did you subscribe to the Industry Standard? Expect to start seeing AOL CDs in the mail, thanks to them buying up the subscriber lists at the Standard's firesale yesterday.

jdbanks — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 12:14:32 -0800

Cancel the Paper. Do you subscribe your local daily paper? (If it's not NY or DC or LA.) If so, do you actually read it? Did you ever subscribe? If so, why did you quit? What about the local alternative (weekly or otherwise)?

ZachsMind — Wed, 04 Jul 2001 10:34:37 -0800

Big Brother 2 goes pay. They're tripping on themselves before they even get out of the starting gate. At the Official Site they've recently reported they will charge for live Internet feed access after the first few days. The obsessed and addicted are none too pleased. What do you think? Shrewd business move or greedy reaction by clueless network executives?

preguicoso — Tue, 05 Jun 2001 06:46:05 -0800

"There is no revenue credibility for new services on the Internet—and that’s the fault of the west coast hippies” Harsh words from the Economist. Will much of web space become segmented into paid subscription "walled gardens" accessed by wireless users, leaving free/community services to the "hobbyist" crowd that dominated the space since the early 1980's?

JParker — Thu, 10 May 2001 12:49:21 -0800

Update on FuckedCompany.com. A lesson for all those who pooh-pooh'ed Pud's move to start a subscriber service from his free site: he's now got 860 subscribers paying an average of $63/month, so he's making over $650K a year. Not bad in less than 2 months. Article is a couple of days old, but I missed it when it came out - sorry if it's old news =)

bumppo — Tue, 01 May 2001 09:05:50 -0800

Is this a typo? Salon's David Talbot in the NYT: "'A lot of our audience pays $300 a year to join National Public Radio and they don't have to pay anything,' he said. As early as next year, Mr. Talbot said, Salon hopes to impose a fee of $75 to $150 a year to read any of its site with ads." Now, I would have read that last sentence as "to read any of its site without ads", but perhaps I'm just being naive.

acridrabbit — Sun, 08 Apr 2001 20:23:02 -0800

Can Salon make it? A great article, if you're interested in Salon, content on the web, and/or online journalism in general. A few things I learned: Salon's peak readership is 3 million unique visitors a month; Salon's office got bomb threats after they broke the Hyde affair story; and Salon's founding editor made $175,000 last year, plus a $50,000 bonus.

owillis — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:11:50 -0800

Romp.com goes subscription. "our friends at icebox.com, before it closed, were making $184 dollars per day on banners, not even enough to pay for one episode of one animated series" It seems their rates will be around $3/month...

jaybarrow — Thu, 01 Jun 2000 12:27:11 -0800

Salon gives in. Back to readability, baby.

luke — Fri, 12 May 2000 23:14:26 -0800

McSweeney's suspends lifetime subscriptions. Sure hope mine got in under the wire.