The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that Apple is running into a wall with negotiations, with the company's proposed cut central to that pushback. Apple wants to keep a whopping 50% of subscription revenue, an even higher cut compared to the 15% to 30% cut that it takes from subscription-based apps and subscriptions it sells through Apple News. The remaining 50% of subscription revenue would get aggregated into a larger shared pool, which would then be paid out to publishers based on their proportionate share of user engagement, according to the report.
I somehow suspect that the content available on Apple's new subscription service isn't going to be as heady as they had hoped.
While I think 50% is high, and I don't see why they can't use the 30% that was long standard in the App Store (or the newer 30%/15% system), be aware of where the 50% number came from. That was the revenue split already in use by Texture, the service that Apple bought to develop into this service.
