Publishers band together online

You know readership is rapidly declining when three of the biggest publication companies, Hearst, CondeNast and Time Inc. are teaming together to create a hub for magazines currently known as "iTunes for Magazines." The news broke out around October 2 and since then many have had a lot to say about it.

The idea is being adopted from iTunes, the one-stop hub for music, movies and even popular television shows created by Apple. The main idea of this project is to have a third-party company, which has yet to be determined, create a digital storefront for customers to pick and choose the magazines of their liking by traditional subscription.

The theoretical result would be "a direct relationship with consumers, while gaining leverage with heavyweights like Apple and Amazon," according to Businessinsider.com. Whether or not the publishing companies will play fair in competing with one another on the digital frontier is the least of their worries.

Many critics believe that trying to sell online magazine content that is already free will most definitely backfire. Most magazines have a Web site to supplement their print publications, however what most people actually want to pay for is the actual art work of the magazine pages, not that of web pages.

Another criticism is that while publication companies may be heavily investing on digital subscription forums, it seems that the digital age and the print world cannot co-exist.

Electronics Web site Pcworld.com offers some advice to the idea of iTunes-style magazine store and one of them is to "stop worshipping print." The general idea is that publications will encounter the “us-or-them” ultimatum; it’s either online or in print.

The idea of an online magazine store ideally presents a way for the publication industry to start generating some profit, but in reality there might be some redesign of the magazine, reallocating of the content and basically reworking the way the entire magazine works from start to finish.

As of yet, there is only so much speculation of how the “iTunes for Magazines” will work out. Many review the idea from a financial aspect, while others see the idea provoking major moves and switches in the publishing companies. Either way, the idea should revolutionize the consumers read their magazines.