Folio reports that Time Inc. is starting a new magazine-subscription service called Maghound that sounds a bit like Netflix’s movie model:
Maghound.com allows consumers to choose titles from a variety of publishers for mix-and-match “subscriptions” where they pay one monthly fee and have the ability to switch titles at any time. Unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren’t locked in their memberships and can cancel whenever they wish. Ventresca says that Maghound.com offers “flexibility, choice, control, and personalization.”
Will it work? Here’s what’s interesting to me about this model:
1. One magazine publisher has built a distribution channel to sell not only its own magazines but those of other publishers as well. There’s an obvious efficiency at work but will Conde Nast, e.g., really be happy to put an extra dollar in Time Inc.’s pocket for every Conde Nast subscription it sells?
2. I don’t sense that magazine readers are dying to swap subscriptions very often. Part of the appeal of receiving a magazine is knowing your way around its format, its style, its idioms. Of course I may be totally wrong about that; I order new magazine subscriptions all the time and inevitably hate them after four issues. Also, the model doesn’t suffer if people don’t swap: they pay the same regardless, and it’s less work for Maghound if they don’t swap.
3. The magazine industry is hardly a world-beater these days, but magazines seem to be holding up far better than newspapers in the face of the internet. According to the Magazine Publishers of America, circulation at the top 100 magazines rose 1.9 percent from 2006 to 2007. Newspaper circulation, meanwhile, is falling — in some cases hard and fast.
This disparity probably makes sense when you consider that a lot of magazine content is more appealing on glossy paper than newspaper content is on newsprint, which means that a computer screen is a worse substitute for magazines than for newspapers. Also, newspapers are far more dependent than magazines on classified ad money, and that’s one form of revenue that’s been making a fast and furious migration to the internet.
To me, one of the biggest advantages of something like Maghound is far more prosaic: having one channel through which to handle all your magazine subscriptions, rather than having to hassle with that constant flood of mail from every magazine, reminding you 4 or 6 times that your subscription will be expiring in a mere 12 months.
(Hat tip: Romenesko.)
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I like the idea–especially if you know what the magazine will contain (i.e., if there is a story on Appalachian State University, I’m sure Dubner would like to read it).
But I have a better (if not necessarily feasible) idea:
Wouldn’t it be great if ARTICLES within each magazine could be ordered under this one-price-for-everything notion?
That way I could obtain ONLY those articles I’m interested in reading, and not have to skip over part of the magazine that has no interest for me (e.g., Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, or some esoteric write up about the primaries in some small town in Vermont, etc.).
I mean, we ALREADY skip those parts. So why waste paper?
Rather than a Netflix approach, it would be more like downloading songs. You may only like one song on the new Journey album (of course, this is impossible), and you could obtain just that song.
Ideally, all the articles could be assimilated into a single, actual magazine.
Maybe even better, you could select, “All articles about Saudi Arabia”–and all relevant articles from the pool of magazines would be prsented so you could pick and choose, making your “own” magazine.
Just my thoughts. Do not attempt to use them for yourselves, wealthy companies, without giving me a free. lifetime subscription. And $1 million. Ha!
I think it’s a great idea.
More things I’d like to see:
If I could turn a weekly sub into a bi-weekly or monthly sub (i.e., something more manageable given other demands for my attention), I’d love it! I love the New Yorker. I can’t keep up with it, and I hate all the paper build-up and waste – so I don’t have a subscription.
I also think being able to opt out of a magazine after a month or two, and replace it with a different one would be pretty useful. If this swapping included access to back issues (subject to availability), I’d be even happier. (Esp. for non-news magazines, i.e., martha stewart living, sunset, cooking light, etc.)
Going to an I-tunes/music-downloading format to get just the pieces of a magazine you want is another distribution channel that I think complements the “whole magazine” approach. This is really better suited to digital delivery than hardcopy, whereas the whole-mag approach is a better fit for hardcopy. I don’t think it’s either-or.
I really like this idea. I hate managing my subscriptions and find the information costs kind of hard to manage. Managing subscriptions by the little cards once a year depending on when you ordered each subscription? Really irritating. I think one of the main uses though could be to help people find the magazines in different fields that they like. I don’t think that most people get multiple magazines in the same general area, but would like to get one and aren’t always sure of the best one. So I tried a few different cooking magazines before I settled on one that I liked (i.e. treated me like a consumer and didn’t assume that I regularly spent $20 on a bottle of wine). I might like to subscribe to some magazines in other areas, but I think I would need to receive a couple of issues before I really determined whether I actually read enough of it.
I think another reason magazines are having relatively more success than newspapers is that the articles are usually much longer (at least the feature articles). Reading short news clips on your computer screen is fine, but reading an 8-page magazine article on a computer is a less pleasant.
I currently hold three magazine subscriptions, The New Yorker, which puts waaay to much of its content online and offers little benefit for subscription and it is a subscprition I am beginning to regret having. I love their content, but there is so much of it that is available for free, what is the point in paying?
On the other hand, Harpers offer more online with a subscription than without, so the subsciption is more than worth the cost.
My other subscription, Macworld,is a digital subsciption and there are some benefits (like embedded links) and some consequences (the software is not as good as could be and it is not as portable as one would like, but that may change with iPhone software).
So there are models that the internet undermines a normal subscription or enhances it. I really love the Harpers, but the New Yorker, well they do not make me feel special for having paid.
I want it. Now. Give it to me.
Managing magazine subscriptions is very, very painful and I don’t want to do it anymore
I would have like that idea – several years ago. I used to go to the library during lunch and read articles from magazines for which I didn’t have a subscription. I don’t do that any more; I use the internet.
What I need is an index of the most popular or interesting posts on the internet. I liked Daypop, but it’s not up anymore. I check out the NYTimes most popular lists and Digg, but somehow, they are not the same. What I don’t need is another magazine coming to my house which I probably won’t read.
I don’t like it. Netflix (and movie renting in general) works because a movie is the same every time you watch it, so you get bored quickly. On the other hand, my Economist is different every week and I’m always happy to see it, though rarely do I read the whole thing.
I like #1′s suggestion of the aggregate magazine better. I pretty much do this for blogs already with Google Reader; all I need now are some magazine RSS feeds to pop in.