Free magazines with paid content hit with negative reviews on iOS 5 Newsstand debut
A couple of weeks back, the Tap! app went live. I had nothing to do with it, so I got the same experience as everyone else on grabbing it and downloading a copy. It’s hard for me to not be a little biased (given that I’m a contributing editor to the magazine), but I think it’s all kinds of lovely, with a great UI, issue pricing that’s way cheaper than buying the printed mag, and components that take advantage of the medium (such as video previews of games).
Now iOS 5 has arrived, Future Publications has made a big deal about its 50+ Newsstand-compatible apps, and the reviews have been flooding into the App Store. They’re so diametrically opposed that they would be comical if they weren’t so utterly depressing. Take Tap!, for example. At the time of writing, it has eight reviews on the UK App Store. These break down as follows:
5/5: Four
1/5: Four
The negative reviews appear to be one general grievance (a guy who likes the app but, for whatever reason, hates the content), and a lack of demo content (which I think is a fair point—and I imagine that will arrive soon for those mags that don’t yet have it). I’m not sure the latter warrants a 1/5 review, though, instead of a letter to the mag itself, and the sad thing is, these are the best of them. Trawling through Future’s other app reviews and you stumble across a slew of entitled ‘reviews’, complaining that—gosh!—someone downloaded a free app and yet they then had to pay actual money for magazines! One particularly inane review complains that since they bought an iOS device for hundreds of pounds, they should damn well get free magazines! (Just like when I bought an expensive new TV, I automatically got free DVDs and Sky+ forever. No, hang on…) Others simply whine that when an app says ‘free’, it should mean ‘free’, despite in-app purchase being for a long time now a major part of the iOS app ecosystem. In perhaps the worst example, someone who clearly has an axe to grind against a certain publication lets loose with a spew of almost libellous garbage.
I posted about this subject on Twitter yesterday, and despite it being a Sunday there were plenty of replies. Some sided with me (“The app is free, the content isn’t. How hard is that to understand?” complained a friend of mine who works on the iPad version of a major newspaper), whereas others said that labelling an app as free cements an expectation that it isn’t something that you should end up paying for. One guy suggested these kinds of apps should be badged in a different manner, with ‘subscribe’ instead of ‘free’, although it would obviously be down to Apple to implement such a solution and could cause further confusion with mag/newspaper apps that enable you to buy single issues rather than enforcing a subscription.
The thing is, I’ve seen these problems dozens of times before when working on iOS games. Almost every time a dev drops the price of a game to free, the 1/5 reviews flood in. Some complain that the game “doesn’t work”; others whine when the game has IAP to add extra content; many just moan for the hell of it.
But that’s the problem with ‘free’: anyone can review, because anyone can download an app, without making any investment whatsoever. Typically, when people have paid money for something, they are more considered. And in making an app something other than free, you filter out the idiots. I’m not sure what the solution is for mag apps. I’m sure Future Publishing (and others in a similar situation) did a ton of research before deciding on the ‘free app and paid content’ model, realising what the risk would be. But I wonder if a lowish app price (say, £1.49) that bundled the current issue would be beneficial from a feedback standpoint. Of course, that isn’t necessarily beneficial for the consumer, because you’re ‘forcing’ them to buy the current issue, even if they don’t want it. But as is often the case, consumers en masse don’t always know what’s good for them and so end up with inferior solutions; I wonder if that’ll be the case in the medium term with mag apps, especially if the negative reviews keep flooding in.
Update: on the ‘free issue’ front, Ian Betteridge writes: “Mens Health has really suffered: they got lots of 1/5’s for “no free issue!” when there’s quite clearly a free (old) issue.”
Update 2: On Tap! specifically, read editor Christopher Phin’s response in the comments below.
Update 3: Tap! now has a free sampler edition, featuring content from the October issue.
Related:
Sturgeon’s Law applies, doubly so when it comes to muggles sharing their opinions on the Internet. Sampling any statistically relevant amount of reviews on the App Store is the critical equivalent of holding your mouth open directly underneath the cloaca of a diseased reptile.
I think it’s relevant, because people do read those reviews before buying. If a lot of idiots are whining, that may put people off. The fact that the average App Store reviewer is fighting the typical YouTube commenter for ‘bottom of the barrel’ prizes is neither here nor there.
I have noticed this trend too. People expect free to mean free. They almost think it is a right to have a developers time.
There is one Newsstand app that I will commend… The Guardian.
What they have done is provide a free three month subscription with a download.
I think this is a good way to go for Newsstand content providers. Perhaps not excessive as three months but perhaps an issue or two. I assume The Guardian has provided three months as to get a user used to using their app daily therefore more likely to subscribe at £9.99 a month.
I’m don’t think that you can say that the people who are downloading the app then leaving bad reviews are idiots. I’m sure that /some/ of them are, but I also think that there are reasonable people who would /never/ have bought the magazine if they’d had to pay for it. They were just passively interested, so they gave it a try because it was advertised as “free”. They feel that they’ve had their time wasted /and/ they’ve been bait-and-switched by “false advertising”. They get angry, and leave a bad review to warn others. If the cost was obvious upfront I suspect a lot of them, though they would not buy the app, would not think it unreasonable, or be angry about it.
There’s a big difference between the opinion that the all content should be free (which I hold no truck with), and the opinion that pay-for content should not be advertised as free, which, to the average App Store user, is what is happening here.
So, in summary, I guess I’m saying this is Apple’s fault for presenting these apps as ‘free’, and this was a predictable outcome. I hope they fix the situation soon, because I think it’s negatively affecting popular opinion of the whole Newsstand idea, for no good reason.
Most free apps that use IAP offer some content or functionality in the free version. But these magazine apps don’t. Without spending money on an IAP, the app does nothing; it is entirely useless.
So the customer sees “Tap! Magazine” in the App Store, with a prominent button labelled FREE beside it. When they install the app, they find they then have to pay an additional fee—which was not disclosed prominently (they have to tap “More” to see it)—to obtain any content.
This is misleading; it might even be in breach of The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008: Schedule 1 (Commercial practices which are in all circumstances considered unfair) , 20. “Describing a product as ‘gratis’, ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar if the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of responding to the commercial practice and collecting or paying for delivery of the item.”
@Damon: The Guardian’s also trying to convince people who already bought an app they mothballed to buy something else. Once bitten… Still, I hear it’s a fantastic app and the initial free content is a smart move.
@Jamie: I’m not saying every negative reviewer is an idiot, and I specifically didn’t apply that to the guy downrating Tap! because he hated the content. But the ‘free’ expectation and entitlement thing really bugs me. There are a LOT of free apps that have used the IAP model for a long time now; is it really a stretch to expect that you’ll have to pay for content in a free app?
As for the cost being upfront, in the case of Tap!, this is listed clearly in both the app description and the App Store sidebar. Worst-case scenario for anyone is downloading a 13 MB app, which is no hardship. (Note: I also said I agreed with people saying that there should be demo content.) Like you, I think perhaps there’s a labelling solution, but I’ve no idea what the right label would be.
I think this is mainly a UX problem. After updating to iOS 5, I browsed through the available magazines, and downloaded a bunch of them because they looked like I might be interested in them. But after then opening the apps, there was no way for me to evaluate whether I would like the magazine. No free issues, no example articles. It was a rather disappointing experience.
I think these apps should simply download a free issue or some free articles up-front, and put them right in front of the user’s eyes when he first opens the app. Maybe even just open the example issue right away. Tell people that they can subscribe or buy issues *after* they’ve found out what the magazine is actually about.
I don’t think the comparison to, say, games with IAP applies, by the way. I’ve yet to find a game where you can’t get at least some sense of what it is before you’re asked to pay.
As I mentioned on Twitter, I think one problem here is that these magazines appear in the Top Free charts, which appears to be a popular source for casual users looking for new content.
So they see these magazines in the Top Free charts (which I think cements the idea that the content will be ‘free’ more than the “Free” button) and download them without even bothering to read the app description which, IMO, outlines the costs of issues/subs very clearly.
The ideal solution would be for Apple to improve the presentation of Newsstand apps in the store and make the costs even clearer and possibly remove them from the Top Free charts altogether.
However, one thing publications can do to avoid this themselves is, as you say, to provide at least some content with the initial download. A decent sample, perhaps a free issue or charge for the app in the first place (equal to or less than a single issue price) and bundle the current issue.
@LKM The difference with games and magazines is that you can’t sample iOS games anywhere else. However, you can go to a book store or newsstand and flip through just about every magazine available in Apple’s App Store to get a feel for it.
Let’s say these apps do give away last month’s issue for free to start people off with – where does it end? Many users will expect the last month’s issue to be free every month after that, resulting in more 1 star reviews because they didn’t give *enough* away. It’s the old cliche, “Give an inch and they’ll take a mile.”
We need to start treating app reviewers like what they are: children. Take away their toys (the ability to review) until they’ve learned to act like mature individuals (purchase content).
Couple of tiny points: There’s a Tap! sampler going live very shortly. Yes, we should have thought of this; we didn’t. I am annoyed at myself.
Also: the free/IAP thing is, if not mandated – I’m an editor, not a developer, though I think it actually is mandated – then strongly encouraged by Apple as the model for Newsstand apps.
@Harry: The magazines in the App Store are not available in newsstands where I live. I can’t sample them.
If we are to take this as Apple’s master plan for epublishing / ereader pay for content, then do a better job of calling it what it is in simple, clear and upfront terms. One could say that this move replaces many of the individually delivered apps and officially provides new platform to be a “publication.” These should no longer be considered as apps, but officially classified as a new category called “publications and subscriptions”, where the free button can only be used unless the “content” you are offering is truely free! This is where Apple has dropped the ball! Much of the negative content could be a result of people automatically treating these as apps when they shouldn’t have to and that is not their fault. The message and to some extent idea has been poorly conceived and delivered because apple fell into the same trap. They are not and should not be labled as Apps considering what newsstand pretends / hopes to be!!!!!
@JL and others: I don’t disagree that there’s a UX issue here, but many of the complaints are that people genuinely expected magazines such as Edge, T3 and others to be free, forever, just because they spent lots of money on an iPad. It’s an attitude of entitlement that I find both disheartening and baffling.