3 ms·
One thing that subscriptions have going for them is that they're a relatively fair way to charge for products that have continuous operating and development cos
by Barrin92 4y ago
One thing that subscriptions have going for them is that they're a relatively fair way to charge for products that have continuous operating and development costs.
With one-off payments there's the obvious issue that you're either overcharging in case the startup (which the article talks about specifically) fails or you're severely undercharging which I think is more common if anything.
Just a few days ago I noticed I still have a lifetime membership for a podcast app that I once bought for almost nothing and they still ship features. While lucky for me personally not necessarily great for either the devs or other users who joined later after they switched to subscriptions.
- xg15 4y agoThey also give strong incentives to only develop projects in the future that have continuous operating costs. You can see evidence of that in our general industry trends, where software is either "being worked on" or "dead", but can never be finished. That's tolerable for pure software projects, but now we're increasingly seeing the same trend with physical devices.
- joshuak 4y agoA problem, however, is that subscriptions are desirable revenue streams regardless of continuous operating costs. A product I can buy for a largely concrete exchange in value, whereas subscriptions will (at best) go to value in the future that I may not have chosen to buy. I notice that you feel bad for the devs of the podcast app, but not so bad as to give them the word of mouth marketing they no doubt hopped would be the fair trade value of early lifetime memberships.