Just what is the appropriate price for a B2B magazine’s mobile app? That answer is still being thrashed out in the industry – and United Business Media’s MusicWeek is so uncertain that it’s already changed it’s mind, less than 24 hours after launching its debut app.
The music-biz mag introduced an iPhone app Wednesday with a hefty £9.99, renewable price tag for 30 days’ access to new issues, news, data and the archive. Some raised eyebrows at what is a steep price for a mobile mag – though it’s a decent enough discount on the print/online subscription, which, at £225 a year, works out to be double the iPhone rate, £18.75 per month.
But the offering has already changed, we’ve now learned. Exact Editions, the digital-replica vendor that made the app, said that it had been talking with MusicWeek about lowering the price while the app was with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) for approval.
Now the app itself has magically become free, sort of. Readers will be able to read some of the content – specifically, the last three issues from a month ago – for no charge. But the £9.99 price tag has also remained: readers who want the current month of MusicWeek, plus any archived content beyond the month before still need to pay £9.99 for 30 days of access.
Experience may have been the tipping point for UBM: Exact Editions has developed digital editions for a number of magazines, and, more recently, mobile apps for the Spectator, Opera Magazine and Athletics Monthly – priced at around £2.50 per month.
“We are dealing with quite niche markets, but the publishers would agree that the take-up has been surprisingly good,” says Daryl Rayner, the MD of Exact Editions.
UBM declined to comment on the MusicWeek app. A spokesman for the company said that it does not keep tabs on individual publications’ mobile strategies. “We are in so many markets, and there are so many different pricing sensitivities, that it makes no sense to have a centralised view on it,” he said.
The MusicWeek app highlights some of the key issues with magazines moving into mobile apps: they are all hungry for the additional route to monetising their content. But they are still trying to work out the best pricing to get there.
There is also the question of what is offered in the app. Try-before-you-buy is used in other kinds of apps, such as games, and might become more prevalent as more niche trade magazines move into apps. The MusicWeek app lets subscribers download a copy of the current issue, to browse while offline, with the rest of the content needing an internet connection for access. It’s a service that is also available with the Spectator’s app, and Rayner says other publishers are interested in the part-download/part-streaming model, too.
Update: Since publishing the article, a spokesperson for MusicWeek has been in touch to say that the change in pricing for the app wasn’t down to uncertainty over how to price it. The last-minute change (in the words of Exact Editions) was made because they wanted to incorporate Apple’s in-app pricing feature, and changes the app to a try-before-you-buy model. As reported before, users can download the app for free, and get some free issues, but they can also subscribe to recent and archive content for the fee of £9.99/30 days.
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