
Medium plans to launch a consumer subscription product this quarter - chmars
https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/medium-subscriptions/
======
philjackson
"We live in a world where digital products are inherently undervalued relative
to other products. We will shell out $5 for a pumpkin spice latte in a
heartbeat, but the second we have to pay $1.99 for an app, we begin to conduct
cost-benefit analysis as if we were buying a damn house."

This is something I think about a lot, especially as a developer of a service
that will one day require subscription (Yipgo).

When I buy a coffee, I walk into a physical building, staffed by people who
I've got a two way relationship with and I get a physical coffee. As well as
the experience itself, there's more a more tangable product in the coffee than
there is a blog I might subscribe to. I'm not saying we shouldn't pay for it,
I'm just suggesting that might be the phsycology that explains it a little.

~~~
lojack
When I buy a coffee I also don't have to worry about it charging me $5 once a
month forever unless I go through a maze of menu options (possibly involving
phone calls) to get it to stop.

~~~
pweissbrod
Also when you buy a coffee you dont just download a bytewise clone of a coffee
from some repo.

An hourly paid person must manually prepare fresh coffee using distributed
physical goods multiple times a day and brew the cup full at every brick and
mortar location.

This is not a very good analogy at all. Free market and competition have
already decided the price of quality apps and quality coffee. The only way you
can prove this wrong is by actually disrupting the market.

~~~
Veen
But does the free market always produce the best results? The free market
tells us people want click bait, porn, and cat videos. It tells us that long
expensive investigative journalism won't find a market that will support it —
that sort of work is expensive.

We can take the free market purist view that there needs to be no further
discussion on the issue: the market has decided that high-quality journalism
doesn't generate enough revenue to support itself, therefore, its
intrinsically valueless.

Or, we stipulate that high-quality journalism is valuable becauae it has
positive effects on society that are beyond the ability of the market to
determine. If we think so, it makes sense to talk about how to fund these
endevours that aren't reliant on free market forces.

(I realize you're talking about apps, but the topic of the article is content,
and the same basic principles apply to both)

~~~
Sacho
Let's assume we agree with both premises - the free market has decided the
value of apps, and the free market does not always produce the best results.
Since "the free market has decided" means the people participating in that
market have made such a decision, there's two strategies you can take -
persuasion and coercion. You can already apply most methods of persuasion
through the free market - are there any that you think are unable to thrive in
it?

For coercion, people are naturally resistant to it, even when it is "good for
them". Do you think it is a worthwhile investment to spend political capital
on laws, regulations, enforcement etc to apply such coercion? Maybe if we use
one of the subtler methods, i.e. taxation and subsidy? There's also the
problem of the 1A which tends to negate most government action you can take in
this sphere.

------
kristianc
I'm struggling to work out what Medium is going to offer in an 'upgraded'
reading experience that is going to make it worth paying for.

The problem that they face is that the core asset they own - other people's
content - just isn't that compelling.

There are a couple of reasons for this, but here are a couple:

\- People go to Medium to find an audience for their work. Medium has no
meaningful brand / identity / curation / editorial voice of its own, so Medium
posts tend to be posts that people have thrown up their, tagged, and hoped to
find an audience.

\- There's very little way of an author or a writer building their brand
through Medium. This is because all of the articles are presented in exactly
the same way with the exact same layout features. Even if I remember an
article, I'm going to struggle to remember who wrote it.

\- Although Medium launched with the promise of helping to launch undiscovered
writers and rewarding attention minutes, in practice this has actually ended
up being 'he or she who has the most Twitter followers wins'. This means that
the same folks who win on Twitter, and Medium simply ends up being another
outlet for their voice.

\- People who are prepared to wade through all of the above on the off chance
that they'll strike it lucky and their article will end up with a few thousand
shares have worked out how to game Medium. This has filled Medium with the
kind of low grade motivational bullshit no one in their right mind would pay
for.

\- It's really hard to believe any pitch that starts with 'I know we've
ploughed through $132m in venture money so far, but it'll all get better when
we ask people to pay for it.'

Either Medium has some very heavyweight content partners lined up - in which
case, the rank and file creators are just SEO fodder - or Medium is doomed.

~~~
petra
I don't think the medium of today is what the intend to charge money on, and
it may even be possible that they intentionally made it worse , to
differentiate their paid product.

But :

What if their product is about amazing curation on the consumer side ?

And on the writer side - it promises writers access to better readers ? for
example, if i'm a professional and i wrote a great article about some
industry, i'll get more relevant people(so i'll market my idea more
effectively), i'll get a higher share of relevant people(and hence the
discussion will be much higher quality), and i'll get a better chance to
connect to highly relevant individuals ?

~~~
tedmiston
> I don't think the medium of today is what the intend to charge money on

I get the impression that the service will be sort of Newsstand / Feedly meets
Spotify.

~~~
petra
Could you please expand?

~~~
tedmiston
A monthly subscription service to a very large amount of content organized by
"magazine". Magazine ~= publication on Medium.

------
te_chris
Why would I subscribe to Medium in the hope that it becomes some sort of real
organisation, with good writing, when those already exist? Sorry, but I think
I'll just keep paying for The Guardian, The LRB, N+1, MIT Technology Review
etc and patronising my local bookshops.

I'm not poopooing the idea of Medium going subscription, FWIW, but this
author's call to arms is a bit ridiculous.

~~~
lmm
> Why would I subscribe to Medium in the hope that it becomes some sort of
> real organisation, with good writing, when those already exist? Sorry, but I
> think I'll just keep paying for The Guardian, The LRB, N+1, MIT Technology
> Review etc and patronising my local bookshops.

I think I read more and better content on medium than all of those put
together. (Of course there's also a huge amount of dreck on there)

~~~
k-mcgrady
Any examples? I can only think of one super interesting article I've ever read
on Medium whereas I'll get that at least once a week from a decent news
source. Medium, in my experience, is half echo-chamber half opinion from
people who have little to no idea what they're talking about.

~~~
lmm
Nothing specific springs to mind (but that's true for all those sources). Most
good articles there I pick up from here or reddit or the like - the only part
of medium I "follow" is War is Boring and they're pretty variable. The
discovery experience on medium is pretty terrible and the front page often
looks like the kind of echo chamber you're talking about.

~~~
criddell
I'm like you - I end up on Medium because of shared link.

If Medium were to go away, I suspect those links would just lead to a
different site. What value does Medium add?

~~~
lmm
Really nice readable design that gets out of the way. And I can know from the
URL that the page I'm going to will have really nice readable design that gets
out of the way. It shouldn't be hard, but so many sites manage to get it
wrong.

~~~
criddell
Maybe that's on reason they are struggling - more and more sites _are_ getting
it right now. I used to use reader mode in my browser all the time and I find
I use rarely use it anymore.

------
iamdave
A lot of attention is being put in this piece as to how this will affect the
reader - which okay, this is ostensibly a service built _for_ readers and I
get that.

I'm genuinely and truly hoping though Medium plans to address how this will
impact writers on the platform. Not only do I have my own publication on
Medium, I contribute to a column ran by a major name in sports journalism.

How is this subscription service going to benefit _writers_?

Will it at all? I don't know if I can keep my publication on a site that's
charging my readers while I continue to write for free-though I understand Ev
and Co.'s want to monetize the platform. When there's a element of everyone
contributing content for the same reward (eyeballs and shares), suddenly
bringing money into this has me as a writer wondering "Okay, I provide value
to your platform by driving visitors to the site, but now you're telling me
you plan to charge my readers? That's cool, but what's in it for me?"

~~~
CM30
Agreed. When I read that Medium were doing subscriptions, I was like "cool,
I'll be able to charge people to read my content on Medium". I likely wouldn't
get a lot of paying subscribers reading my content, but I guess I'd get at
least a few.

Yet every article seems to make this out as 'Medium charges for content,
writers continue getting sod all for it'.

Sorry Medium, but if turns out to be more than the latter than the former,
then I'll stop writing on your platform. If you're implementing a bunch of
ways to make money, let the creators on your site use them to make money from
their own works. We're not writing for free so you can charge people money to
read it.

~~~
iamdave
Bingo. While other commenters have brought up some very real benefits to self-
hosting/self-publishing, monetizing the platform presents a real opportunity
to make real money from your work and determine value of what gets written.

I imagine it'll be harder to paywall one's own blog in the vacuum of a "blog
brand". That's enticing to me greatly, but it's absolutely worth considering
tradeoffs.

------
StudyAnimal
I don’t think I will pledge until I see drastic improvements in two areas:
Content (still lots of posts pushing a very orthodox agenda, lots of self-help
fluff and too much start-up techy stuff. Not enough challenging or interesting
general reads), and the Reading Experience: I can’t believe I have to export
to Pocket (which is currently doing a better job providing me good content
that Medium is) in order to get things like white on black or sepia themes, a
choice of fonts with ligatures and full justification. Auto-scrolling would be
nice too.

~~~
blacktulip
This and, like in the original post, I have to scroll down a full page to
start reading the real content.

update: the original post has been changed... it was a medium post with a full
screen cover image.

------
jarofgreen
> We are at a crossroads of consumer attention when it comes to reading,
> writing, and the “blogosphere”. With the seemingly endless amount of
> standalone blogs out there on the web, the market is thirsting for a
> platform that will consolidate blogging, and bring the value it provides
> into one convenient and curated location. ... YouTube did this exact thing
> for filmmakers, comedians, musicians and more. Instagram did this exact
> thing for photographers and models. Let’s do what we can do to make sure
> this happens on Medium!

So we are saying that centralising on one platform is the only way forwards?
That may be right, but I feel like that's a point that could do with a hell of
a lot more consideration ...

~~~
pimterry
> So we are saying that centralising on one platform is the only way forwards?

Peter Gasston has a great talk on this that's well worth watching:
[https://vimeo.com/181110920](https://vimeo.com/181110920).

The short answer is: right now, yes, that's becoming a fairly dominant
strategy across the board, but the future isn't necessarily as bad as it
looks.

~~~
StevePerkins
... hosted on Vimeo instead of YouTube, heh.

------
bshimmin
This has now been unlinked from the original submission
([https://medium.com/the-mission/wow-its-official-the-
subscrip...](https://medium.com/the-mission/wow-its-official-the-subscription-
model-is-coming-to-medium-134bc0846f6e#.57orkwlct)), which contained this gem:

 _Personally, I couldn’t count how many Medium articles have changed my life,
but a conservative estimate would be hovering around 50._

I think perhaps the disconnect between this extraordinary statement [1] and
the reality of people who might actually pay to read things on Medium is
perhaps indicative of why this might not be the great success they're hoping
it will be.

[1] I have read plenty of articles on Medium and I'm not sure even a dozen of
them have had me thinking about them five minutes later, never mind "changed
my life".

------
cyborgx7
This post is telling me to take a pledge to subscribe without telling me what
I'm suppposed to be getting. How about we clarify that first and then I decide
if this glorified blogging platform is worth it.

And to the point made in the article about digital products being undervalued
in relation to physical ones, maybe people don't feel like all these digital
products provide that much value to them.

------
gumby
How often does a channel become a brand name?

Netflix became a household name in the DVD era because they had a unique and
useful value prop. Ditto Facebook (well, not unique at time of creation but
they managed it very well). But nobody says they want to sit down to watch an
NBC show or some RCA music.

Even when you manage the content creation the name brand is hard to maintain
Yes, Disney and many of its sub brands, and a very small number of news
sources like NYT, but they are the exception.

In fact the channel model tends not only to be a painful business (has to be
made up in volume) but chews up the branding further downstream (car companies
worry about being genericized by self-driving fleet managers).

Medium has chosen a tough row to how.

~~~
gumby
> Medium has chosen a tough row to how.

Goddamn you iOS autocorrect, "hoe" is a perfectly reasonable word!

------
blobman
I like Medium and I DO hope it goes ahead with the subscription model. It will
make it easier for me to stop procrastinating and to read something more
useful, like arxiv articles.

------
akoster
The ability for a "light" HTML only mode would be greatly appreciated

~~~
ptrptr
Removing “highlights from other users” would be appreciated, IMO they are
distracting and pointless.

~~~
ezekg
Especially when readers go and highlight random spaces…

------
helen842000
It seems a lose-lose situation to get readers to pay to consume content. The
most valuable part of Medium is that it has a large audience that writers want
to reach. Surely a better monetization strategy would be to allow promoted
posts so that even the individual creator can pay to reach more readers.

------
therealmarv
Great news... for the 50 people who got fired recently

------
jpeg_hero
> Founded in 2011, Medium has raised $132 million, and now it looks like
> there’s a plan to start making good on those investments.

Oh, the snark. Yeah, you don't pay back $132m getting people to pay for bog
standard blog posts.

~~~
openmosix
I think Medium raised the $132M with the promise of "we will disrupt how news
are produced and consumed". A monthly subscription of a digital magazine does
not seem a so disruptive concept. The only disruption is to have people to
write article for free while you charge for its reading.

------
shubhamjain
Personally, I would find it hard to shell out money for a Medium subscription,
simply because I'd detest paying for a subscription and still myself short of
quality stuff by New Yorker. Imagine the same scenario in music streaming —
paying for Spotify and still unable to access most of songs you'd like.

Frankly, it seems advertising is more obvious option for Medium rather than
building a subscription business. Surely, it's despised, but one must wonder
what chances Facebook would have had if it thought of creating a "$1 / month"
social network.

------
vermontdevil
How is the Svbtle model working out? The one where they charge content
creators $ to host on their site but readers get to read the content for free.

Maybe Medium should have gone this way instead. I find it difficult that
there's a working model in which subscription from the readers is going to be
sufficient enough to survive, much less grow. Of course certain site s are
capable of doing this (NYT, Economist, etc). Medium? I dunno.

------
tvanantwerp
One of the biggest turn-offs when I'm thinking about clicking a link to an
article is seeing that it's at Medium. So many things there are of such low
quality that I can't imagine wanting to pay for it. If anything, I would pay
whomever could find a way to forever remove half-baked think pieces and
Silicon Valley posturing from my life.

~~~
laurentdc
I think that has to do with writers, not with Medium itself as a platform

~~~
iamdave
You're not wrong, but you also can't help the perception people have if this
is in fact a large enough perception; and IMO I've at moments held this
perception _myself_. I know it isn't Medium's fault, but it's something the
medium of Medium.com enables with the "anyone can publish" approach.

That's not necessarily a bad thing on its face, but it is something that
exists.

------
Pandabob
I really like hackernoon and could see myself paying for more content like
that.

If they could convince some more high(er) profile tech/startup bloggers to use
their platform, like Ben Thompson from exponent or Benedict Evans from A16Z,
i'd definitely at least try it.

------
idiot_stick
> _If Medium can get enough of its readers to subscribe to a paid product with
> extra features, it may be able to achieve its initial goal of building a
> different business model for publishers._

A subscription model is different?

------
chebum
It's unclear whom will they charge: writers or readers?

~~~
tristanj
From the TC article (the new link), looks like they're charging readers.

------
castle-bravo
Does this mean that it'll be harder to accidentally end up on Medium? If so,
great.

------
api
Will they pay their writers or is this a magazine staffed by crowdsourced
unpaid interns?

~~~
lancewiggs
That's the issue. They are breaking the standard contract between the reader
and writer: \- We readers only pay if the writer is paid. \- We writers only
write for free if the reader does not have to pay.

------
dangerboysteve
My issue with Medium is low barrier to entry for most authors. Whenever I see
a HN post which links to Medium I never click on it. I have read many Medium
post which ended up being self promotional pieces with little or no substance
or flat out click-bait.

------
holydude
too tldr for me I can see myself subscribing if the content is good and
authors get paid for views (a la spotify model ?)

------
Doctor_Fegg
FWIW, this posting doesn't appear to be an official Medium announcement, just
something written (badly) on their platform by a third-party.

mods: maybe change the URL to [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/medium-
subscriptions/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/medium-subscriptions/) ?

(edit: thank you mods)

------
hochchristoph
Wow. That's the typical Medium post in a nutshell.

------
alvil
Wow? :D Never mind.

