Time Magazine erects pay wall, launches all-access plan

NEW YORK (TheWrap) - Time magazine joined the list of publications putting up a pay wall on Tuesday, but it also offered its subscribers an "all-access" plan for the magazine across all platforms.

Starting Thursday, readers can purchase the $30 plan, which includes both print and web subscriptions, as well as an app for the iPad and other tablets.

Two other options are the one-week pass to access magazine content online ($4.99/week) and a monthly all-access subscription ($2.99/month).

Those who sign up for none of those plans can still read articles on the website, but they will not have access to articles from the magazine for three months. The Time release says that 95 percent of the site's content is original and distinct from the magazine.

This is the second plan of this nature that Time Inc. has released this year. The first was for Sports Illustrated, but in that case the app was only for Android phones.

Now that magazines only have to follow Apple's iTunes subscription terms and not use the subscription service, they can create iPad apps without surrendering subscriber information.