Publishers were stunned to hear about Apple’s plans for their new news service that would be available on subscription, because of the proposed financial terms that the tech company plans to impose.
According to reports. Apple plans to retain around half of all revenues generated by the subscription service, which would allow subscribers to read unlimited content from publisher partners in return for a monthly fee. According to unofficial information, the subscription fee would amount to around $10 per month.
The remaining revenues would be funneled into a central account from where it would then be distributed among individual contributing publishers, in accordance with the total amount of time spent by users on their own content, TheDrum reported.
Several major publishers have already voiced dissatisfaction which such proposed setup, with New York Times and Washington Post withholding from licensing their own content.
Apart from the financial terms of the proposed platform, another cause of strife is Apple’s plan to keep all subscriber data such as credit card, email and address information.
Apple is expected to launch the service as a premium subset of its Apple News app later this year. The moves follow Apple’s acquisition of the Texture news app last year.
