How to set privilege to wordpress subscriber for private page

This post is a couple years old, but I thought I'd provide a simpler, cleaner conditional:

if (current_user_can('subscriber')) {

// subscriber code

} else {

// non-subscriber code

}

Without a plugin something like this should work

    //functions.php
    function get_user_role() {
    global $current_user;

    $user_roles = $current_user->roles;
    $user_role = array_shift($user_roles);

    return $user_role;
    }

    //page template
    $role = get_user_role();
    if($role == "subscriber"){
       //cool you can see this
    }
    else {
       //sorry not allowed
    }

A BETTER way would be to use something like the Members Plugins which lets you have custom roles and check roles and such.