Apple loosens grip on subscription terms for news publishers

The announcement of the digital app service Newsstand was good news for news and magazine publishers this week, giving them a higher profile, dedicated space within iTunes and their customers a simpler subscription process. It also means customers automatically agree to keep paying subscriptions until and unless they choose to opt out, which is likely to mean more subscription revenues because us consumers do have a tendency to forget about these things.

We wrote earlier this week about the trade-off publishers make when opting to go through the App Store: great profile, a big consumer base and desirable devices, but being forced to hand 30% commission to Apple and losing control of subscriber payment and contact details.

Photo by ell brown on Flickr. Some rights reserved

That control was something publishers negotiated hard with Apple about, but an argument they ultimately lost.

But some new details in Apple's App Store terms reveal what Apple may have relinquished in return.

German news site Heise Online spotted that Apple has lifted the conditions on in-app pricing.

Significantly, these have now been replaced by a term that says publishers can include content that consumers have paid for elsewhere. So if a newspaper subscribers has paid the paper directly for a year's online and in-app access, then Apple won't take a piece of that payment because it was processed outside the App Store. The same applies for services including Spotify, or Netflix.

It sounds like Apple has listened.

Previous terms had insisted that in-app subscriptions were to be the same price or cheaper than subscriptions elsewhere, and also that external subscriptions had to be made available within the app. This is great news for publishers, not least because apps on Apple products are seen as premium devices, and therefore ones that publishers would like to be at liberty to charge more for. And now they can, without fear of Apple sending round the heavies.

It means publishers can choose whatever price point they like for subscriptions wherever they are, and won't have to include what might be irrelevant external subscription offers in the Apple apps.

A browse through the perfunctory terms makes for slightly uncomfortable reading.

Point 11.13, which caused much of the annoyance for publishers, has been removed: "Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions."

Revised terms now include this one, 11.14: "Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app."

Interestingly, the terms have a dedicated porn section where they say: Apps that contain user-generated content that is frequently pornographic (ex "ChatRoulette" apps) will be rejected."

So ChatRoulette is named and shamed, but the Daily Star iPhone app made it through...