Singing News to restrict website access
Singing News announced last week that effective December 31, they will be restricting access to some areas of their website to current subscribers. I believe this will be the third time (at least since I’ve been watching) that they try doing this. A large part of whether the move will succeed will depend on whether they post enough content to make it worthwhile subscribing just to gain access to the website.
Freely available Southern Gospel websites have changed the way Southern Gospel news is reported. One no longer has to subscribe to the Singing News to know what’s happening in the genre. Different people have different reasons for continuing to subscribe; I, for one, subscribe mainly to have a vote in the Fan Awards and receive Ed O’Neal’s column every month.
Singing News has tried implementing a few things. Danny Jones does have interesting blog posts, and seeing the radio airplay charts in advance of their publication is also interesting. But I’m not sure those two alone would provide a compelling reason to subscribe to the magazine just to get website access. It will be interesting to see what they will add to their website in the coming months.
