7 ms·

Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

42 points by whinythepooh 7y ago

lioeters 7y ago
Can't read the article: "Subscribe or Sign In to continue reading".
- whinythepooh 7y ago
  https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remaking-corporate-america/ https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remak...
whinythepooh 7y ago
Here is an alternative link in case someone cannot read the article because of paywall https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remaking-corporate-america/ https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remak...
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/VryJ4 http://archive.is/VryJ4
TheEnder8 7y ago
The unintentionally amusing part: "To continue reading... Subscribe or sign in"
- pkaye 7y ago
  "To continue reading... Subscribe or sign in... or disable Javascript"
buboard 7y ago
subscribe to read hahahah For one, I hope subscriptions die. It's a pernicious trend that is borderline fraud for consumers (like gyms, profiting from users who simply forget to unsubscribe or making it painfully hard to unsubscribe). It's also exclusionary for most of the world for whom the subscription price might be a year's income. With downloadable software it was kind of possible to find a crack online, but web apps and content make it almost impossible.It also makes individual property ownership impossible. we need honest,anonymized payments on the web.
- swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  I think subscriptions are fine; it is the banks that give power to corporations by making it impossible to control who bills your accounts. If you could easily see recurring billing charges and cancel on your bank's end easily, companies would have to step up and offer a useful service.
  - mlazos 7y ago
    I agree but at the same time I feel like companies are bolting “as a service” onto literally everything. Take Rosetta Stone for instance. There’s zero need or benefit from that to being subscription but there it is. Games as a subscription also make we want to die unless it’s an MMO where you’re constantly getting new content.
    - thebean11 7y ago
      I don't know, I was falling into a pattern in games where I kept spending $40-60 just to find out I don't really like a game. A subscription service lets me try out a bunch of stuff and sink time into what I actually like.
      - baroffoos 7y ago
        Steam lets you refund a game for any reason if you have under 2 hours playtime. I have never found that I liked a game for the first 2 hours and didn't like it at all after that.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >I think subscriptions are fine Is that correlated with having ample money to pay for them?
    - swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
      Many useful things take money to accomplish, I would be suspicious of anything that provides a service for free. That being said, health insurance is an example of a subscription in the USA I find predatory.
aNoob7000 7y ago
I wonder if sometime in the future, there is going to be subscription fatigue.
- dukoid 7y ago
  I think there already was, at least in Germany -- based on contracts that made it quite hard to unsubscribe. I think a key to avoiding a general subscription aversion is to make it very easy to unsubscribe.
  - durnygbur 7y ago
    > I think there already was, at least in Germany Yup. Two years contracts, automatically renewed, with three months notice period for cancellation, cancellation by post (yes, by a papper letter), no early cancellations. Reverting the monthly direct debit transaction to "give a hint" to the predatory "service provider" triggers furious response from their accounting and customer service, and transaction cancellation fees. It's hard to imagine how the setup could be even more predatory for a customer. Fuck, even the memory of dealing with this raises my adrenaline level.
- johnpowell 7y ago
  I'm already there. I just hate random money coming out of my account. I just gave fastmail $130 for three years. I wish I could have given them a thousand for lifetime so I would just never have to think about it again. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass for $150 so I would never have to think about it again. And no hard feelings if these services were to shut down. I can deal with a large one time payment. A bunch of random 5 dollar a payments a month isn't going to float. I crawl through my credit card statements looking for oddities. And it just bugs me.
  - throwawaycuriou 7y ago
    try privacy.com one off credit cards with fixed limits. use them for each service that may bill you again.
jammygit 7y ago
The Starcraft community requested subscription content for years during the hots years. The popular reasoning was that the game needed refreshing and updating but that a company can’t afford to do it without incentives - and the ongoing revenue would incentivize them to keep the game in great shape. Then again, you can’t use subscription software at all after the company completely moves on either - no windows 95 compatibility mode to keep using your expensive desktop applications. So you still end up with unusable software eventually - longer peak but a shorter life for more cost The fundamental problem is how difficult and expensive it is to make software and maintain it year after year
- jedberg 7y ago
  It doesn’t have to be that way though. The company can open source the server. They could also release a final patch that unlocks all content and removes the license check.
Guest42 7y ago
A year ago I downloaded an interval running app for 10 dollars. Recently I recommended it to a family member only to find out they changed the pricing to 10 dollars per month for the same features.
- ianai 7y ago
  You can’t tell me that interval running app is as useful to you as a Spotify subscription. 10/mo is pretty steep comparatively!
  - Guest42 7y ago
    At a certain point it gets cheaper to find a Mac on Craigslist, sign up as an Apple developer, and build it myself
  - chooseaname 7y ago
    I bet it's all the "social" features running apps cram in now. Last time I looked (admittedly a couple years now) it was slim picking if you wanted an app that didn't sync your data to the cloud or offer some sort of social feature. I stopped using apps. I run to clear my head and try to stay healthy, not brag that I run.
tracer4201 7y ago
I signed up for “subscribe and save” because it gave me like a 5% discount on my Protein purchase from Amazon. Before the next 5 lb jar was supposed to get sent, they sent me an email saying they were about to charge me and I had until X date to cancel. You can make subscriptions work if your intentions are good and you’re not looking at them as a revenue stream based on people forgetting to cancel. I ended up cancelling that next shipment but ordered again a few weeks later. The model isn’t bad. Just depends on the execution.
- whinythepooh 7y ago
  > You can make subscriptions work if your intentions are good I am afraid investors only care about growth. First they are going to grow untill no more subscribers. Preferably the company will have monopolistic position by that time. Then they will start increasing rates up to "what market will bear". Then they will start tweaking "personalizing" experience with microtransactions etc trying to squeeze more. Add regulatory capture to this. This rent-seeking won't stop.
aidenn0 7y ago
Subscriptions for SaaS are essentially a lease, and leases are almost always preferable to sales for the one doing the leasing. See e.g. IBM[1] [edit] Software (and other media with a high development cost, but low marginal cost such as films) are particularly valuable to lease, because you remove the secondary market, which can cannibalize sales. 1: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40751117?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40751117?seq=1
- whinythepooh 7y ago
  For SaaS I agree but subscriptions for stationary bike, for food, for printer ink, for traktors, etc.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    Stationary bike and tractors fit the mold perfectly; if you can't use it without the subscription, it's effectively a lease. Food and printer ink are different because they are consumables.
- rasz 7y ago
  Leasing is preferable for Business if you need creative book keeping because you live over your means or need to hide something.
awinder 7y ago
So because of the timing on this article, the notes on Apple’s PE ratio are interesting to consider. Apple is now trading at a P/E ratio of 23 (Microsoft at 28), and Apple has made a point of trying to reorient / reclassify revenue as subscription revenue over the last several years. Even still I think this argument is rather weak, I think looking at a coarse metric like P/E to induce a single fact is a little too much.

42 points by whinythepooh 7y ago

lioeters 7y ago

Can't read the article: "Subscribe or Sign In to continue reading".

whinythepooh 7y ago
https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remaking-corporate-america/ https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remak...

whinythepooh 7y ago

Here is an alternative link in case someone cannot read the article because of paywall https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remaking-corporate-america/ https://www.zuora.com/2018/12/09/how-subscriptions-are-remak...

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/VryJ4 http://archive.is/VryJ4

TheEnder8 7y ago

The unintentionally amusing part: "To continue reading... Subscribe or sign in"

pkaye 7y ago
"To continue reading... Subscribe or sign in... or disable Javascript"

buboard 7y ago

subscribe to read hahahah For one, I hope subscriptions die. It's a pernicious trend that is borderline fraud for consumers (like gyms, profiting from users who simply forget to unsubscribe or making it painfully hard to unsubscribe). It's also exclusionary for most of the world for whom the subscription price might be a year's income. With downloadable software it was kind of possible to find a crack online, but web apps and content make it almost impossible.It also makes individual property ownership impossible. we need honest,anonymized payments on the web.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
I think subscriptions are fine; it is the banks that give power to corporations by making it impossible to control who bills your accounts. If you could easily see recurring billing charges and cancel on your bank's end easily, companies would have to step up and offer a useful service.
- mlazos 7y ago
  I agree but at the same time I feel like companies are bolting “as a service” onto literally everything. Take Rosetta Stone for instance. There’s zero need or benefit from that to being subscription but there it is. Games as a subscription also make we want to die unless it’s an MMO where you’re constantly getting new content.
  - thebean11 7y ago
    I don't know, I was falling into a pattern in games where I kept spending $40-60 just to find out I don't really like a game. A subscription service lets me try out a bunch of stuff and sink time into what I actually like.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      Steam lets you refund a game for any reason if you have under 2 hours playtime. I have never found that I liked a game for the first 2 hours and didn't like it at all after that.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >I think subscriptions are fine Is that correlated with having ample money to pay for them?
  - swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
    Many useful things take money to accomplish, I would be suspicious of anything that provides a service for free. That being said, health insurance is an example of a subscription in the USA I find predatory.

aNoob7000 7y ago

I wonder if sometime in the future, there is going to be subscription fatigue.

dukoid 7y ago
I think there already was, at least in Germany -- based on contracts that made it quite hard to unsubscribe. I think a key to avoiding a general subscription aversion is to make it very easy to unsubscribe.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  > I think there already was, at least in Germany Yup. Two years contracts, automatically renewed, with three months notice period for cancellation, cancellation by post (yes, by a papper letter), no early cancellations. Reverting the monthly direct debit transaction to "give a hint" to the predatory "service provider" triggers furious response from their accounting and customer service, and transaction cancellation fees. It's hard to imagine how the setup could be even more predatory for a customer. Fuck, even the memory of dealing with this raises my adrenaline level.
johnpowell 7y ago
I'm already there. I just hate random money coming out of my account. I just gave fastmail $130 for three years. I wish I could have given them a thousand for lifetime so I would just never have to think about it again. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass for $150 so I would never have to think about it again. And no hard feelings if these services were to shut down. I can deal with a large one time payment. A bunch of random 5 dollar a payments a month isn't going to float. I crawl through my credit card statements looking for oddities. And it just bugs me.
- throwawaycuriou 7y ago
  try privacy.com one off credit cards with fixed limits. use them for each service that may bill you again.

jammygit 7y ago

The Starcraft community requested subscription content for years during the hots years. The popular reasoning was that the game needed refreshing and updating but that a company can’t afford to do it without incentives - and the ongoing revenue would incentivize them to keep the game in great shape. Then again, you can’t use subscription software at all after the company completely moves on either - no windows 95 compatibility mode to keep using your expensive desktop applications. So you still end up with unusable software eventually - longer peak but a shorter life for more cost The fundamental problem is how difficult and expensive it is to make software and maintain it year after year

jedberg 7y ago
It doesn’t have to be that way though. The company can open source the server. They could also release a final patch that unlocks all content and removes the license check.

Guest42 7y ago

A year ago I downloaded an interval running app for 10 dollars. Recently I recommended it to a family member only to find out they changed the pricing to 10 dollars per month for the same features.

ianai 7y ago
You can’t tell me that interval running app is as useful to you as a Spotify subscription. 10/mo is pretty steep comparatively!
- Guest42 7y ago
  At a certain point it gets cheaper to find a Mac on Craigslist, sign up as an Apple developer, and build it myself
- chooseaname 7y ago
  I bet it's all the "social" features running apps cram in now. Last time I looked (admittedly a couple years now) it was slim picking if you wanted an app that didn't sync your data to the cloud or offer some sort of social feature. I stopped using apps. I run to clear my head and try to stay healthy, not brag that I run.

tracer4201 7y ago

I signed up for “subscribe and save” because it gave me like a 5% discount on my Protein purchase from Amazon. Before the next 5 lb jar was supposed to get sent, they sent me an email saying they were about to charge me and I had until X date to cancel. You can make subscriptions work if your intentions are good and you’re not looking at them as a revenue stream based on people forgetting to cancel. I ended up cancelling that next shipment but ordered again a few weeks later. The model isn’t bad. Just depends on the execution.

whinythepooh 7y ago
> You can make subscriptions work if your intentions are good I am afraid investors only care about growth. First they are going to grow untill no more subscribers. Preferably the company will have monopolistic position by that time. Then they will start increasing rates up to "what market will bear". Then they will start tweaking "personalizing" experience with microtransactions etc trying to squeeze more. Add regulatory capture to this. This rent-seeking won't stop.

aidenn0 7y ago

Subscriptions for SaaS are essentially a lease, and leases are almost always preferable to sales for the one doing the leasing. See e.g. IBM[1] [edit] Software (and other media with a high development cost, but low marginal cost such as films) are particularly valuable to lease, because you remove the secondary market, which can cannibalize sales. 1: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40751117?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40751117?seq=1

whinythepooh 7y ago
For SaaS I agree but subscriptions for stationary bike, for food, for printer ink, for traktors, etc.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Stationary bike and tractors fit the mold perfectly; if you can't use it without the subscription, it's effectively a lease. Food and printer ink are different because they are consumables.
rasz 7y ago
Leasing is preferable for Business if you need creative book keeping because you live over your means or need to hide something.

awinder 7y ago

So because of the timing on this article, the notes on Apple’s PE ratio are interesting to consider. Apple is now trading at a P/E ratio of 23 (Microsoft at 28), and Apple has made a point of trying to reorient / reclassify revenue as subscription revenue over the last several years. Even still I think this argument is rather weak, I think looking at a coarse metric like P/E to induce a single fact is a little too much.