The New York Times online business model is well publicized and generally considered to be a success. User's get free access to 10 articles per month, but to read more you need to pay a subscription fee - until now.
The updated NYT Now iOS app is now free to nonsubscribers and allows users to read unlimited New York Times articles each month. The caveat is that only 10 or so NYT articles will be available at any one time, but that's still hundreds per month.
The redesigned free NYT Now app is available for download as of Monday, May 11. NYT Now was originally launched in April 2014 and promised to offer a subset of Times' content to a mobile-first audience. The app aimed to bring in new readers who may never have bought a printed paper. It offered a curated selection of stories from the Times' output each day and links to interesting reads elsewhere online.
But the $7.99 per month fee proved a stumbling block. The paper admitted in October that the youth-focused app wasn't selling as expected and it recently received a slew of one-star reviews on iTunes.
The app is now going for free and instead relies on an ad-based business model. Its core functionality hasn't changed too much, though. There are redesigned "cards" showing a headline and summary bullet points which can then be expanded to reveal the full article. NYT Now features articles selected by editors from the New York Times and across the web. The editors also provide witty commentary, which makes the app read a little like a heavily curated small Twitter feed. There is a core team of "eight or nine" people working on the app as well as dedicated editors in Hong Kong, London and Paris who update the feed outside of New York hours.
The biggest change in terms of content is that the free app will only feature roughly 10 articles from the New York Times at any one time, down from a maximum of 25 on the paid version. That still gives users access to hundreds of stories per month, a lot more than the 10 free you'll get through the main website before the paywall kicks in for non-subscribers.
Unfortunately for Android fans, it doesn't look like the app will be expanding beyond iOS anytime soon. A New York Times spokesman told the Verge that an Android version an "is not off the table, but we're devoting our resources to making the iOS experience the best it can be." Last month the paper also launched a new app for the Apple Watch.
If you're an Apple user looking for headlines and a few stories, NYT Now seems like a pretty good deal as full digital subscriptions cost between $15 and $35 per month. The other alternative is to find a NYT story on social media, as even if you've already read your 10 free articles per month if you access a story from a link on Twitter or Facebook you'll still be able to read it.
