Blendle

Blendle is a The New York Times Company and Axel Springer-backed journalism startup from the Netherlands that offers all articles of all newspapers and all important magazines in The Netherlands in one web app, with one paywall, where users will only have to pay for the articles they read. At Blendle, we think that unbundling of journalism is the Holy Grail in getting young people to pay for journalism again.

Short history

Not so long ago, people didn’t think individuals were ever going to pay for music again. Pirating was so widespread that a lot of people thought: What service could possibly beat free downloading?

...and then came iTunes. ...and then came Spotify.

For the first time in their lives, our friends are paying for music. And it doesn’t stop there. They also spend quite a lot of money on apps, even paying for movies and TV-shows with Netflix. However, none of them pay regularly for journalism?—?they never have. And a lot of publishers think they never will.

If anything, the music business has taught us that consumers want a simple way to pay for content. As a consumer, you only want to pay for content you actually consume, you want algorithms and social networks to help you filter, and you want everything in one place. While consumers changed, newspapers and magazines didn’t really adapt.

To this day you still need to register at every newspaper or magazine you want to read while paying monthly fees for every site or for a bundle of articles with all kinds of stuff you don’t read. The editors still make a non-personalized selection for you, and every newspaper has its own website.

Journalism needs an iTunes!

What happens when all major publishers in a country join forces, bringing all articles written in a single country together and ensuring they are readily available in a single app, and all payable from a single wallet? That’s Blendle.