New Subscription Launches for The Atlantic, NBCUniversal and Amazon

A number of major media organizations launched digital subscription products this past week. First, The Atlantic, almost pathological in the avoidance of online subscriptions,

A number of major media organizations launched digital subscription products this past week.First, The Atlantic, almost pathological in the avoidance of online subscriptions, launched The Atlantic Weekly, a paid iPhone and iPad app. Priced at $2.99/month, $19.99/year and $1.99 for a one-off purchase, the app simply curates the “best of” content from The Atlantic’s free website and presents it in a compact app that’s quick to download. (The app also includes archival pieces, such as Henry Thoreau’s “Walking,” which ran in The Atlantic in 1862.)Meanwhile, Amazon has started a B2B subscription service through its Amazon Vendor Central (and joins Katie’s Cards and The Christian Science Monitor as another B2C site to expand into B2B subscription services). Known as Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA) Premium (and remarkably, without a direct Web page, although there is a handy PDF here), the service promises vendors access to “real-time data that gives you the hourly sales for any product in your catalog for the past 24 hours.” Vendors can also get geographic-based sales numbers, page view and conversion stats, and search terms used by consumers. Amazon is offering existing vendors a free 30-day trial.Finally, NBCUniversal is re-booting its video-on-demand subscription service, PictureBox Films, which caters to audiences in the UK and Ireland. For £4.99/month, subscribers can now choose from new and catalog titles, curated by the company’s “panel of film lovers” and viewable on multiple devices. The best part from a business perspective is that the titles “expire,” creating a better sense of immediacy for both conversion and retention.And in other news, Netflix just announced plans to expand its streaming video service into the Netherlands by late 2013.

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