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Dana E. Neuts

Dana Neuts is Subscription Insider's Editorial Director, covering our daily subscription news as well as member features, case studies, premium content, and reports. Dana is also a writer, editor, marketer and communications professional. Her work has appeared in AARP Bulletin, The Seattle Times, Seattle Business, 425 Business, 425 Magazine, South Sound Magazine, Northwest Travel and more. Her specialties include business writing, community news, senior issues, travel and, of course, subscriptions!

Dana E. Neuts

Weekly Subscription News: Payments, Paywalls and Podcasts

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In addition to our subscription news stories, there were some fascinating headlines this week: LinkedIn will launch a weekly podcast about work called “Hello Monday,” The New York Times is testing a tougher paywall, and YouTube Live has grown to over 1 million subscribers. Also this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to woo Amazon back to New York, Medium takes down its paywalls for Twitter users, and JCPenney shuts down its subscription service.

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Five on Friday: Music Revenue, Mobile SVOD and Top Subscription Jobs

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In this weeks edition of Five on Friday, Brian Bergstein of the Boston Globe explores the idea of offering tax credits to save local news, recorded music revenue in the U.S. continues growing, Digital Context Next looks at The New York Times program to offer free subscriptions to students, Sensor Tower shares the top 10 grossing SVOD subscription apps in 2018, and LinkedIn posts some great subscription jobs that are worth a look.

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MoviePass and MoviePass Studios Pivot to a New Business Strategy

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MoviePass and MoviePass Films are pivoting to a new business strategy to refocus business model on reliable revenue it generates in-house and that is not dependent on revenues from studios or exhibitors. According to an announcement on Wednesday, MoviePass will expand its reach by focusing on technological innovation and high-quality content through the MoviePass movie subscription program; MoviePass Films, MoviePass’s own production company; and Moviefone, a MoviePass-owned multimedia information and advertising service.

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Ridesharing Startup Lyft Files for IPO, Beating Uber to the Punch

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Last Friday, ridesharing startup Lyft filed an S-1 Registration Statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, beating rival Uber to the punch. Lyft hopes to be valued between $20 billion and $25 billion. In its prospectus, Lyft reported that it had doubled revenue between 2017 and 2018 from $1.1 billion to $2.2 billion. In spite of that growth, Lyft also reported a $911.3 million loss. The IPO is being underwritten by J. P. Morgan, Credit Suisse and Jefferies.

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UC Cancels Nearly $11 Million Subscription Deal with Elsevier

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Last Friday, after more than 6 months of contract negotiations, the University of California terminated their multi-million dollar subscription with Elsevier, the world’s largest scholarly publisher. UC’s goal in negotiating the contract was to contain costs for its 10 campuses and authors while ensuring its published materials, which account for close to 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output, are immediately available to global readers without cost. Instead, Elsevier wanted to charge UC authors large publishing fees in addition to the university’s nearly $11 million subscription deal.

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Julep Abruptly Discontinues Maven Subscription Beauty Boxes

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With no notice to subscribers, popular beauty brand Julep abruptly discontinued their Maven subscription beauty box program, effective February 15, 2019. The company’s FAQs only say they have retired the program, and subscribers do not need to take any action to cancel the subscription. They will no longer be charged the monthly subscription fee. For those who have Maven perks, the discount will increase from 20 percent to 25 percent. For subscribers who have prepaid for their beauty boxes, they will receive a gift card to use on future purchases. The Jules and Secret Store promotions have also been discontinued.

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AMC Entertainment Does Dramatic Reversal of Multimillion Dollar Losses

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Last year marked a dramatic reversal of fortune for AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) with the company going from a net loss of $487.2 million in 2017 to net earnings of $110.1 million in 2018. That’s a swing of $597.3 million! For the fourth quarter of 2018, revenue was $1.413 billion, a 0.2 percent loss of the fourth quarter of 2017, but with such a strong year, a slight reduction in quarterly revenue has no impact. For the full year 2018, AMC had revenue of $5.5 billion, a 7.5 percent increase over 2017.

AMC Entertainment Does Dramatic Reversal of Multimillion Dollar Losses Read More »

Weekly Subscription News: Pinterest, Paywalls and Predators

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In this week’s subscription headlines, YouTube is proactively blocking ads on videos most likely to get predatory comments, Pinterest files confidentially for an IPO and Roku is on track to get to $1 billion in revenue this year. Also, Boston Globe Online saw subscriptions grow at the end of 2018, Lyft is moving toward an IPO, hoping to beat rival Uber, and Texas Monthly puts up a paywall.

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Five on Friday: Gaming, Third-Party Food Delivery and Apple News

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Happy March! It is hard to believe that March is already here. We hope that means spring is just around the corner. While we wait to see if the groundhog was right, Variety explains why they believe subscriptions are the future of gaming, Broadcast Now tells us why Netflix is the SVOD to beat, The Spoon explores the future of third-party food delivery (hint: subscriptions), digital advertising is bigger than TV and print advertising, and Recode breaks down Apples rationale in asking news publishers for half their Apple News revenue – it wants to save journalism.

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Medium to Launch Four New Digital Subscription-Based Magazines

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Medium, who once touted itself as the publishing platform that would save journalism, is experimenting with its business model again. According to Digiday, for the last two weeks, Medium has posted job listings for contributors and staff writers for four new digital, subscription-based magazines – Medium subscriptions, that is – covering science and technology, business, health and general interest. In addition to these magazines, Medium hopes to partner with others on publications too, says Siobhan O’Conner, Medium’s vice president of editorial.

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