Unless Apple makes some unexpected changes to Newsstand, it will not be helping publishers win that fight for attention. For The Magazine’s Fleishman, at least, that means it’s time to seek solutions outside the product that Apple once marketed as a great hope for publishers.
Says Fleishman: “I hooked my wagon to a star that has dimmed in Apple’s eyes.”
The forgotten Apple Newsstand
PandoDaily: “The Magazine recently started to lose subscribers. Fleishman, who won’t give out subscription numbers..” THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW!?
Because Fleishman apparently said so.
Is there direct cause-relation effect between The Magazine losing subscribers and iOS7..? From a personal point of view, I subscribed to The Magazine when it first came out, then I subscribed to The Loop Magazine, now I subscribe to just The Loop Magazine… It’s nothing to do with the iOS restyle of Newsstand. I think the new icon has a hint of Mad Men about it and I like the new shelves. I found I wasn’t that interested in the content any longer, just as I no longer subscribe to The New Disruptors podcast.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, Glen Fleishman could say that numbers were down without giving exact numbers.
I use Newsstand extensively and have completely replaced my many magazine subscriptions with it.
I love Newsstand (even if the app looks gross under iOS 7 and hijacks the home button) and I have active subscriptions costing almost $1100 annually (this includes some costly German papers and magazines); I am even reading Newsweek again – a magazine I maybe bought 5-10 times a year at the real newsstand.
There is nothing wrong with Newsstand. I had a The Magazine subscription and cancelled it, because the content sucks and the app sucks. I stopped reading Macworld because of people like Fleishman – I do not need them to tell me what is wrong with Apple.
Then they shouldn’t have said subscriber numbers were down without citing some kind of evidence.
Good point. People may simply not be interested in the content as opposed to the reasoning found in the article.
Does this mean we’re one day closer to being able to delete it from our device(s)?
They we’re citing the guy himself…
Where? I read the post and nowhere does it say, “Fleishman said subscriber numbers were down.”
“Fleishman, who won’t give out subscription numbers, suspects the iOS7-instigated changes to Apple’s Newsstand have something to do with it.”
Isn’t this the old “Apple isn’t doing our advertising for us anymore” problem? Many companies have found themselves at the end of an Apple push-start with no idea how to keep themselves on the general public’s radar without Apple’s help.
Even The Loop Magazine has this falling off the radar problem.
I subscribe to The Loop Magazine, but I haven’t developed a habit of reading it. I like the content. It just hasn’t caught my attention permanently.
If new Loop magazine covers were displayed under the Loop Magazine link on the Loop website, I might notice when a new issue came out or I might be interested in checking out the story behind that cover.
I think it has nothing to do with iOS7. The Magazine content is just not that great. And once the hype died down, subscribers started to leave.