Slovenia’s Big Pay ‘Wall’ Has Made €26,000

Piano Media, the online news payment system which first launched in Slovakia last year, says it made €26,000 ($33961.2/£21616.4) in its first month in Slovenia this year.

Users pay €4.90 ($6.4/£4.07) per month for access to new paid parts of all nine participating sites from the country’s main publishers.

So I calculate Piano has 5,306 paying customers in Slovenia. But Piano CEO TomáÅ¡ Bella tells paidContent: “53,00 customers is not the correct number since weekly and yearly subscriptions are also included in the 26,000 figure.

He did not specify actual consumer numbers. The company does say more than 25,000 Slovenians had pre-registered with Piano.

“Slovenian Piano publishers are earning more than €1,500 ($1959.3/£1247.1) per 100,000 users compared to just over €1,100 ($1436.82/£914.54) in Slovakia,” Bella. But that may be because Piano charges more in Slovenia than in Slovakia, where the monthly price recently raised from €2.90 ($3.79/£2.41) to €3.90. ($5.09/£3.24)

These numbers are small by many standards. Bella says critics would note that the countries’ internet populations are relatively small.

“If you consider that most websites were free one month earlier then these are really great results,” Bella says.

In Slovakia, Piano had made €40,000 ($52,248/£33,256) in its debut month. But Slovenia’s internet population is half the size of Slovakia’s.

Just as in Slovakia, where Piano now has 50 sites from 12 publishers, participating publishers put only a minority of their content in to the Piano system.