Subscription growth isn't really about the paywall anymore
Notes from the Audiencers' Festival: the best thinking is about building a relationship valuable enough that people keep coming back.
I was at the Audiencers' Festival in London, listening to publishers including Le Monde, The Economist, WIRED, Ringier, Funke, Broadsheet and Project Syndicate talk about audience, subscriptions and product.
The thing that stuck with me: most of the interesting subscription thinking is no longer really about the paywall. The paywall still matters - so do pricing, registration, newsletters, apps, offers and churn journeys. But the better examples were about something bigger: how do you build a relationship with people that feels valuable enough to keep coming back to?
Some standouts. Broadsheet showed how registration only works when it unlocks a proper journey after sign-up. Project Syndicate made the point that friction isn't always the problem - sometimes the value exchange just isn't clear enough. Ringier showed a smarter way to look at user value across both reader revenue and advertising. Le Monde in English used AI to change the economics of market expansion while keeping editorial judgement intact. And The Economist and WIRED both reminded me that premium value is increasingly human: named experts, access, judgement, events, habit, trust - the stuff AI is least good at replacing.
My main takeaway: subscription growth is becoming holistic. It's brand, product, audience, data, editorial, marketing and revenue working together - or it doesn't really work.
In a market where generic content is easier to produce and harder to defend, the value of a media brand will depend on the quality of the relationship it builds with its audience.
(Originally shared on LinkedIn.)