Magazine Publishers to Announce Joint Digital Venture
9:42 am, December 8th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
A group of four magazine publishers and media conglomerate News Corp are expected to announce Tuesday a joint venture aimed at developing new standards for digital magazines, according to a report. The move is seen as preventing Apple or other e-reader developers dictating a new age of digital publishing.
The new company — as yet unnamed — will be jointly owned by Hearst, Time Inc., News Corp., Condé Nast Publications and Meredith Corp., according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, the group’s aim is to create standards governing advertising and how readers can buy magazines through an online store. The publishers hope to prevent a repeat of how Apple’s iPod and iTunes store decimated the traditional music business.
The news follows a Nov. 24 report that said 50 publishers were “within weeks” of announcing a similar consortium. The group had met with e-reader makers, including Apple, on creating an iTunes-like magazine kiosk, according to The New York Observer.
Apple reportedly is preparing a tablet for introduction in 2010. As part of the roll-out, the Cupertino, Calif. company is talking with publishers about ways to develop content for the device.
[Via iClarified and Wall Street Journal]
Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article
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Good for them, good for consumers, back to the (ahem) drawing board for the presumably proprietary Apple Tablet?
I am very glad they beat Apple to the open-platform, no DRM punch.
Will Apple even enter the market now? Will they try to impose their locked-down model in a world of competition? Is the world moving faster than Apple?
iGenius, on December 8th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I’d rather have Apple than the fascist organisation like News Corp.
Fin Devious, on December 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
What difference does it make?
“Digital Magazines” = FAIL.
That stuff that’s in ‘em you can get for free off of that particular website.
New *kinds* of media — like “iTunes LP”, for example — now *that’s* where the action is.
CaryMG, on December 8th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
iGenius, the self-proclaimed visionary badly in need of an optician.
Apple is not the cause of the loss of control of their markets by music industry chiefs. It all started with digitisation. Once media (be it music, images or text, or any combination of these) went digital, all the markets for such media were up for grabs. Napster anyone? The winner was always going to be the consumer. The ‘victim’ was always going to be the corporates who were addicted to the crazy-high prices they had been charging before, and during the early years of the digital era. You cannot stop the democratisation of access to media that digitisation brings. That ball cannot and will not roll backwards,
Apple is not the ‘perp’ of this ‘crime’ as these new gangs of publishers would have you believe. It is just the company that helped (big-time) to free digital media from the money-grabbing clutches of greedy media companies. Nobody does digital better than Apple. Others want to be better than Apple at this but they can’t beat Apple because Mr. Average Joe knows that any other company would be greedy enough to conspire with media companies to hike prices back to where they used to be, or take them even higher. Americans and Europeans have never really understood just how deeply and for how long they had been suckered by the media industry until Richard Branson opened the world’s eyes that greed-ridden can of worms that was the Music industry and, much later, Apple stepped on it and crushed it. We have all been the beneficiaries of this change. Now, if only the same could be done to the rest of ‘media – publishing of movies, books, mags and ‘papers’ could come down to a fair and yet very low price and many many more people would buy them.
What is wrong with that? Unlike music and movies, most news and magazine articles are a single-use item for 99% of us. It has no further value for us once it has been read. Therefore, it should be priced really really low, or even free or the papers will indeed wither and die (already happening). They could make money on non-news items and vital news circulation to those who want that e.g. financial market news, industry news, and let’s not forget celebrity news and gossip (sigh). etc.
What’s wrong with buying all your eMovies, eBooks, eMags and eNews from a proven ‘net outlet like iTunes? No one does that better. No other eVendor has championed low prices and the freedom to choose to buy only the items you want. And so, in the same way that iTunes lets you buy only the songs you want, it would let you buy only the news items and individual magazine articles that you were interested in. Do you really have a problem with such freedom of choice and fair prices?
Maybe you need more than optician in that case.
chano, on December 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
“Others want to be better than Apple at this but they can’t beat Apple because Mr. Average Joe knows that any other company would be greedy enough to conspire with media companies to hike prices back to where they used to be, or take them even higher.”
Mr. Average Joe does not use Apple products. Other than the iPod, Apple sells niche products to a small minority of consumers.
“What’s wrong with buying all your eMovies, eBooks, eMags and eNews from a proven ‘net outlet like iTunes? No one does that better.”
One problem is that when one uses an Apple product, one has no choice of content vendor other than Apple, with few exceptions. And BTW, one exception is Cydia, and in their niche, they do it a LOT better.
The other problem is having a gatekeeper who takes on the role of nanny. Do you really want one company deciding what sort of stuff you can read or otherwise consume? Did you know that millions and millions of folks enjoy porn, but that they cannot buy it at the iSore?
Porn is pretty mainstream stuff, but there are other types of content which niche audiences would want, but which a big corporation like Apple would NEVER sell.
iGenius, on December 8th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Umm… What?
“when one uses an Apple product, one has no choice of content vendor other than Apple”
Not this nonsense again. I call bullshit. I use many apple products and have no problem getting media or software from other vendors. Yes, it’s true not every vendor wants to publish or create products for my hardware, so what. There are more than enough that do. If you want to shout IHATEMACS! to the rooftops have a good time. At least have a factual argument.
Doug, on December 9th, 2009 at 8:56 am