Get 5 Decades of Pop Culture FREE with Rolling Stone Now

Last Friday Rolling Stone launched Rolling Stone Now, giving rock and roll lovers and pop culture fans unlimited, free access to its breaking news

Last Friday Rolling Stone launched Rolling Stone Now, giving rock and roll lovers and pop culture fans unlimited, free access to its breaking news and archived content. In addition to the archives on its main website, the Rolling Stone Now archive is available on Android and iOS phones and tablets from the Google Play Newsstand.

The archives include top articles, political reporting, investigative journalism, iconic photos and a Cover Wall featuring magazine covers dating back to Rolling Stone’s 1967 launch. The archived content is separate from current and recent issues of Rolling Stone magazine, available at Google Play and the App store for $4.99 per issue. The archives currently include three to four stories from each archived issue, but will be expanded next year to include multimedia content, including audio and video.

Rolling Stone is offering its archives in partnership with Google, who has sweetened the deal by purchasing seven figures’ worth of advertising for Rolling Stone. Brian Irving, global head of marketing for Google Play, explains the partnership in a recent Fast Company article:

“Our goal is to help publishers succeed in a changing world. We’re constantly looking for ways to partner with people who are content creators and help bring something to life.”

Insider Analysis:

We love that Rolling Stone is leveraging the use of its archived content, extending its brand to new and existing readers. While currently available for free, we anticipate that Rolling Stone will at some point monetize the archives. This could be done directly by selling the app, selling individual issues or offering subscriptions, or indirectly by capturing user data and marketing directly to those consumers and through advertising partnerships like the one with Google. Other subscription-based companies can learn from this model by assessing, digitizing and optimizing their archives to get in front of new audiences or to provide value to existing ones.

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