One of the most prestigious entertainment magazines in the United States, Variety has announced that, come Thursday, the publication will feature only paid content on its website and free access will be disabled for all users. This latest move by Variety is aimed at generating greater revenues from advertising on the website along with the paid subscriptions. The transition is to be implemented slowly, where the website will require one out of every ten visitors to sign up for the paid subscription to get full access to the magazine.

The new business model will devoid Variety of the 2.5 million unique user visitations each month as the website will no longer be offering the free services that had made it so popular. However, the company plans to keep the five free page views a month and it seems that Variety would prefer to keep its half more than 50,000 paid subscribers, as against the million others who visit the website and get the content without any charges.

According to Neil Stiles (President, Variety Group),

“We fundamentally believe that the readers should pay one price and get all or any of our content. If you don’t pay, you don’t get anything.”

The company has created a user subscription model of $248 for an year’s wort access to the website’s content related that would be inclusive of the daily and weekly print editions along with applications designed specifically for the Apple iPhone. The website strongly believes that, the new pay model will be more effective and will help Variety generate better revenue figures than it does right now.

Via Associated Press.