A few months later than expected, the Times has finally revealed the details of its metered pay wall. Here are the basics: You’ll be able to access twenty articles for free, after which you’ll hit a pay wall. To get past it, you can either sign up for a $15-a-month plan, which will also give you access through an app on your smartphone, or $20 for the same with iPad app access. For access through every device, you can pay $35. (There’s no option for online access only, presumably because you could just bypass the smartphone and iPad apps.) There’s no information so far on how many times You’ll be able to access stories that are linked from blogs or other aggregators like Facebook, even if you’ve surpassed your limit. Some search engines will have daily limits. But in good news, subscribers to the print edition will get access for free — even if you only subscribe to portions of the paper, like the Weekender editions. Digital subscriptions will go on sale on March 28, though it’s not clear that this is when the pay wall will be erected once and for all. AllThingsD reports that the subscriptions will be sold through iTunes, which means that the Times will tithe 30 percent of its profits there to Apple, just as you are tithing to the Times.
Oh, and they’re launching it in Canada first in order to use that country as a giant guinea pig. Nice.
Become a Digital Subscriber Starting March 28 [NYT]
Earlier: The New York Times Pay Wall: A Goodwill Membership?
