Tag Archives: Metro

Don’t charge for digital when printed is free…

Leave a reply

You’ll remember from my recent posts (“It’s official – the 6 year old’s verdict is that digital magazines are better!“) that I’m now a convert to digital newspapers, when done well – like the good old London Metro (which is free for both the printed paper and the digital iPad version).  So this week, starting the London commute again and picking up the free London Evening Standard each night on the way home (at the London tube stations), I was excited to read about their new iPad version.

All looks good, so where do I get it and how?  But then reading the smaller print, what’s this, you can get a free trial?  And then what?  Oh then it’s £4.99 per month.  But the printed one, the one everyone picks up at the tube and train stations is still free – yes with ads (lots) but it’s free.  The iPad is pretty much the same version, with ads, but I have to pay for it?  That’s all wrong!  Ok, the printed one used to be paid for but it’s not now, and hasn’t been for some time.

I’m now one customer the Evening Standard won’t get with their new digital version.  With this new planned business model, I’m not even going to go for the trial.  Why should I?  It’s too easy for me to get the printed one every evening and hey I could get a few if I wanted, and all for free.

Digital is not about a new way of making money from subscribers.  It’s about a different, and yes new, channel for how we as the customer want to be able to access the same content.  That’s it.  Why should it cost me more to consume?  It cost you more to build it?  Ok, but that’s all about investment for the future – digital is the way it’s going so get on-board quick and get some earlier adopters with you to iron out problems etc, then maybe look at new pricing.  Like a monthly charge for premium content, not the normal free content.  But not a short term return, that won’t work.

Some reviews of the Evening Standard iPad app from the Apple Appstore…

… it’s not just me!

The Metro are still – by a long way – the only newspaper publisher (in the UK at least) who are doing this well.  Their printed and digital versions are free, and their digital version offers more than the printed version, and hey yes I may now be willing to pay extra for the digital one because it offers more.  I said may – still not 100% convinced.

It’s official – the 6 year old’s verdict is that digital magazines are better!

Leave a reply

Without any prompting from me, this morning over breakfast, when I was browsing the Metro app on the iPad, little Miss Noble tell us that magazines and newspapers are better on the iPad than the paper ones.  And the Focus magazine from the BBC is right up there as well – we had a quick look at that as well over breakfast.

This is only week 2 or 3 into our digital newspaper experiment but it’s going well and the Metro is without a doubt the clear winner here and leading the way in how newspapers can go digital and do it well.

For my 6 year old daughter to decide in her own mind that the digital versions are better says a lot.  Here’s her thinking as well (she told us why it was better)…

  • It has videos – consumers want more rich media content now
  • It has clever pictures – hi-res photos you can zoom in on and pan about
  • The adverts are funny – with videos and links and buttons you can click

All key points and she’s right.  For us, it’s a much more interactive family newspaper experience now and it’s so easy for me to show everyone else cool photos and stories.  Even 3 year old Mr. Noble needs to see them!

In the Metro today there’s a great story about a cable car in the Swiss Alps where you can sit on the roof for an outside view – see the picture below.  This was a great breakfast table topic as daddy (me) took a trip last night on the newly opened (yesterday) Emirates Air Line cable car across the Thames (London).  And the photos in the app really added to the conversation.  It looks a bit high though (the Swiss Alps one), not sure I’d be jumping to go on it, but maybe – it does look like fun…

Check out the web-site for the Emirates Air Line, it’s a very cool way to cross the Thames – 50m above the river and with some awesome views over London…

And some cool snaps from my first trip across the Thames in a cable car – the perfect evening for it, clear blue skies and the sun just about to set (a bit windy 50m up though).

The end of content ownership?

Leave a reply

Following on from my earlier post on going digital and what content we’ve gone digital with , I want to go back to the thorny subject of ownership.  Do you ever own content?  Do you need to own content?  What does it matter?

Over the last few years I’ve been reading a series of books called “50 xxx Ideas You Really Need To Know.” – where the “xxx” is not something pornographic but a specific topic or area.  Like Digital, Economics, World History, Physics, Maths, Genetics, Management, Philosophy and more.  They’re all great books, at a bargain price and very very readable.  A little plug here to where you can get them on Amazon – do take a look…

One of these books is aptly titled, “50 Digital Ideas You Really Need To Know”, written by Tom Chatfield (British author, writer and commentator) and is well worth a read.  It covers all digital and technology topics in this space, including:

  • Internet service provision
  • Web 2.0
  • Blogging
  • Aggregation
  • Privacy
  • Hacking
  • Cyberwar
  • Games consoles
  • Mashups
  • Culture jamming
  • E-commerce
  • Location-based services
  • Virtual goods
  • eGovernment
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Free software movement
  • Digital distribution
  • Cloud computing
  • Net neutrality
  • Semantic web
  • Augmented reality
  • Convergence
  • The internet of things
  • Distraction

Quite an extensive list and all in nice chunks of a few pages long.  Under the section on Digital Distribution, Tom talks about the end of ownership and covers many of the points I wrote about before…

Why are we worried about ownership?  Does physical ownership matter?  No it doesn’t.  The content never really was ours and we’ve simply been granted rights to use it – through payment (by whatever means that was agreed etc).  What does physical ownership give us?  Something to put on the shelf and look pretty?  It’s more from an technical era gone by where physical media was the only way to consume the content – that’s it.  Very simple.  We’re now in the digital age and we’re making the – sometimes painful – transition from physical to digital.

It is a transition and as I said before, we’re not talking a big bang approach here where one day everything becomes digital.  No, we need to make a controlled change that suits us, when the technology is right, at the right price and when it works well (with a nice user experience to it).  Some areas aren’t ready yet (e.g. newspapers) and some have been ready for a while (e.g. music).

My on-going experiment with digital newspapers is interesting and the current front runner is the Metro (the free London morning newspaper).  It’s available in the Apple Newstand and is fantastic.  It’s not just a digital scanned version of the paper (as some other digital newspapers are) but a fully interactive version with great ads that are fun, videos, hi-res photos that you can zoom in on and scan around and lots more.  And it’s free every weekday.  Interestingly I’m not alone in my high ratings for this app – it actually won the Newspaper App of the Year Award (at the 2012 Newspaper Industry Awards).

The subject of content ownership is one that’s being actively debated and discussed online and elsewhere.  Here’s a link to an interesting article by PCMag.com from mid-2011.  A few changes since mid-2011 but still relevant…

The Future of Entertainment Summit 2012 was held this week in London, with some great speakers from across the content, entertainment, digital and broadcast space and some great discussions.  I wasn’t able to attend this year but was watching Twitter closely for the updates on what was being said.  See a few of the Tweets from the day below all around content and consumption…

It isn’t about ownership anymore and it doesn’t need to be.  It’s now about consumption and access to content, and yes now the digital consumer!  The next challenge is guaranteeing that access – keeping your internet connection (as it is now) up and running and what happens when it goes down.

What makes Britain so brilliant? Care of a Carling ad.

Leave a reply

Reading the Metro yesterday on a work trip up to London town and the cover pages read “WHAT MAKES BRITAIN BRILLIANT”.

Hours away from a 4 day weekend celebrating The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and seeing Union Jacks all over the streets, you can’t help be more patriotic than normal and get in with the spirit of the celebrations.  With this headline grabber – even though it’s an ad for beer (mind you, a fine celebratory drink for the weekend) – and then 2 full pages with what make Britain brilliant, you can’t help but read it.  Some more on the funny side and made me laugh out loud on the train and tube, which is always a good sign.

 

So here they are in ascending order…

  1. Marmite.  Mmm…yuck.
  2. Our devotion to our wonderfully gripping soap operas.
  3. Vivienne Westwood’s heels.  It’s worth the pain.
  4. The Earl of Sandwich’s groundbreaking concept of putting a savoury filling between two pieces of bread.
  5. Glastonbury – mud and all.
  6. Our modesty – we never boast how great we are, apart from today.
  7. The pound and our reluctance to adopt the Euro.
  8. The best selling music artists in the world, are our very own; The Beatles.
  9. Our politeness – no matter how irritated we get, we are always too British to say anything.
  10. Kate Middleton and her sister.
  11. The Great British Summer (don’t forget the brolly).
  12. Driving on the left (the right way to do it).
  13. No matter where you are in Britain, you’re never far from a pub.
  14. Any excuse for a cup of tea.
  15. Curry, the unofficial national dish, with a pint of cold lager.
  16. We don’t moan because we are miserable, we moan because it makes us happy.
  17. Our international language.  Travelling abroad is a doodle.
  18. The Queen and her graceful wave.
  19. The Great British countryside, when you’re not stuck behind a tractor.
  20. Freedom of speech.
  21. Deep fried food, Fish, sausages, Mars bars…  absolutely anything.
  22. Some of the very best museums and galleries on the planet.  Free.
  23. The national tendency to cheer the underdog and ridicule the mighty.
  24. We apologise way too much.  Sorry about that.
  25. Crisps.  We eat more of them, in more varieties, than the whole of Europe put together.
  26. Shakespeare.  When thou can understandeth it.
  27. Sir David Attenborough and his soothing voice on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
  28. British strawberries, perfect with cream.
  29. Our cobbled streets, watch your heels ladies.
  30. Chips with fish, or cheese, or beans, or pies, or steaks, or curries or in a sandwich.  Chips with pretty much everything.
  31. We know the importance of a good queue.
  32. Beans on toast, brilliant no matter what your age.
  33. Court room wigs.  Our great way of making very smart people look very silly.
  34. Pantomimes.  The jokes never seem to get old.
  35. No matter how cold it gets, it will never keep us from our nights out.
  36. HP sauce.  Chuck it on everything.
  37. The 3pm Saturday kick off.
  38. Cream teas.  In case you are wondering, Cornish is jam first, Devon is cream first.
  39. Jellied eels.  And jelly.  Though not necessarily together.
  40. Beer gardens.  Because we love our beer and we love our gardens.
  41. Saying ‘I’m fine’ no matter how we feel.
  42. A love of mowing the lawn.
  43. Plugs with switches.  Amazingly nowhere else seems to do this.
  44. Tolerating nearly everything, but banning hosepipes.
  45. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in North Wales.  Just wait till your sat nav tries that one.
  46. World Cup, 1966.  We’ll be clinging to it forever.
  47. Egg and soldiers.  Those brave and tasty souls.
  48. The BBC.  The only time you’re not constantly reaching for the fast-forward button.
  49. Our British seasides.  Watch out for the seagulls.
  50. Archie Gemmill’s goal against Holland.
  51. Prime Minister’s Question Time.  A no-holds-barred, public bashing for whoever’s in charge.  Every week.
  52. The Full English breakfast.  Served all day.
  53. The weather.  Although we get less of it than almost anywhere, it’s still the major talking point.
  54. The 99 flake.
  55. Morris dancing.  We know how to move it 15th Century style.
  56. Allotments.  Our very own little patch of the countryside.
  57. Our love of anything pickled.
  58. Carry On films.  Oooer Missus.
  59. Our talent.  Be it our artists, musicians, directors, actors or just dancing dogs.
  60. Carlsberg.

Pure genius.  A great ad, and you actually finish reading the ad thinking why not – so it works!  Clever, funny and makes you proud.  We invented HP Sauce!  There’s something in the list for absolutely everyone.

Have a great long (in the UK) Jubliee weekend.  And no mention of running!