The New York Times improves its radio play. Today, the publication launched New York Times Audio, a subscriber-only iOS app that serves as a one-stop shop for all audio journalism — including hot-button podcasts like The Daily and The Ezra Klein Show. If you have a penchant for a particular podcast platform like Spotify or Stitcher, don’t worry – the Times’ biggest podcasts are still available for free on other players.
Instead, the app appears to be an attempt by the Times to engage an engaged audience for all of its audio offerings — not just podcasts. It will serve as a home for even more audio journalism, including exclusive pieces the medium is creating just for the app.
These include a 10 minute daily news show called “The Headlines” which is released every morning and shorts which are literally very short audio stories – less than 10 minutes – about culture, lifestyle, cooking and more trades. There will also be a Reporter Reads section where Times journalists will read their own stories and provide additional commentary.
The audio exclusives are intended to give current Times subscribers a bargain and help the publication retain its 9.7 million subscriber base. The Times says it’s seen this formula work with newsletters and hopes to reproduce it with audio as well.
“What we’ve seen with our subscriber-only newsletters in particular is that subscribers who engage with them engage and retain better than those who don’t. This is consistent with our belief that delivering differentiated value with a Times subscription is good for our users and good for our business,” Jordan Cohen, executive director of communications for The New York Times, wrote in an email The Verge
If the app takes off, the Gray Lady will have another financial benefit: It means she’ll have a valuable source of first-party listening data about her subscribers. And there might be more ad monetization options later. “[The paper] has an opportunity to explore partnerships with brands to sponsor app-specific shows and programs as more consumers become more accustomed to ad-light as opposed to ad-free subscription options,” Paul Kelly, chief revenue officer of audio advertising technology platform AMA, said The Verge.
A screenshot of the New York Times Audio app for iOS. Image: The New York Times
At first glance, the app itself has an elegant interface and is easy to use. There is an opportunity to increase playback speed and download episodes. But as far as podcast players go, the app is still pretty basic. Adding custom accessibility features like written transcripts or the ability to share non-exclusive episodes (the latter seems to be in the pipeline) could further expand the app’s audience.
The app opens to the Today tab, where listeners will find a playlist updated daily with new episodes of Shorts and The Headlines. Listeners can also track their favorite shows or create a custom playlist. Overall, the app does a good job of organizing a large number of Times audio stories in one place – it never feels overwhelming or too busy.
According to Cohen, there are currently no plans to offer a cheaper audio-only subscription to New York Times Audio — the app is only available to All-Access and News subscribers. But it seems the Times toyed with the idea before publication: the App Store listing mentions an in-app subscription to audio content worth $5 a month.
The Times has no plans to acquire shows like The Daily from other providers like Apple or Spotify. “We intend to remain a major publisher in this space,” Cohen wrote.
The Times has been on an audio buying spree in recent years, acquiring Serial Productions (the podcast studio behind Serial) and sports news channel The Athletic (which has over 50 sports podcasts). It also formed an alliance with syndicated radio program This American Life and bought Audm, the subscription audio non-fiction app. The app will host virtually all of this content — as well as the archives of shows like Serial and This American Life.