It's funny. I thought we'd see an "iTunes for News" years ago. It was just too confusing, though, to figure out what the jukebox would look like, the combination of coins needed to buy something, how the news tunes would be played, or kept or shared, and lots more.
So, it looks like we may finally see "iTunes for News" in 2011, if not just before year's end.
Today, we've got a news break on Apple's new storefront for news companies, out of the Mercury News. As genuine news, conjecture and a share of misinformation slips into public awareness, we'll all await Apple's (AAPL) formal announcement. Until then, let me pose nine questions on Apple's "iTunes for News":
1) Will news companies let another new middleman get in between them and their readers? They did it once, as Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and AOL (AOL), became the great aggregators of the web age (1995-2010?), reaping the greatest share of the ad revenue benefit. They've half-vowed, "Never again!," but have mounted insufficient efforts to prevent a second coming.
2) Does the Apple's music store metaphor work for news? Well, maybe, the music store now dominates music sales, with almost 30% of the market, but music selling and news selling may not have a lot in common. The value of news is mainly singular, one-time-usage, with not much reason to "replay" it. At the same time, a continuing relationship to certain news providers -- a trusted local source or the Times or Journal -- is valuable, while few music buyers have any kind of relationship with a label. So news companies have long valued relationships -- subscriptions -- and increasingly in the digital age, want to broaden and deepen those relationships, the better to upsell and to target for advertising. As these issues began to arise with smartphone news app offerings, publishers
