Could Substack creators bypass the platform’s 10% cut?
PLUS: Could Roku ever become a subscription juggernaut?
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Could Substack creators bypass the platform’s 10% cut?
The film industry publisher The Ankler is moving its paid subscriptions and most of its content off Substack:
More control over our platform allows us to better expand coverage and improve the subscriber experience: a more refined design, a single sign-on and everything across Ankler Media living under one roof.
It also gives you — our audience — more control over how you engage with us and what you receive in your inbox, along with more flexible subscription options.
I think this move is significant for two reasons.
The first is that the Ankler was one of Substack’s largest publishers and earliest success stories. While its founding technically predates Substack — I’m pretty sure it started out on Mailchimp — it really came to prominence after Richard Rushfield migrated it to the platform. That move gave Substack added legitimacy as a place where serious media entrepreneurs could launch their businesses.
But what’s perhaps even more interesting about this move is what it says about Substack’s network effects. As I’ve documented in my newsletter over the past few years, the company has steadily built a suite of tools that allow creators to tap into its ecosystem and grow their audiences. What started with the Recommendations feature has evolved into something closer to a centralized social network.
That strategy is core to how Substack justifies its 10% cut. Without built-in growth mechanisms, creators would have a strong financial incentive to leave once they reached a certain scale. The implicit tradeoff is simple: you stay on Substack because it helps you keep growing.
Which is why this move stands out. As one of the platform’s oldest and most prominent publications, the Ankler was likely among the biggest beneficiaries of those network effects—and yet it still decided it was worth leaving.
Or at least mostly leave — Rushfield also announced he’s launching a free spinoff newsletter that will continue to publish through Substack.
In some ways, that hybrid approach may pose an even greater threat to Substack’s business model.
Consider the scenario: a publisher builds a paid subscriber base on Substack, then migrates those paying users to another platform like Beehiiv using Stripe, while continuing to distribute a free version of the newsletter on Substack. That setup allows the publisher to keep benefiting from Substack’s discovery and growth tools—without paying the 10% fee on subscription revenue.
Yes, it introduces some operational friction, since you’re effectively running two newsletters. But for many publishers, that tradeoff could be worth it.
Right now, the Ankler is the only example I’ve seen using this approach. But if it spreads, it could become a serious problem for Substack, whose primary revenue stream is that 10% cut. This is precisely why Apple barred iOS apps from linking to (or even mentioning) alternate payment options.
UPDATE: A reader alerted me to this clause in Substack’s official publisher agreement:
No Circumvention: You agree to process payments from Readers only in the manner determined by us. This includes using the third-party payment processing platform (“Payment Processor”) we choose, and following any other rules we specify. You may not circumvent your payment obligations to us by soliciting payment from a Reader outside of Substack or by using any alternative method to collect subscription payments. This includes receiving payments for your publication through links to PayPal or a separate Patreon page. You agree to notify us immediately if you receive any such offer or solicitation to circumvent your payment obligations by contacting tos@substackinc.com.
Interesting...I wonder how Substack enforces this when it’s actively luring subscription publishers like New York magazine, The New Yorker, and The Economist onto the platform? I wonder if this simply means you can’t sell paid subscriptions elsewhere and then comp those subscribers with paid subscriptions within Substack?
ICYMI: Why a magazine geared toward political operatives wants to expand into a B2B media empire
After getting acquired in 2011, Campaigns & Elections cut its print magazine, rebuilt its events business, and refocused on attracting a high-value, B2B audience.
That case study actually sits behind a paywall, but if you’re not ready to subscribe, I also included it in an ebook that you can download over here.
Google’s subscription side hustle
From the Hollywood Reporter:
Overall, the number of paid subscribers across YouTube premium as well as Google One, Alphabet’s storage business, have hit 340 million, up from 325 million the prior quarter.
Google got bored of building the most successful ad product of all time, so it decided to build one of the world’s largest paid subscription businesses as its side hustle.
Bloomberg is using AI to fortify its moat
Wired interviewed Shawn Edwards, chief technology officer at Bloomberg, about a new chatbot that’s being tested out with a subset of Bloomberg Terminal users:
The broad idea is to help finance professionals to condense labor-intensive tasks, and make it possible to test abstract investment theses against the data through natural language prompts …
The primary problem we’re solving with generative AI is helping users to find key insights and synthesize a view of the world around a particular idea.
Here’s what’s always amazed me about Bloomberg: over the years, there have been countless would-be disruptors, yet the company has managed to build a moat strong enough to keep users locked into its $27,000-a-year Terminal.
A big part of that moat is its internal chat feature. It functions as a built-in social network where subscribers can message one another—essentially a private club for the financial elite. Many users even describe it as Bloomberg’s “killer feature.”
Then there’s Bloomberg Media, an extensive newsroom that feeds original reporting directly into the Terminal. While you can subscribe to Bloomberg’s standalone media product for around $400 a year—I do—it still serves as an added layer of value that makes the Terminal more indispensable.
The most critical piece of the moat, though, is Bloomberg’s vast data repository. There’s simply no comparable product that aggregates information from thousands of licensed sources, and recreating that dataset from scratch would be enormously expensive.
But with so much information flowing through the Terminal, the experience can easily become overwhelming. That’s where its new AI tool comes in. Just as chatbots now help users distill large amounts of information, Bloomberg’s tool could allow subscribers to synthesize its proprietary data into more digestible insights.
I haven’t been able to test it myself, but if it works as intended, it could become the primary interface traders use for research—effectively a souped-up version of ChatGPT tailored to the Bloomberg ecosystem.
Could Roku ever become a subscription juggernaut?
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Roku’s $2.99-a-month streaming app just hit a major milestone:
Roku’s low-cost streaming service, Howdy, has hit more than one million subscribers, according to research firm Antenna.
After launching in August 2025, Antenna estimates that the $2.99 a month service added close to 300,000 subscribers in its first month, with an additional 100,000 or more added each subsequent month. The streaming research firm also estimates that 51 percent of subscribers that signed up for Howdy in August and September are still subscribed, giving it a higher retention rate than many other streaming platforms.
It’s always impressive when a company signs up 1 million paying customers for a new product, but it’s fair to ask how this fits into Roku’s broader strategy. Howdy’s subscriber base is tiny compared to the scale of streamers like Netflix, and its low price point means it would need to grow dramatically to become anything more than a rounding error on Roku’s balance sheet.
That said, there are a few ways to understand its strategic value. Roku essentially operates a streaming app marketplace, allowing users to subscribe to services like Paramount directly through its platform. In those cases, Roku typically takes around a 20% revenue cut and, more importantly, collects the user’s payment information. Once a credit card is on file, it becomes much easier for that user to subscribe to additional services with a single click.
Amazon has built a sizable business around this exact model. Its Fire TV ecosystem—whether through smart TVs or the Fire Stick—combined with the massive base of stored payment credentials across Amazon.com and Prime Video, creates a powerful distribution engine. As a result, many major streaming apps choose to sell subscriptions through Prime, even if it means sacrificing some direct customer access.
Roku’s challenge is that, despite having more than 100 million streaming users, most haven’t shared their payment details. That creates friction when trying to sign up for new services. If Roku can convert even a few million of those users into Howdy subscribers, it unlocks significant value—even if they later cancel. Once payment information is captured, Roku can more easily drive one-click subscriptions across its platform.
There’s also a case to be made for Howdy as a standalone product. One of Roku’s key advantages is its low-cost access to a large content library. Through carriage agreements, it often secures rights to stream portions of a partner’s catalog on The Roku Channel, which it monetizes with ads. Over time, this has resulted in a surprisingly deep catalog of popular shows and movies.
Howdy is essentially an ad-free version of that experience, meaning its core value proposition is simple: pay to remove ads. That model has worked extremely well for companies like YouTube and Spotify, both of which have built massive subscription businesses by offering an escape from advertising.
And Roku has a meaningful audience to tap into. According to Nielsen, The Roku Channel accounts for about 3% of total TV viewership—larger than both Paramount+ and Peacock. That’s a sizable user base that could be nudged toward an ad-free upgrade.
Roku also benefits from its control over ad inventory. In many carriage deals, it retains up to 30% of a partner’s ad slots, giving it ample opportunity to promote Howdy across its ecosystem. It can advertise on its homepage, within The Roku Channel, and across partner content—essentially using its entire platform as a marketing engine.
Will Howdy become a subscription juggernaut on the level of Netflix or Disney? Probably not. But it doesn’t have to. Even at a modest scale, it can play a meaningful role in Roku’s business—both as a direct revenue stream and as a way to strengthen its broader platform economics.
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