Marvel launching its own subscription service, Marvel Unlimited, is a sign that the major comic publishers finally grew tired of sharing revenue with other digital comics marketplaces. Marvel's plunge into the "Everything-as-a-Service" trend is finding the publisher new sources of revenue from its extensive catalog of 70+ years of content.
The new business model still hedges the publisher from completely disrupting its primary revenue stream, publishing new monthly comics for higher prices, by holding back the six most current issues of any title.
The service's launch in March also means the publisher is competing directly with one of its major channel partners and the current digital comics marketplace leader, Comixology. Comixology's value-adds to the digital comics space are its fantastic user-experience and recommendations to lower cost independent titles. Comixology's patented Guided View technology enhances the reading experience by auto-zooming between frames on a page or sliding between characters in a conversation.
Early reviews of Marvel Unlimited's service stated that Comixology's UI was decidedly better showing that user-experience is still a major differentiation. However, as Marvel cuts into Comixology's market share, it will be interesting to see how aggressively the publisher pursues a completely platform play.
Key Takeaways:
- Content owners with a extensive catalogs of desirable content could look to "as-a-service" models for fresh revenue from old material
- In an applified world, content marketplaces need other value adds such as unique (and defensible) user experiences
Disclaimer: The author of this post may or may not currently be testing out the Marvel Unlimited service for two months until he feels extremely grad-school-poor again.
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