The New York Times has been trying to find a way to make money while navigating a market that is flooded with free news content. The company’s website has a pay wall that blocks access after 10 views in one month and a subscription-based iOS app called NYT Now was launched a year ago in attempt to appeal to younger readers.

Today, the news organization announced an update to NYT Now that makes all content in the app completely free. So, you can read headline news taken straight from the daily paper’s front page without hitting any pay walls or having to pay $7.99 per month.

The only problem is that the app is only available for iOS with no promise of versions for Android or other platforms in the future.

NYT Now

According to The Verge, the New York Times decided to drop the subscription model for its mobile app because there just wasn’t enough interest from the general public. The 20,000 subscribers were mostly made up of readers that already have full New York Times subscriptions.

The app is now ad-supported to help supplement the loss of profits from subscriptions. Content-wise, there are now only about 10 news articles available at a time as opposed to the nearly 25 the app previously offered. However, there is still loads of content from the company’s website posted regularly. So, readers aren’t going to be short-changed with the loss of the subscription model.

The ones that do lose out on the free NYT Now content are Android phone user. For more than a year, the app has been iOS exclusive. A spokesperson for the New York Times told The Verge that an Android version of NYT Now is “not off the table,” but the company is focusing more on perfection the iOS version first.

So, in other words, don’t hold your breath.

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8 replies on “NYT Now app goes subscription-free, but not for Android”

  1. I find it sort of odd that you need an app to view a newspaper. Especially if the app is free. How is this different from just browsing to their site?

  2. As an old person, Leroybismark, the NY Times is not for me either (it doesn’t even have comics). The LA Times is just as good and free. So are any of a multitude of sites. Unless I wanted local news from NYC, what does the NYT have to offer? Ultimately, paywalls only make sense for technical and professional publications, not for newspapers.

  3. Companies waste time making things for the minority of ios users, then they find they can’t make money from it. Imagine being told you can’t buy a newspaper because you don’t have the right make of car. These dinosaurs deserve to die.

  4. Basically, this decision all comes down to demographics. No doubt the numbers tell them that IOS users are more likely to be the type of users advertisers want viewing their ads.

  5. Meh, the NYT sux, is for Old people mostly.

    Android has a great News App called Google Play Kiosk, it’s so much better.

    1. hmmm, well I’m 48, and love the nytimes. Does that make me old? The truth is no other newspaper is as thoughtful and well written. They cover issues, wars and diseases no one else does. Plus, as an apparently old liberal I need the op-ed page to tell me how I should think about issues. Actually, I hate the op-ed section. I would gladly pay something for the times, however not what they are charging. Besides, paying for news is like paying for breathing, both are stupid and ridiculous in 2015. I understand it costs them money to gather the news, but I’m pretty sure that’s why God invented advertising. I use a greasemonkey script in Firefox to get around the nytimes paywall and also block advertising with Bluehell. Which makes me a 48 year old hypocrite and thief. It totally annoys me that they are only giving it way to hipster iOS users, but then again I am an almost fifty year old liberal Linux user and steal it so why should I be annoyed?

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