The New York Times is betting the future of newspapers is not paywalls or digital subscriptions, but charging on a per article basis. The Times recently invested in Netherlands based startup Blendle to usher in a new area.
Blendle recently attained three million dollars from the NY Times and and German media giant Axel Springer. The company launched in 2013 and has been billing themselves as the iTunes of news. This has been a hot topic for quite a few years already, and this pay-for-what-you-read model is a huge step forward.
The Blendle service has attracted over 130,000 registered users in just over a year. The essence of the service is to partner up with hundreds of Netherlands based news agencies and pay them a percentage of every article that is read. Each news item price is established by the publisher, so the pricing is not consistent, but everything is really cheap.
The money that Blendle has raised will be used to establish a presence in other countries. They want to include more agencies and sources to be able to have a true European reach.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.