(Bloomberg) -- The New York Times Co. will launch a new, podcast-only subscription plan in October that will require listeners to pay for access to the back catalogs of its most popular shows.
Putting flagship programs like The Daily behind a paywall for all but the most recent episodes will help diversify revenue by including more reliable subscription fees instead of primarily relying on advertising.
The offering will cost $6 a month or $50 a year and will be available through Spotify Technology SA or Apple Inc.’s Podcasts app, according to the Times. People who already subscribe to the newspaper’s bundle and news-only subscribers will be granted podcast access as part of their package.
Once the subscription launches, only the latest three episodes of The Daily, ranked as the third most popular podcast in the US by Edison Research, will be available for free. For most other shows, only the two most recent episodes will be available before hitting the paywall, Ben Cotton, head of subscription growth, said in an interview.
Subscribers will also get exclusive early access to new seasons of programming from Serial Productions. For older seasons, the first couple episodes will be free and the rest will be behind the paywall, a way to hook new listeners and entice them to subscribe.
Details of the plan will likely change as people sign up and use their plan, Cotton said.
“Generally we have a history with other products of having or introducing paywalls and still being able to grow the audience to those products,” he said.
In 2023, the company launched a standalone audio app exclusively for subscribers, called New York Times Audio, which will continue to function, said Cotton. Audio also now has a dedicated tab on the paper’s main news app.
“We expect that no matter how it evolves, listening and audio have become a critical part of engagement and how people experience Times journalism,” Cotton said.
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