The New York Times announced today that it is removing all videos on its website from its Paywall. In the past, you could only watch 10 per month before you had to pay a monthly fee to watch more videos and read articles. Now, it is possible to watch unlimited content without ever having to pay.
The New York Times Paywall system has been live in some form or another since 2011. The shift to giving people enough free content and then making them pay was a savvy one. In the last quarter, circulation revenue rose 16.1% to $257.8 million mainly because of growth in digital subscriptions. NYT currently has a digital subscription base of 640,000 and seems to be increasing by double digit figures every quarter.
The majority of digital subscribers use the website and various apps for mobile phones/tablets to catch up on the days news. The New York Times basically dangles a few free stories to rope people into paying, but there are common ways in the internet browser to bypass it. The shift to free videos will put more eyes on one of the few global newspaper brands and hopefully increase the digital subscription rate.
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.
