Apple News+ readership is reportedly down for most major magazines on the platform. According to data obtained by Press Gazette, the top 25 magazines on Apple News+ reached a combined circulation of just over 1.3 million in the first half of 2022, which is up from the first half of 2021 but down from compared to the second half of 2021.
Apple News+ readership reportedly down
Here’s the circulation breakdown for these Apple News+ magazine publishers, according to data from the Alliance of Audited Media.
- First half of 2021: 1,255,802
- Second half of 2021: 1,622,823
- First half of 2022: 1,333,088
Here’s the breakdown of the top 10 magazine publishers’ circulation data on Apple News+, according to Press Gazette. These numbers are calculated by the Alliance of Audited Media by “using a magazine’s average unique opens per issue.”
The top 25 magazines for each time period differ slightly, meaning that many individual titles in the current rankings have increased their circulations significantly despite the overall trend.
| Title | Unique users per magazine | Total number of openings | Unique users, H1 2021 | Year-on-year change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| People | 104,726 | 191,272 | 164,781 | −36% |
| Men’s Health | 78,460 | 165,550 | 54,393 | 44% |
| Vanity Fair | 78,384 | 145,172 | 89,867 | −13% |
| New Yorker | 70.225 | 89,649 | 40,223 | 75% |
| The Atlantic | 67,354 | 159,642 | 61,078 | 10% |
| National Geographic | 66,899 | 105,435 | 71,028 | −6% |
| Esquire | 63,375 | 131,186 | 29,880 | 112% |
| Popular Mechanics | 63,003 | 114,666 | 71,380 | −12% |
| Women’s Health | 58,669 | 110,297 | 34,335 | 71% |
| Wired | 58,309 | 119,136 | 55,131 | 6% |
| Totals | 709,404 | 1,332,005 | 672,096 | 6% |
A clouded future for Apple News+?
As you can see, the major publishers saw their viewership decline in the last quarter, but it’s up year-over-year compared to the same period in 2021. This data is tricky to compare because, in general , traffic and media readership are higher towards the end of the year than at the beginning of the year.
It will therefore be necessary to monitor traffic data for the second half of this year, which, of course, is not yet available.
Apple News+ is available on its own for $9.99 per month in English-speaking countries, including Canada. It’s also included in the Apple One Premier bundle alongside Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+ with 2TB of storage and Apple Fitness+, but still not in France.