Irish Independent New App

bobbyss

Have been getting messsges on the app saying soon will have to pay for premium content. Today i had to download uodated app. Soon will have to pay for articles. I won't be paying however.

Does anyone have this app? The Indo has been fine all the time I have had so it's sad they are now charging.

The font is dreadful. Too thin. Too wirey. That in itself would put me off. What's it called?

mburke

Updated to the app and it is terrible, a step backwards in my opinion.

Gloomtastic!

From this morning’s IT. I like the analogy.

All respect to Peter Vandermeersch, publisher at Independent News & Media (INM) and overseer of its new digital strategy: he didn’t resort to tired “price of a coffee” comparisons when explaining the rationale for paywalling stories on its website.

In a recent interview with the Currency, Vandermeersch had only the really good stuff in mind. “Think about it. We’re bakers and we make croissants, and if you come to one door, our print door, you pay for the croissants,” he said. “But if you come to the back door, the digital door, we give them away for free.”

This enticing yet unsustainable bakery deal is over, however. “From now on, also at the back door, we’ll ask the 2½ euro a week for the croissants there.”

From Tuesday, unrestricted access to the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent sites will cost €10 a month. To get its e-paper too, it costs €14 a month.

Vandermeersch tweeted that the company, now owned by Belgian newspaper group Mediahuis, was doing this “because we believe in journalism and real stories are worth paying for”, a statement that should by now be entirely uncontroversial. The news costs money to produce.

Backwards digital revenues

The old INM regime, back when Denis O’Brien was the company’s largest shareholder, was paywall-averse, yet wasn’t exactly harvesting a great digital advertising bonanza from its open-access policy. Indeed, in the period right before Mediahuis swooped on the company, INM’s digital revenues were actually going backwards. Vandermeersch pithily summed up Mediahuis’s first impression of the digital side of the business to the Currency: “There was none.”

On this basis, INM has little to lose from belatedly discovering the logic of a paywall. The outstanding question, of course, is how many visitors to the Talbot Street bakery like the smell of its fresh croissants enough to part with money for them, and how many will simply seek out free pain au chocolat elsewhere.

bobbyss

mburke wrote: »

Updated to the app and it is terrible, a step backwards in my opinion.

I don't know the name of the font but it is doing my eyes harm. It should come with a health warning. Dreadful.

I have never paid for an app in my life and I wouldn't be starting with this.

passremarkable

Bit disappointing but not surprising
I loved reading the indo app
Not sure whether to pay
I miss it already

passremarkable

Bit disappointing but not surprising
I loved reading the indo app
Not sure whether to pay
I miss it already

jack presley

passremarkable wrote: »

Not sure whether to pay

Where else are you going to get your Kathryn Thomas holiday updates if you don’t pay?

Thinkingaboutit

I'd only read this thrashy celeb rag, purveyor of fake news and third rate windup merchant act, this forth rate Daily Mail, if I was paid for it, maybe as a press officer, so I likely won't read it again, although I didn't really read it too much. I suppose its new Belgian owners want to pay its way, which is fair enough.

dhaughton99

Thinkingaboutit wrote: »

I'd only read this thrashy celeb rag, purveyor of fake news and third rate windup merchant act, this forth rate Daily Mail, if I was paid for it, maybe as a press officer, so I likely won't read it again, although I didn't really read it too much. I suppose its new Belgian owners want to pay its way, which is fair enough.

But how else are you going to get all the latest on Amy Huberman?

I don’t mind paying for something that’s good and I will use, as opposed to these plebs that illegally stream or make fake spotify families etc, but I think the Indo are over valuing themselves with the price for this one.

Thinkingaboutit

dhaughton99 wrote: »

But how else are you going to get all the latest on Amy Huberman?

Yes, true.

dohboy

Unlikely I'll sub to this as I have two digital subs already, but thought the website overhaul looked good. Best of luck to it.

Gekko

Pricing isn’t great.

The Times (not the Irish Times) is €5 a month

They Indo have pitted themselves at the Irish Times level - €12 a month

They seem to be recruiting new journalists so I guess quality will improve but then I don’t understand why they didn’t wait until they’d done that before rolling out the digital subscription

bobbyss

jack presley wrote: »

Where else are you going to get your Kathryn Thomas holiday updates if you don’t pay?

There might be a helpline available. Nobody should be deprived of getting daily updates on what it's like to be a mooom.

dohboy

The Times has about three Irish reporters afaik. It's very good value, especially with the Sunday Times included, but you wouldn't want to be relying on it for Irish news/analysis during the week imo.

Gekko wrote: »

Pricing isn’t great.

The Times (not the Irish Times) is €5 a month

They Indo have pitted themselves at the Irish Times level - €12 a month

They seem to be recruiting new journalists so I guess quality will improve but then I don’t understand why they didn’t wait until they’d done that before rolling out the digital subscription

passremarkable

Irish Independent digital copy is available daily on the Pressreader app with a library card number.

passremarkable wrote: »

Bit disappointing but not surprising
I loved reading the indo app
Not sure whether to pay
I miss it already

bobbyss

dohboy wrote: »

The Times has about three Irish reporters afaik. It's very good value, especially with the Sunday Times included, but you wouldn't want to be relying on it for Irish news/analysis during the week imo.

Sport is excellently covered.

Gekko

downtheroad wrote: »

Irish Independent digital copy is available daily on the Pressreader app with a library card number.

Can you get straight in from the app?

I seem to recall I needed to go through my library website in order to get in to it before

Muahahaha

Just deleted the app this morning, theres no point browsing something annoying yourself where 50% of the articles are behind a paywall. Have a sub for the Guardian and might get one for the Times as both of them have good content worth paying for, the Indo is does not.

jack presley wrote: »

Where else are you going to get your Kathryn Thomas holiday updates if you don’t pay?

That kind of sums it up really.

Has there ever been any figuers published of how many hits the Indos site/app gets on a weekly/monthly basis? Would have thought that it is high and the ad revenue could sustain it but obviously not.

toby2111

Could the monthly sub be split between 5 people? So it only costs €2 a month.... Anyone interested?

Gloomtastic!

Just discovered Mrs G! has a digital sub from work for both the IT and Indo.

dohboy

There's no Irish sport covered in the Times though, Monday to Saturday, bar whatever they are running in England.

bobbyss wrote: »

Sport is excellently covered.

bobbyss

dohboy wrote: »

There's no Irish sport covered in the Times though, Monday to Saturday, bar whatever they are running in England.

I know. I buy it about three times a week. I like the opinion pieces. I love the football coverage. It's also tabloid and more managable than IT in that regard.

GeneHunt

Gekko wrote: »

Pricing isn’t great.

The Times (not the Irish Times) is €5 a month

They Indo have pitted themselves at the Irish Times level - €12 a month

They seem to be recruiting new journalists so I guess quality will improve but then I don’t understand why they didn’t wait until they’d done that before rolling out the digital subscription

I'm shocked they're looking for €9.99/monthly for the Premium Sub or €13.99/monthly for the Premium+ Sub. I hope your right about new journalists and the quality improving, they need to get a lot better for that kind of money. That would be like paying for the The Journal app :rolleyes:

I have only recently downloaded the Irish Examiner,

I was thinking of getting a subscription for The Guardian, but I'm thinking I could ask here for a opinion on some papers to consider, I'm interested in news (Irish and international) no interest in Sport. I listed below a few that come to mind.

The Irish Indo at €9/Month

The Irish Times at €12/Month

The Times (UK) at €5/month

The Guardian at €7.49/Month

Independent (UK) at 10.99/month

Gloomtastic!

Do Irish publishers have to pay VAT on digital subs?

L1011

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Do Irish publishers have to pay VAT on digital subs?

Yes, but at the same rate as paper editions now (9%). Was 23% until whenever Budget 2019's VAT changes took place, probably April 2019.

Man Vs ManUre

jack presley wrote: »

Where else are you going to get your Kathryn Thomas holiday updates if you don’t pay?

Don’t forget the weekly adventures of Holly Carpenter how can you miss out on hearing about what she got up to on New Year’s Eve?? Well worth the cost of the app.

jack presley

When you see a headline like this, you know you were right not to subscribe:

"I'm the definition of fun - life after litigation for baroness of Ballsbridge Gayle Killilea".

Comhrá

jack presley wrote: »

When you see a headline like this, you know you were right not to subscribe:

"I'm the definition of fun - life after litigation for baroness of Ballsbridge Gayle Killilea".

Premium content, Yeah? Great.

Muahahaha

jack presley wrote: »

When you see a headline like this, you know you were right not to subscribe:

"I'm the definition of fun - life after litigation for baroness of Ballsbridge Gayle Killilea".

If my deletion of the app wasnt justified before it certainly is now.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Cant see them getting good numbers at 9.99 a month and Im sure plenty are deleting the app when you cant read half the content anyway.

dohboy

Nearly 7k subscribers so far according to Indo boss https://twitter.com/pvdmeersch/status/1235556904656670721

Muahahaha

Nice to see they put what looks like a lump of turd beneath the number, very apt.

Sounds like a disaster to me, 7k subs upon launch does not bode well for the future. Pretty sure I saw them claim before that their site gets over 400,000 viewers per day. So if less than 2% of that number are willing to pay for it so far its not looking great.

Where to next? Will they get their sales team to try and strongarm every govt department into paying 9.99 per civil servant?

Their main champion of the taxpayer subsidising the media Dimmy Tooley lost his Dail seat too. They're going to have to find another Fianna Failer to take up the slack.

passremarkable

That’s a very poor return.
The premium is too high per month.
It should be €5/6 max a month
They would get more if an uptake then I’d imagine
Priced too High I feel

callaway92

They'd surely be considered very poor numbers. You aren't going to get big increases from there, and steady increases will be minimal. There'll obviously be a drop-off from the original numbers too.

Big issue with the 'Premium' guff is it looks to just be random articles become 'Premium' ones or not. Not purposefully done.

Premium Today - 'Can we win Eurovision 2020 with Lesley Roy's Story of My Life?'
Premium Today - 'Dear David Coleman: My daughter's whinging really winds me up. How can I help her to stop?' - A parenting article.

I mean.... what the hell

dohboy

Don't seem like bad numbers to me tbh. It's less than a month since it launched.

callaway92

dohboy wrote: »

Don't seem like bad numbers to me tbh. It's less than a month since it launched.

But if you don't get the initial 'bounce', when do you get it?

Muahahaha

dohboy wrote: »

Don't seem like bad numbers to me tbh. It's less than a month since it launched.

They look like pretty awful numbers to me. I mean when they went premium about half of all the content was put behind the paywall. So the choice for readers at that point is pretty stark- either pay up or forget about using the app altogether because theres no point annoying yourself scrolling the homepage when you cant read half the articles on it. Plus you'll find many of the same news stories on other sites for free anyway. As a result of the paywall I deleted the app within a couple of days of them going behind the paywall, would imagine lots of other people did the same or just stopped using it.

Now if all they got was 7,000 subs and they've claimed to have 400,000 daily viewers in the past then that means less than 2% of the readers actually paid up. The other 98% dont see it as worth paying for, if they did they'd subscribe. 7,000 subs @ 9.99 a month gives them an annual turnover of 910,000 from subs. Its hard to see how they can pay all those journalists and editors wages, rent, utilities, etc on that kind of turnover.

dohboy

callaway92 wrote: »

But if you don't get the initial 'bounce', when do you get it?

I would call 7k subs a bounce.

jack presley

Muahahaha wrote: »

Its hard to see how they can pay all those journalists and editors wages, rent, utilities, etc on that kind of turnover.

They still sell actual newspapers too so their turnover isn't limited to the subs.

Muahahaha

jack presley wrote: »

They still sell actual newspapers too so their turnover isn't limited to the subs.

They also give a lot away for free as well. And the numbers that are sold at full price are plummeting year on year, this paywall is an attempt to plug a hole in their turnover. Their advertising revenues have been completely hollowed out by the likes of Donedeal, Carzone, Daft, etc and now their only regular advertising is
by supermarkets and government departments

Ultimately all newspapers will be going digital, I doubt we will be seeing physical copies in a decades time when the main market who buy them on a daily basis are slowly dying out. If they cant get digital to pay they'll eventually be in trouble.

jack presley

Muahahaha wrote: »

They also give a lot away for free as well. And the numbers that are sold at full price are plummeting year on year, this paywall is an attempt to plug a hole in their turnover. Their advertising revenues have been completely hollowed out by the likes of Donedeal, Carzone, Daft, etc and now their only regular advertising is
by supermarkets and government departments

Ultimately all newspapers will be going digital, I doubt we will be seeing physical copies in a decades time when the main market who buy them on a daily basis are slowly dying out. If they cant get digital to pay they'll eventually be in trouble.

Ah yeah, I know all that and I'm not disputing any of it. But while physical newspapers are at death's door, they're probably still selling around 50,000 copies a day and at €2 a pop it adds a good chunk to the turnover figure.

Now when newspapers are officially dead, of course 7k subscribers won't work but I'd imagine we're a few years away from that yet and who knows what the model for journalism will be then.

Muahahaha

Yeah they'll survive for now but it doesnt look good long term. Say they are doing 50k sales at 2 euro a day that gives them 2.4million print gross income a month. With a sub of 9.99 a month in order to replace that 2.4m print income they would need to ultimately sell 240,000 subs.

That is a long long way off the 7k subs they have begun with. For sure they can build on that 7k number over time but if I were the CFO you would hoping of getting at least 10% of the readership to pay up. If 40,000 people signed up upon launch at least you've a good starting point to build upon, 7,000 subs is starting from a very, very low base. Its hard to see how they could even get to 40k now dont mind eventually getting to 240,000 to replace the inevitable loss of print income.

Their big problem IMO really is the content just isnt worth paying for. Its not specialised and nor is it in depth and much of it is found for free elsewhere. You never come away from reading the Indo thinking wow Im really glad I read that article like you might from the Guardian or Sunday Times. Its a take it or leave it publication and so far with this paywall strategy many people have chosen to leave it.

Gloomtastic!

Muahahaha wrote: »

Yeah they'll survive for now but it doesnt look good long term. Say they are doing 50k sales at 2 euro a day that gives them 2.4million print gross income a month. With a sub of 9.99 a month in order to replace that 2.4m print income they would need to ultimately sell 240,000 subs.

That is a long long way off the 7k subs they have begun with. For sure they can build on that 7k number over time but if I were the CFO you would hoping of getting at least 10% of the readership to pay up. If 40,000 people signed up upon launch at least you've a good starting point to build upon, 7,000 subs is starting from a very, very low base. Its hard to see how they could even get to 40k now dont mind eventually getting to 240,000 to replace the inevitable loss of print income.

Their big problem IMO really is the content just isnt worth paying for. Its not specialised and nor is it in depth and much of it is found for free elsewhere. You never come away from reading the Indo thinking wow Im really glad I read that article like you might from the Guardian or Sunday Times. Its a take it or leave it publication and so far with this paywall strategy many people have chosen to leave it.

But then you have print, paper and distribution costs for those papers. Not insignificant.

Muahahaha

oh yeah, Im being generous allowing them 2.4m gross monthly income from print copies sold. By the time printing and distribution happens that sum is significantly lower.

The silver lining for newspapers is that going digital means the cost of production are significantly lowered and thus theres more profit by taking out the costs of psychically printing it and getting it into shops. But that will only work if they convert a healthy proportion of their print and free app readers into subs. Given a sub works out at about 30c a day and the paper itself costs 2 euro or so they need 6 to 7 times more subscribers to replace the gross revenues from the print readers. Thats a very tall ask and the small numbers signing up so far does not bode well for the future.

I think digital is the way forward but newspapers need to produce top quality content to get people to pay. The likes of the New York Times or the Guardian have excellent content that they can sell subs on the back of, the Indo does not, far from it imo.

callaway92

dohboy wrote: »

I would call 7k subs a bounce.

I don’t think you quite understand the term ‘bounce’.

How far can their sub number go so do you think? It ain’t gonna spike much above 10k ever if the initial amount was only 7k unless they start putting offers in place.

For damn sure they’ll have a drop-off from the initial subscribers.

Gekko

They don’t get all the revenue from newspaper sales.

There’s Vat, a cut for the retailer, not sure if distributor gets some also

doublej

Gekko wrote: »

They don’t get all the revenue from newspaper sales.

There’s Vat, a cut for the retailer, not sure if distributor gets some also

Correct; the Mon-Fri Irish Independent which has a cover price of €2.20 carries 9% VAT, bringing the exVAT price to €2.01.
The retailer is discounted by 23% (46c) and Newspread the distributor ( a 100% INM subsidiary) receives 5% of the exVAT price, which is 10cent per copy SOLD( not merely distributed).
The amount available to INM from the physical printed paper is €1.45, out of which the cost of printing.

bobbyss

I have the Guardian app and it is brilliant. But I see you pay for some kind of premium service on it if you want to. What extras would you get? it's very good as it is and it is free.

LimeFruitGum

Gekko wrote: »

Can you get straight in from the app?

I seem to recall I needed to go through my library website in order to get in to it before

It doesn't connect with other media/newspaper apps. PressReader has its own app as well, and you login through your library hotspot. It can be a bit fecky to navigate, but you save a fortune on mags and subs.

Muahahaha

Yeah I downloaded Pressreader and got access using my library card and PIN. Its a very clunky app and to read articles every 3 or 4 short paragraphs you have to scroll left to right to read more.Its very frustrating to use. Ive pretty much given up on it, I tried it on the laptop too and its clunky there also.