The three biggest magazine publishers in the US, Hearst, Time Inc and Conde Nast, are reportedly investing in a separate company which some say will be iTunes for magazines. It will be interesting to see how they plan to monetise content which is currently freely available online.
As I have written here previously, my view is that it will not be magazines which make serious money online but stories. Set the stories free from their mastheads and make them available, individually, for micro payments and you turn the model on its ear. Leave the print product as the aggregated model and the online model is story / celebrity / issue based.
Britney Spears or Michael Jackson fans may pay a few cents to buy a story which has a fresh angle whereas they may not want to pay over $1.00 for a ‘magazine’ of which content they want is a small part.
While there will be some impact on print sales with these and other digital moves, I expect them to be minimal in most magazine categories for some years yet. Indeed, as we have seen this year, there are some segments delivering good growth.