Discors piles new publishers into its pay-once-read-everything service
News outlets are having the time of their lives as people are flocking in to subscribe, but what if you want to read more than one news outlet? You could keep a giant stack of subscriptions, or you could reach for Discors. The startup recently announced it’s adding The New York Times and the Financial Times to its $4.99 per month subscription model. Read More …
News outlets are having the time of their lives as people are flocking in to subscribe, but what if you want to read more than one news outlet? You could keep a giant stack of subscriptions, or you could reach for Discors. The startup recently announced itâs adding The New York Times and the Financial Times to its $4.99 per month subscription model, which already includes The Economist, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Bloomberg and other light, escapist titles.
The companyâs app offers a curated list of articles from each of the publications, with the goal of giving readers access to a wider range of news sources.
âFor us, we just felt there were so many barriers between readers and the journalists writing awesome content,â says Bail Enan, founder and CEO of Discors. âWe wanted to make a product that means that people can access a lot of different publications. Itâs all about getting different perspectives.â
Discors raised a $1.2 million chunk of change last year with the goal of targeting additional news outlets, and the freshly announced partnerships are the first results of its push forward.
âNobody actually wants to read all the news from all the publications,â Enan explains, referring to the crushing weight of guilt that comes from placing a new unread publication that just turned up in the mail on top of a neat stack of other neatly stacked unread publications. âYou know exactly what happens: You end up with a large pile of unread magazines and newspapers. As readers, we donât have the time nor the money to read everything from everywhere. So we offer an alternative.â
Itâs an alternative that seems to make sense to the publishers, too. Enan claims that his customers donât cannibalize subscription revenues, but instead give publishers an opportunity to monetize potential readers who would never really be subscribers.
Discorsâ business model is to charge the customer $4.99 per month. In turn, it pays a licence fee to each of the publications featured within the app.
The updated app with the additional publications is live in an app store near you now.