On 29 March, French daily Le Monde launched a new subscription promotion that the management presented as a “quadruple-play” offer because it includes print, web, iPhone app and iPad app for 19.90 Euros per month*. The paper is following its new mantra: adapt to its audience’s lifestyle.
In January, Le Monde celebrated the 100,000th subscriber to its paid-for website, which was launched in April 2002 at a price of 5 Euros per month (it now costs 6 Euros). That comes on top of a substantial audience for the free part of the site (40 million visits per month).
The group plans to continue building on its hybrid model. The free side will strengthen its content by offering more original articles produced for the website and dedicated news wires such as "Le Monde.fr Sport," launched at the end of 2009, the same for Economy and Finance (February 2010), and Technology (March). Lifestyle, Opinion and Travel will follow.
The current Internet subscription offer is based on two components: informing readers in real time (news but also analysis, access to documents and access to all archives) and a possibility to customise the subscriber environment.
The existing free iPhone app will continue its life in the AppStore, but the novelty
is the possibility to download a new application to buy a single copy or subscribe to the daily paper and get the digital edition of the full print version at the time it hits the Parisian newsstands (Le Monde is an afternoon paper and people outside of Paris get their paper the morning after). A similar version will be offered on the iPad as soon as the device comes out in the USA at the beginning of April, but a more sophisticated application is to be launched when the Apple tablet reaches Europe. The new application, which is said to have exploited all the design possibilities of the iPad, will follow the same commercial pattern: single-copy sale or subscription.
*At the end of the promotion period the price will be 29.90 euros per month for this all-included subscription offer.
Philippe Jannet, CEO of Le Monde Interactif, told to Beyond the Printed Word's 2009 participants that the Le Monde free iPhone app “has been a great success with 880,000 downloads, 15.6 million pages viewed a month and one iPhone in two in France has our application on it.”
