Apple revealed Apple News+, its new magazine subscription service, on Monday morning at its Cupertino, California-headquarters, giving customers access to 300 magazines for $9.99 per month.
The service evolves its existing Apple News app, which Apple CEO Tim Cook said is now the number one news app in the world, with more than 5 billion articles read on it each month.
Apple News+ will cover “just about every passion under the sun,” according to Apple VP of Applications Roger Rosner, with access to several top magazines, including Wired, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine. Major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post were conspicuously absent from the service, but it will offer The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. According to an internal WSJ memo obtained by CNN, Apple News+ will not provide complete access to the outlet’s financial news, but will only offer a “curated collection of general interest news.”
“Magazines are iconic and a part of our culture,” Cook said.
Rosner said subscribing individually to all of the magazines included in Apple News+ would cost about $8,000 per month, compared to its $9.99 bundle package. Customers will be able to share their account among family members. It’s available today in the U.S. and will come to Canada and Europe, starting with the U.K., later this year.
With a backdrop behind him reading “Apple doesn’t allow advertisers to track you,” Rosner said the company is committed to privacy, stressing what customers read on Apple News+ will not impact the ads they’re hit with while surfing the web — drawing a round of applause from the large contingent of Apple loyalists inside the Steve Jobs Theater.
The announcement came before Cook is expected to unveil the company’s original content plans, after its signed deals in the last two years with a slew of Hollywood stars, including Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.