What is "Blendle" that aimed at iTunes of journalism that also contributed to that New York Times?

On October 26, 2014 the Netherlands startup "Blendle"Which operates The New York Times, one of America's newspapersThe New York Times CompanyAnnounced that it acquired a capital of 3.8 million dollars (about 410 million yen) from. In the first place, what kind of service does Blendle provide? What is the reason why you received a contribution from American newspaper despite having a business in the Netherlands?

Today our journalistic startup got backed by The New York Times and Axel Springer - On Blendle - Medium
https://medium.com/on-blendle/today-our-journalistic-startup-got-backed-by-the-new-york-times-and-axel-springer-8857c70832e4

We started service in the Netherlands in April 2014BlendleIs a content service targeting newspaper and magazine articles published online. Blendle's adoption is a billing platform that pays fees for one article, and journalism "ITunes StoreIt is aimed at aiming at.


He is one of co-founder of BlendleAlexander KlöppingAccording to Mr. Blendle, the purpose of creating Blendle is to break down the situation where newspapers and magazines are placed and contribute to the future. The newspaper and magazines' economy is considerably stagnant when compared to the past,The Washington PostHe worked for 50 years and then left the company in 2014Robert G. KeizerMr. wrotepaperAccording to, it seems that advertisement sales of newspaper and magazines are drastically decreasing.

The bar graph below shows yellow advertising sales by Google and gray indicates advertisement sales of newspapers. Advertising sales of newspapers began to decline at the boundary of 2006, although it was about 46 billion dollars (about 5 trillion yen) in 2003, and it fell to about 24 billion dollars (about 2.6 trillion yen) in 2013 . On the contrary, Google has been increasing advertising sales in 2003, but in 2003 it was rare, but in 2013 it grew to about 50 billion dollars (about 5.4 trillion yen), more than twice the newspaper It is breaking through.


Furthermore, looking at the graph below showing the consumption time ratio of each media by the user, TV, Internet, newspaper & magazine, radio and mobile, the time consumed by the user in newspapers and magazines is other It is overwhelmingly smaller than the media of the advertisement market, and the market share of the advertisement market is lower than that of TV and the Internet.


In response to these circumstances, Blendle was founded by Mr. Klöpping 's desire to save newspapers, magazines, and journalism. Blendle has partnered with major Dutch newspapers and tabloid papers, fashion magazines, beauty magazines and so on one after another and sells from 10 cents (about 14 yen) to 80 cents (about 110 yen) per article.


Since newspapers and magazines usually develop independent services for each media, users need to register for each medium and pay a flat fee in order to read articles online. The user can pay all the contents by paying a fixed amount, but some articles of genres that are not of interest may be included, and it was Blindle that I could not change the system That's why.


Since opening, Blendle has increased Gungun and registrants, and the number of registrants exceeded 130,000 in the Netherlands only in about seven months from the start of service.


The New York Times watched the movements of this Blendle, Blendle plans to expand its services throughout Europe, with capital investment as the origin. in JapanGunosyYaSmartNewsA free news reader such as free news reader is gaining popularity on smartphones and the possibility of a billing platform like Blendle is unknown, but if it succeeds in the United States, it seems that there is a possibility that it will land soon in Japan.

· Continued
Blindle, a groundbreaking new service that allows you to purchase even articles with rose sales of paid newspaper articles and magazine articles in full swing, can also return goods after reading - GIGAZINE