NYT to sell audio subscriptions through Apple and Spotify
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Beginning next month, The New York Times will make its audio subscription available for purchase through Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The big picture: More publishers, including Vox Media and The Economist, are experimenting with paywalled podcasts as part of broader efforts to grow their subscription audiences.
- "A big part of our strategy is building direct relationships with our customers," said Ben Cotton, The Times' head of subscription growth. "In this case, we can effectively do that on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and using the technology that they provide."
How it works: Come October, listeners will need to subscribe to The Times' audio content to unlock older episodes of The Times' hit shows, such as "The Daily," "The Ezra Klein Klein Show,""Modern Love," or "Hard Fork."
- At launch, the three most recent episodes of "The Daily" will be available to all listeners for free on any platform. But the deeper archive will be available to subscribers only.
- Most other shows will only feature the latest two episodes for free.
- Subscribers will also get other perks, such as early access to new shows from Serial Productions, an audio production firm acquired by The Times in 2020.
By the numbers: Podcast subscriptions purchased through Spotify or Apple Podcasts will cost $6 monthly or $50 annually.
- That price mirrors the cost of a subscription to NYT Audio, an app that houses all of The Times' audio content, including podcasts, serialized shows and audio versions of its text articles.
Zoom in: Subscribers to The Times' core news subscription package or its all access digital subscription package automatically get access to all of The Times' audio content, including the NYT Audio app.
- But they will need to authenticate their subscription through Apple or Spotify to access The Times' shows on those platforms.
Between the lines: The Times launched its flagship news show "The Daily" in 2017, and has seen its podcast business explode since then.
- NYT Audio, which was released in May 2023, reached over 1 million downloads last year. The company's podcasts were downloaded nearly 1 billion times in 2023.
- "We've really been expanding what we offer," said Paula Szuchman, The Times' director of audio. "We have this very large portfolio that we feel is sort of worth paying for at the moment."
- The Times debuted a new short-form daily news podcast called "The Headlines" last year, and a new weekly show for its Wirecutter consumer reviews site earlier this year. It's added more podcasts from its opinion section, as well as new shows from Serial and its sports site, The Athletic.
Zoom out: The audio subscription is part of a broader, yearslong effort by The Times to grow its subscription business by putting more content, such as newsletters or podcasts, behind the paywall once its audience has reached a critical mass.
- The Times will partner with third parties to grow its subscription base off-platform where it makes sense, Cotton said. Improvements to Apple's and Spotify's tools and technology made The Times "much more comfortable" with launching third-party subscriptions for podcasts, he noted.
What to watch: Cotton said it will count new podcast subscribers that come through Apple Podcasts or Spotify towards its overall subscription total, as it does for any third-party subscription vendor it works with.
- With the exception of The Athletic, the company does not offer breakouts of how many of its total subscriber base pay for specific products.
- In its most recent earnings report, the company said it had 10.84 million subscribers in total, the vast majority of which subscribe to digital-only products. The company hopes to reach 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027.
