A Netflix for Magazines

After years of development, Time Inc. plans to introduce an online service next year that will offer pay-as-you-go, mix-and-match, highly flexible magazine subscriptions from a variety of publishers. Consumers using the service, to be called Maghound, will be able to pay one monthly fee for three subscriptions, with the ability to swap one title out for a new one or cancel entirely at any point.

Maghound won't fix everything that's wrong with subscription sales, but it does eliminate the need for annoying renewal notices.

Maghound won't fix everything that's wrong with subscription sales, but it does eliminate the need for annoying renewal notices.

It's a complicated bid by the country's biggest magazine publisher to make the web an ally instead of an enemy -- and to find new magazine readers in the process. The hope is that Maghound, which has been in development since 2004 and still won't go live until September 2008, will meet the growing expectations of increasingly empowered consumers.