Medium’s membership program, which it’s carefully not labeling a subscription, is available to its early partners. It lets a publisher set a single, recurring monthly tier, and Medium collects the money. A publisher can mark specific posts for members only. Medium will charge a 20% fee, but pass through only the processing fees for the first 500 members. So a publication charging $5 a month would pay 8% and net $2,300 a month for its first 500 members, and 20% to net $4 a member thereafter.
I believe that publishers who brave the storm will be happy they remained independent. Medium is appealing because for-profit publishers are losing a ton of money right now but you give up far too much control to switch and I’m not convinced any significant amount of people will pay for content.
Some people will. The majority won’t.