Author: Katherine Noyes

Netflix Tops $1 Billion in Q1 Streaming Revenue, Surpasses 48 Million Subscribers

Entertainment and Streaming, FInance, News / Katherine Noyes

Following a strong last quarter of 2013, Netflix on Monday reported that its first quarter of 2014 was even better, bringing in more than $1 billion in quarterly streaming revenue and finishing up the quarter with more 48 million global subscribers. Total revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion. A full 4 million new members joined the service during Q1, compared with 3.05 million new members added in the same quarter a year ago. Included in…

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Newspaper Revenues from Print-and-Digital Bundles Jumped 108% in 2013

Business Strategy, FInance, News, Subscription Apps / Katherine Noyes

Promising data for subscription news sites from the Newspaper Association of America this week! Although total multiplatform revenue was down slightly to $37.59 billion in 2013 from $38.60 billion in 2012, circulation revenue for U.S. newspapers enjoyed a second consecutive year of growth in 2013, the association reported on Friday. Specifically, circulation revenue as a whole — a figure that apparently includes print subscriptions, single-copy sales and digital paywalls — rose 3.7% to $10.87 billion last…

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Flexible Paywall Lets Readers ‘Pay’ With Loyalty or By Watching Ads

Business Strategy, News, Payment Processing, Subscriber Acquisition / Katherine Noyes

Those of us here in the subscription content industry are more than familiar with the traditional kind of paywall, whereby some content is accessible only to paying readers. Canadian startup SlimCut Media, however, has an idea for a new, more flexible kind of subscription arrangement, and it’s already signed on several publisher clients. The premise is this: Readers can still access content by purchasing a subscription package, as they do with a traditional paywall. Alternative options,…

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Google Changing the Game for Email Marketers Yet Again

News, Subscriber Acquisition / Katherine Noyes

If you’ve been using email marketing for some time to promote your subscriptions, you probably remember the angst that followed the introduction of Google’s Gmail Tabs feature last year. Among the early fears was that marketers’ promotional messages would get abandoned and forgotten in recipients’ Promotions tab — a fear, it turned out, that proved to be unfounded. Well, brace yourself, because Google looks to be mixing things up again — at least on an experimental…

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Entitle Adds E-Ink Reader Support to Its Subscription eBook Service

Business Media and Publishing, Industry Announcements, News, Subscription Apps / Katherine Noyes

Last December we wrote about the launch of Entitle, a subscription eBook service that was notable for its focus on ownership rather than the ubiquitous model of Netflix-style streaming. At the time, the service — formerly known as eReatah — focused on Android and iOS devices, but recently we learned that popular demand has driven Entitle to expand its hardware support to e-ink readers as well. Specifically, besides adding 10 new publishers and 50,000 new books…

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11% of This Week’s New Chicago Sun-Times Subscribers Paid in Bitcoins

News, Payment Processing / Katherine Noyes

Last week the Chicago Sun-Times announced that it had become the first major US newspaper to start accepting Bitcoins, thereby blazing a trail for subscription content publishers that’s sure to have countless others watching. Well, yesterday some data emerged that suggests the Sun-Times’s bet was a good one. Specifically, a full 11.3 percent of the publication’s new subscription orders this week were paid for via Bitcoin, according to a newsBTC report. That amounted to 7 purchases, and…

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New Subscription Service for Kids Offers Sesame Street Video on Demand

Entertainment and Streaming, Industry Announcements, News, Subscription Apps / Katherine Noyes

By Katherine Noyes Sesame Street has already demonstrated its digital savvy in numerous ways — its successful use of mobile apps, for instance — and it looks like it just added another to the list. Namely, Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind the successful show, on Tuesday launched Sesame GO, a new subscription service for kids that delivers Sesame Street video on demand. Powered by Kaltura MediaGo OTT technology, Sesame GO is available through any Web…

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Chicago Sun-Times Adds Bitcoin Option for Print and Digital Subscriptions

News, Payment Processing / Katherine Noyes

By Katherine Noyes Roughly a year ago we saw OKCupid begin accepting Bitcoins as payment for its digital subscriptions, and last week what appears to be the first major US newspaper to follow suit did as well. The Chicago Sun-Times announced on Thursday that subscribers can now use Bitcoins to pay for their print and digital subscriptions, thereby continuing what the newspaper calls its “digital first” strategy. “Our goal is to keep the Sun-Times current and evolving…

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Comedy Central App Keeps Key Content Behind the Pay-TV Paywall

Entertainment and Streaming, Industry Announcements, News, Subscription Apps / Katherine Noyes

By Katherine Noyes It’s no secret that today’s consumers increasingly choose to access content via mobile device, so it was no great surprise to see Comedy Central launch a mobile app of its own this week, long-overdue though it may have been. Sure enough, the app was released on April Fools’ Day and is now available as a free download for iOS 7 devices offering free access to content including the most recent season of “South…

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‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Jumps in with a Subscription Site for Scheduling

Industry Announcements, News, Subscriber Acquisition / Katherine Noyes

By Katherine Noyes New subscription sites arrive practically every day in the content-publishing world, and we here at Subscription Site Central do our best to let you know about any compelling new features or business ideas that pop up along the way. Every once in a while, though, we find ourselves powerless to resist a new site, and it’s not always for some shockingly disruptive twist in its business proposition. Case in point? CalendarTree, a new venture…

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Insight to drive subscription growth

Katherine Noyes