Drapers online have just announced that from the 27th November they will only allow paying subscribers to view their online articles. This means that many will miss out on the actual beauty of Drapers, free information. I haven't looked at Drapers for a while, and haven't bought the magazine for even longer because I always knew it was online if I ever needed it.
"We believe the valuable content of Drapersonline.com should be exclusively for the benefit of our paying subscribers."
But is it just a way of getting more money? Do they not think that there will be those that would just find their information elsewhere? Surely Drapers isn't the only location for business news, even though it is popular, it now has a disadvantage against other publications.
So why would they decide to make Drapersonline.com exclusive when so many other brands are trying to get as many people interested as possible? Perhaps magazine sales are down due to so many finding their information online, and so all the work they do is becoming free. Surely they should have realised it before they set up an online site. What about Vogue.com? They have most of the information from their magazine online, but the aesthetics of the real life magazine keeps it's appeal and so they will never have to choose between online and the magazine. It seems that online isn't making print obsolete, much to the disappointment of some people who thought it might.
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