U.S. Magazine Flatrate Next Issue Launches
Music and movie flatrates are starting to become a common service on today's Internet. All share a system that provide access to a large database of titles for a flat monthly fee. And while they are already pretty good, especially in the music sector, there is still room for improvement, as there is not a single service available that is not missing one or the other artist.
If things work that well in those sectors, why not move on to other niches. That's probably the core reason why the Next Issue service launched in first place. Like most services of its kind, it is showing great promise and facing issues at the same time.
Next Issue
The magazine flatrate is currently offered in two flavors. First as unlimited basic, a package that is providing access to magazines for $9.99 per month that is covering the bulk of the magazines available, and then unlimited premium which costs $5 more per month, adding a handful of magazines to the subscription. Which magazines are included?
- Unlimited Basic: All You, Allure, Better Homes and Gardens, Car and Driver, Coastal Living, Condé Nast Traveler, Cooking Light, Elle, Esquire, Essence, Fitness, Fortune, Glamour, Gold, Health, InStyle, Money, Parents, People en Español,People Style Watch, Popular Mechanics,Real Simple, SI for Kids, Southern Living,Sunset,This Old House,Vanity Fair
- Unlimited Premium: Entertainment Weekly,People,Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, Time
A total of 32 magazines, with the promise to raise the magazine count to 75 until the end of the year. The price is right, especially if you consider that a single issue in the Next Issue online shop can set you back as much as $4.99. If you read at least three issues per month, you could already be even expense-wise.
Even better, back issues are included in the subscription but only from 1. January 2012 on.
Issues
So far so good, now on to the issues.
- The magazines can only be read in an app, that is currently only available for Android tablets running at least Honeycomb. This excludes the Kindle Fire, the Nook, and Apple's Ipad, as well as e-readers running other operating systems.
- No combination of print and digital deals available, and no custom subscription plans either.
- Next Issue is currently only available in the U.S.
Magazines cannot be downloaded, which means that you will lose access the moment your subscription runs out.
By far the biggest limitation right now is the limit to Android Honeycomb+ tablets, and the exclusion of other tablets. An iOS version seems to be in the making though, but a release date at the time of writing is not known.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sk079o_2FHo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Closing Words
A magazine flatrate makes sense, especially if the monthly subscription price is right. This could be a revenue model to go forward with, considering that this adds another - legal - offer to the tablet that will certainly appeal to a tech savvy crowd. Some will have issues with the way the magazines are distributed to the user, as it means less control for the user, and more for the publisher. While it is possible to download magazines for offline access, it is not clear right now if access remains once the subscription runs out.
I personally think that this is another step that magazine publishers make to enter the digital age. The model needs some refining, but that will sort itself out in the coming years.
What's your take on this? Would you subscribe to a magazine flatrate?
Advertisement
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.