The outfit is buying software, rights and people from Vienna-based Novosense, whose technology can support New York Times-style metered free-article allowances without logging readers’ consumption count via conventional cookies.

Twenty-five publishers of 66 sites in Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland have put a small percentage of their web content into respective national payment systems operated by Piano Media. Unlike paywalls for individual news sites, which are fast being rolled out around the world, Piano currently charges a single monthly fee for access to all publishers’ material.

But, through the Novosense acquisition, there is an addition coming in December. “Some of our media partners were asking for individual systems,” CEO Tomáš Bella says (via release). Bella will call the added model “Piano Solo.”

While hard pay-or-leave systems are a spiky reader proposition, meters are finding some favor. The New York Times’ 10-free-articles meter has brought the publisher more revenue and a circulation hike without impacting web traffic.

But such meters can notoriously be cracked, for instance, by deleting the cookie files that count articles read by individual visitors. Novosense boasts an “innovative algorithm” that relies on an alternative  method of user tracking, which it does not describe.

The jury is somewhat out on Piano Media’s existing shared-kiosk system until it can disclose how many monthly subscribers it has in each of its three existing countries. But the task of corralling rival publishers into a single system is considerable — and one that would become harder in larger, more competitive countries to which Piano wants to expand.

With Novosense’s addition, Bella says: “Now individual media can move ahead on their own…without having to wait for smaller or more conservative partners to make a similar decision.”

Novosense’s service also includes some data tools for building user profiles. Piano raised €2 million in April. Acquisition price is not disclosed.

Six publishers (Agora, Murator, Polskapresse, Media Regionalne, Edytor and Axel Springer-Ringier) are putting 10 to 15 percent of 26 national and regional news title and magazine content from 42 websites in to Piano. Consumers are asked to pay €4.90 per month for access to all participating outlets. But, although the bundle includes Agora’s Wyborcza.pl newspaper, it does not include its popular Gazeta.pl portal.

According to the firm’s proposition:

“Some publishers will provide ad-free versions of their sites, while others will offer premium access to their content before it is released to the public or even offer exclusive material available only with a Piano subscription. A lot of content that has never been online before will now be available.”

Web news payments of all models must overturn consumer reluctance that, in many surveys, puts inclination to pay at around five percent.

Interest is growing in this shared kiosk approach in some European countries, where individual titles may struggle to sell digitally but where a joint approach may prove relatively successful – local-language news can effectively be ringfenced from English-language competition, whose market is saturated and treacherous. Dutch publishers are seeking a kiosk solution, Belgians recently launched their own GoPress.

Polish publishers are the latest to try charging users for news websites. Point Group‘s weekly news magazine Wprost started charging pay-as-you-go micropayments and for a short-term metered subscription plan in June. Politics news magazine Polityka began charging in April; its counterpart Przekroj did so in 2011. Dutch and Belgian publishers are examining a joint kiosk method, too.

How is Piano – just one of the vendors vying to facilitate worried publishers inclination to charge – faring? Piano claimed first-month sales of €40,000 ($50,000) in Slovakia and €26,000 ($33,000) in Slovenia but has not disclosed total active subscribers. Several major publishers have placed on average up to a tenth of their web content in to the independent system, which costs €3.90 per month in Slovakia and €4.89 in Slovenia. CEO Tomas Bella told our paidContent 2012 conference in May (video):

“Media which put in 20 to 30 percent of their content are at three, four, five percent of conversion to paying users.

“The best ones are getting 30 to 40 percent of their online revenues from this source after one year.”

» Can operators like Piano profit from charging for news in Europe? Let us know in the comments…

Publishers in the country are the latest to try charging users for news websites.

Point Group‘s weekly news magazine Wprost will start charging pay-as-you-go micropayments and for a short-term metered subscription plan from Tuesday.

The title will charge using the Znak-It system, which typically involves stuffing an e-wallet with “znak” credits but which also white-labels to publishers.

paidContent understands another large news publisher also plans to charge in a few months’ time. Politics news magazine Polityka began charging in April; its counterpart Przekroj did so in 2011.

The publisher interest is, typically, leading to a vendor face-off.  Wprost’s selection of Znak-It could put Znak-It head-to-head with Piano Media, the bundled-subscription facilitator which has launched in Slovenia and Slovakia and which paidContent understands has been negotiating with Polish publishers for its ambition to launch in a third country.

Znak-It founder-CEO Greg Golebiewski, who favours alternatives to the subscription model, tells paidContent:

“What is interesting is the dynamics of the Polish market.

“The market is interesting indeed, as there are many different models being tried out or considered at the same time. Within the next six months or so, there will be lots of data to compare.”

Wprost is Znak-It’s second major adopter following use by German magazine publisher Bauer’s eastern European division, Wydawnictwo Bauer. It has 320 bloggers who charge using the system.

Springer’s Europe JV with Swiss Ringier is teaming with TV broadcaster TVN, which already owns the portal, to jointly own 75 percent of Onet.pl’s shares, for 956.25 million Polish zloty ($273 million, €217.5 million).

Ringier Axel Springer CEO Florian Fels, in an announcement, calls it a “milestone” for the two-year-old JV.

Founded in 1996, Onet.pl is Poland’s sixth-most-visited website, according to Alexa. Poland has Europe’s eight most active internet audience, according to comScore.

Axel Springer publishes the highest-circulation western-language newspaper, Germany’s Bild, as well as Die Welt. And it has moved rapidly in to online services, including the Hamburg.de, Gamigo.de, Motortalk.de, Auto.cz, Students.cz, AuFeminin, OnMeda.de and FondsDiscount.de, classified sites like CarWale.

And it is increasingly acquisitive in pure-play digital, having recently laid down £110 million for UK number-two recruitment site TotalJobs and taken a stake in property rental site Airbnb in exchange for providing German marketing support.