• Apple is facing pushback from publishers over its planned subscription service, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• The phone giant plans to keep half the subscription revenue it makes from the so-called “Netflix for news” service, which will cost about $US10 a month.
• Some publishers also are concerned that Apple won’t share customer data with them.

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Apple is trying to line up big publishers to participate in its planned subscription service, but it’s facing pushback from outlets that are balking at the terms, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The phone giant reportedly plans to keep half the subscription revenue it makes from the so-called “Netflix for news” service, which could cost about $US10 a month, and share the rest of the revenue with publishers.

Apple sees the service as a way to help shore up sales of its iPhones.

The report lists The New York Times and Washington Post as major outlets that haven’t agreed to be part of the service, while talks between Apple and The Journal are ongoing.

Those publications all get substantial revenue from selling subscriptions directly to consumers, and risk giving up revenue and a direct relationship with readers by being part of a subscription bundle. On the other hand, the subscription service represents a potentially huge audience of Apple device owners to be put in front of subscription publishers.

The strained relationship speaks to an ongoing tension between tech giants and publishers that depend on these tech companies for distribution but are wary of their control of the revenue, data, and publishers’ brand.

After being burned by Facebook, which has cut the amount of traffic it’s sending publishers, many publishers have found a welcome traffic source in Apple News, the news aggregation app that’s baked into Apple’s mobile products.

Apple News also represents a safe, hand-picked environment for quality news publishers.

Publishers also have groused that despite helping send readers to their stories, Apple News doesn’t do much to help them sell advertising on those pageviews because of Apple’s historic anti-advertising stance.

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