Felix Salmon on the NYT’s Pay Wall Pricing

Felix Salmon:

Beyond that, $15 per four-week period gives you access to the website and also its smartphone app, while $20 gives you access to the website also its iPad app. But if you want to read the NYT on both your smartphone and your iPad, you’ll need to buy both digital subscriptions separately, and pay an eye-popping $35 every four weeks. That’s $455 a year.

The message being sent here is weird: that access to the website is worth nothing. Mathematically, if A+B=$15, A+C=$20, and A+B+C=$35, then A=$0.

I just don’t get the pricing, and I find it hard to believe there are many people willing to pay $455/year for digital access to a newspaper, no matter how good the newspaper is.

★ Friday, 18 March 2011