An iTunes Playlist for Magazine Articles? Zinio Thinks Outside the Brand

Mediashift reporting:
How many ways can you sell magazine content?
In the rapidly changing world of digital magazines, we've seen all kinds of variations: multimedia apps, digital replicas, individual stories, single issues, subscriptions, and even the all-you-can-read buffet model. But these variations have usually happened within the boundary of a single magazine brand, rarely blending content from different publications.
Zinio, the company best known for its magazine reading apps for PCs and mobile devices, has launched a project that crosses individual magazines' borders: Content Collections, which pull together articles from different magazines on a similar topic for readers' convenience. While the collections aren't yet available for readers to buy as package deals, Zinio is working on taking the concept in directions that challenge our ideas about magazines all over again.
Discovering Content in Unexpected Places
Zinio has found that its customers frequently buy digital magazines that are completely new to them. About 85 percent of readers who buy a single issue or a subscription through Zinio have never read that magazine in print before, according to Jeanniey Mullen, global executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Zinio.
"People were discovering magazines based on specific content they're looking for," Mullen said. "People were starting to shop by categories [on the Zinio storefront]. They'd see 10 or 20 magazines in that category and spend a ton of time checking out all the magazines."
Zinio wanted to find a way to capitalize on readers' interests in specific topics, rather than relying on magazines' existing "brand cachet," as Mullen calls it, to draw readers.