by Dan Moren
Report: Apple offering 50/50 split in its magazine service
Apple’s upcoming Spotify-style magazine subscription service, an offering with all-you-can eat access to dozens of publishers, will only pay the media partners 50 percent of the revenue, according to two senior publishing executives from different companies with knowledge of the deal.
Obviously, this information is coming from publishing executives, who have good reason to be ticked off. Apple taking 50 percent of revenue is absurdly high, even more so because Apple is looking to hold on to the golden goose, by not sharing customer data with the publications.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about whether the 70/30 split in the App Store is still equitable, and Apple has provided exceptions: for example, developers who get customers to subscribe to their app or service can get an 85 percent share after the customer’s first year.
That makes a 50/50 even more ridiculous, especially because of the potential long-term effects, as Tech Crunch’s Matthew Panzarino pointed out:
Here's the thing. This isn't just about giving Apple 50%, it's also about reconfiguring your organization to take advantage of and eventually come to rely on whatever traffic based revenue this brings. And then, what happens when Apple changes its mind? pic.twitter.com/5Xu0Me1MFQ
— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) February 12, 2019
Apple News is already providing a huge amount of traffic to news sites, but that isn’t bringing money with it. Offering the publications a meager 50 percent of subscriber revenue sure seems like Apple’s giving them the short end of the stick.