12 ms·

We're Drowning in Subscriptions

94 points by redbell 4y ago

MrGilbert 4y ago
Being offered a subscription while reading an opinion piece about drowning in subscriptions is a meta joke I really enjoy.
- michaelteter 4y ago
  Especially given the monopoly cash cow that is Bloomberg terminal subscriptions.
  - incone123 4y ago
    There was a post on here a few days ago about an open source alternative: openbb.co
    - michaelteter 4y ago
      Yeah, but the big problem is that a lot of deals get made in the terminal chat system. Access to that chat system can be very important to doing business depending on the user's role.
      - incone123 4y ago
        I hadn't thought of that, but I did wonder how it would compete for supplying data feeds.
- inconceivable 4y ago
  https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  Newspapers have always had a subscription. You used to pay 3-4 bucks every day, now all they want is a few bucks a month. It's not ironic.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    On the whole, I think paying for each day's paper is a lot "healthier" for the consumer. You only pay for the days you actually read the paper, and you're aware that you're making a payment each time. You can't just forget about it. You can also read five different papers on five different days depending on which one strikes your fancy, leading to a more balanced news diet. A problem I'm having right now is that I want to get news from multiple sources, but I can't afford to subscribe to all of the major papers, I have to choose one!
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Back when people subscribed to newspapers a subscription was cheaper than daily purchases by far. Having someone bring it and come to your door to collect was easier. This is back when this was the only way aside from word of mouth to be informed (daily news touches on stories but moves on quickly)
  - MrGilbert 4y ago
    The fact that I have to pay for news is not what this article is about. It's about getting hammered with subscriptions left and right, while getting subsciption popups on the same page at the same time. I find that amusing.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      I also appreciate the irony, although it is of course worth noting that different people were almost certainly responsible for the website and the article (and this type of firewall is in fact a mark of a good paper).
  - yazzku 4y ago
    Except that then they make cancelling the subscription hard or impossible. https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/new-york-times-makes-subscription-cancellations-exceedingly-difficult-for-consumers-class-action-lawsuit-alleges/ https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/new-york-times-makes-su... Create a subscription? -> Click this button! Cancel? -> Oh, sorry to hear that. You will need to call one of our representatives. 8am-7pm Monday-Friday, EST.
crtified 4y ago
Hooking customers into some form of ongoing dependence must be one of the oldest business tricks in the book. In that sense, there's also a certain irony in this being 'news'.
janandonly 4y ago
The en and flow of bundeling and unbundling. Every couple of years “bundeling” becomes popular. Then, after some more years, people want to pay less and have more varied options, so “un-bundeling” comes in vogue again. I guess we have now reached peak-unbundeling. We pay for everything separately, like video to Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, PrimeVideo and so on. But already the cracks are beginning to show in this unbundled system. I heard recently that Disney is open to licensing their content for other platforms again.
acadapter 4y ago
I'm not
throwayyy479087 4y ago
I disagree with this - subscriptions align the price to users services with the cost to create them. Better than pricing Windows XP at $300 or something like they used to, then using that one-off cost to pay for ongoing support, security fixes, driver work etc.
- xdennis 4y ago
  Before you buy it you're told how long it's going to be supported. It's not like you pay 300 for the product and the company gives you support from the kindness of their hearts. If what you say is true, then subscriptions would get cheaper as more people subscribe, but that's not the case. They just pocket the profit. Subscriptions allow companies to extract more money from their clients, which is , of course, what companies are meant to do. But don't give me that nonsense about making it a more fair alignment between cost and price.
  - spacebanana7 4y ago
    > If what you say is true, then subscriptions would get cheaper as more people subscribe, but that's not the case. They just pocket the profit. The OP’s point could have been better phrased by stating that subscriptions provide an ongoing incentive for companies to support products to minimise churn. Yes they’ll extract almost 100% margin on recurring customers but it’s better than the alternative of one off payment structures where the company is incentived to minimise ongoing costs to the extent they can avoid legal troubles. If you made a one off payment to a newspaper they’d be incentivised to write low cost articles forevermore because they’ll never get any more money out if you. If you make a one off payment for an OS there’s little incentive to bother with security fixes short of again litigation.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      In the other model terms are described up front and you are given terms for support which the company factors into the price. In both models minimizing cost is the goal. In your model the customer loses ownership which means after the break even period the company keeps getting paid vs the loyal user can keep getting usage for free. The customer loses control over the tool. The subscription model is designed against loyalty and needs to cast a wider net they do this by offering free tiers and free periods where the hope is to hook the user. This gets them many low value users who are looking to extract as much value without paying and they will wait for black friday sales, subscribe for brief periods, share services or abuse free tiers. Better for users to have a version that always works on certain operating systems than ongoing payments and out of your control system changes
grapesurgeon 4y ago
[dead]
thatwasunusual 4y ago
Great. I need to subscribe to read the article.
fidrelity 4y ago
The only subscriptions I have is my rent and a very specific podcast I chose wisely. Everything else was avoidable until now. While it's true that one is forced more and more into subscriptions, there is still choice involved. I recently looked for a coin tracking tool, trialing about 5 different solutions and in the end went for the one that offered a lifetime deal. Some businesses are waking up to this fact and potential competitive advantage, as are some indiehackers already.
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  You don't pay for electricity, water, internet, mobile phone, health insurance, home insurance...?
  - rwmj 4y ago
    I wouldn't necessarily classify electricity and water as subscriptions since you mostly pay only for what you use. There is a fixed fee as well, but the supplier is providing and maintaining the infrastructure so that seems fair, plus we exist in a world where it's hard to live without electricity and water. I look forward to the time when we can practically go off grid with solar and using an EV as battery. Health insurance is an American thing, the rest of the developed world includes that in taxes. Internet and mobile phone (and in my case, landline) are the most unavoidable subscriptions. They are also far more expensive than they ought to be.
    - justeleblanc 4y ago
      > we exist in a world where it's hard to live without electricity and water. But a home is not hard to live without? I'm just pointing out the contradictions in the comment. > Health insurance is an American thing, the rest of the developed world includes that in taxes. I'm French, but I can see on my pay stub how much goes to health insurance, and I have to pay for supplementary health insurance to cover beyond the basics. It's not an "American thing". > Internet and mobile phone (and in my case, landline) are the most unavoidable subscriptions. They are also far more expensive than they ought to be. Well, overpricing is an American thing then. I pay 10€/mo for unlimited calls, texts, data, and 25Gb roaming data, and 30€/mo for 5Gbps unlimited internet.
rr808 4y ago
I figure there are two types of people. Those that subscribe to services and mostly forget about them. And people like me who monitor everything and unsub as soon as they can.
Apreche 4y ago
Customers hate paying subscriptions, but I don't see any alternative under capitalism. Someone makes a piece of software. What are they supposed to do, just close up shop and fire everyone when it's "done?" You need people to maintain the software. Fix bugs. Add new features. The expenses for the company do not end. Therefore it can't operate if its revenues end. If every customer only pays money to the company exactly once, it would have to be an absurd amount for the company to be sustainable in the long run. The only way it's going to work is if there's a steady predictable influx of cash, and that means subscriptions. If someone thinks they have a real solution to this problem, message me. I want in on it.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  [dead]
- endisneigh 4y ago
  The solution (that I don’t really see happening) is some perishability that’s enforced cryptographically. Then you purchase one off, and as you enjoy it, it slowly will perish.
- timthorn 4y ago
  The software industry survived for several decades without subscriptions. The installed base grew, people paid for upgrades, publishers managed their expenses and road maps to keep them profitable.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    But also, tons of companies went out of business because revenue dried up. The industry survived, most individual companies did not.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I think it's pretty hard to say that was because they weren't doing subscriptions. Tons of companies will always go out of business because of various reasons. That was true then, that's just as true now.
esperent 4y ago
Everyone is going to comment on how ironic it is that Bloomberg, which sells subscriptions, published this article. Please don't let this comment thread turn into a thousand repetitions of this trite observation. Because it's not ironic. A news publication being willing to publish articles critical of itself is a good thing. It means it's a healthy publication. Whether you like Bloomberg or not, we should be applauding it for being willing to publish self criticism.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I absolutely applaud it, but it's still ironic!
- jiggywiggy 4y ago
  Haha I see even more comments how pious they are to have managed to have max 2 or even zero subscriptions!
- woleium 4y ago
  It's great that this is the top comment. It's sad but unsurprising that the second to top comment is a thread chain about how ironic this article is.
  - MrGilbert 4y ago
    It always repeats itself: Commenters that pick the obvious and leave a snarky comment (me), and others, who damn the former. The truth lies somewhere in between.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Also aren't the writers separate from people who are developing the website and their subscription offerings? I see this all the time when news agencies decry privacy on the web, yet their websites are often one of the worst examples for any kind of digital privacy.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
world2vec 4y ago
Who's we? Nobody is forced to subscribe to every little fad. I have a subscription to Spotify and Github Copilot, that's it (and rent if we consider it a subscription which it kinda is).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wilde 4y ago
  Do you just pirate all video? Or endure YT ads?
  - t344344 4y ago
    YT has ads? Who is browsing today without malware filtering?
  - jascination 4y ago
    On YouTube web if you use sponsorblock + ublock origin (or S-Tube if you have an androidTV), it becomes a quite amazing experience. Not strictly ethical I guess but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - wilde 4y ago
      I’d file that under pirating. I don’t judge folks for pirating, but I think it’s a little rich to be like “why does anyone pay for things they could steal”.
      - tomjen3 4y ago
        I skipped the ads in the (very excellent) podcast I listened to today. I used the forward button. Someone paid a fortune to put ads on busses to force me to see them. If I look away, am I somehow stealing from them?
      - paulclinger 4y ago
        I find this logic strange, as I'm not obligated to watch the ads (so I use adblock), even though I know they pay for the service. By the same logic, someone may complain that I'm paying by credit card balance in full each month and still getting all the benefits while someone else is paying for the service I use (plus whatever merchant/interchange fees CCs are charging).
stevespang 4y ago
[dead]
dumpsterlid 4y ago
[dead]
wand3r 4y ago
I use a dedicated credit card for my subscriptions so I can see exactly what I am paying per month. Subscriptions are pretty annoying but being able to accurately see them is at least something. You can go in and prune things with waning value and additionally see what monthly cost looks like as it is the full CC bill. I understand the fascination with subscriptions from a business perspective but of course it is annoying as hell as a consumer.
vmoore 4y ago
I reached subscription fatigue about a decade ago. Now I'm really economical about what I pay for online. There are certain things that I've committed to like web hosting & domain renewals which will be renewed for as long as possible. I have an agreement with my registrar that specific domains should NOT be allowed to expire, even outside of ICANN's ten year window. I paid my registrar in advance of ICANN's arbitrary ten year limit and my domains (and hosting) are golden for the next 50 years. As for Netflix, Disney+ etc I only pay if there's some show I will be watching. I nuke the account if there's no shows I will be watching. This is basic financial hygiene. Why pay for something you don't use?
- saaaaaam 4y ago
  If you’re that worried about domain expiry then how on earth can your registrar offer a warranty that satisfies you? Registrars can go bust. Hosts can go bust.
- vladd 4y ago
  Which registrar are you using that allows payment in advance beyond 10 years?
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  Better to pirate content. Subscription services universally tramples on your freedom by forcing you to run DRM code.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Spotify is the only subscription worth having due to its recommendations and convenience. I can pirate everything else.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  Thanks for letting everyone know you're a thief and an asshole, too.
Animats 4y ago
"Subscribe now for unlimited access to Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg app Global news that uncovers a new tomorrow. Cancel anytime. Claim this offer"
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
It's the never-ending game of get the maximum bag See, advertising was getting the bag for a while but that's crashing as people reject the constant surveillance that feeds it Now that they hooked you though, they need to make sure to keep advertising backed levels of profit growth in order to ensure that stock prices continue to rise, so the only thing to do is....raise prices. But shit, you don't pay anything now, or if you do it's too low to cover the spread and you won't like an annual dollar figure, plus if we have recurring revenue and dark patterns then we can make sure we just trickle and trick you into giving us way more than you ever would have if we had a regular subscription to start. So it's pretty simple - it's the never-ending game of, how can we use the promise of infinite money (raising money) to find high margin profit for our investors, make switching costs hard and then deliver the minimum level of service to ensure that you don't get so fed up that you easily switch.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  > people reject the constant surveillance that feeds it I’m curious about this. Is this an opinion or is there data to support this? I’m interested because my intuition (not supported by data) is that the average person doesn’t care about that kind of thing, and the most likely explanation is that the volume of advertising is getting absolutely ridiculous.
  - yazzku 4y ago
    Yeah, they got the effect right but not the cause.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    All you have to do is look at legislation globally around data, as well as the massive un-allocated advertising placement over the last year or two https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-digital-media-ad-market-is-getting-hit-hard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-dig...
- dgudkov 4y ago
  > It's the never-ending game of get the maximum bag Yeah, it's an ages old game. It's called capitalism.
metadat 4y ago
https://archive.today/Yi331 https://archive.today/Yi331
wenbin 4y ago
It’s time to advocate subscription by day! Instead of Monthly Billing, a Daily Alternative for SaaS: https://www.listennotes.com/blog/instead-of-monthly-billing-a-daily-alternative-48/ https://www.listennotes.com/blog/instead-of-monthly-billing-...
mvexel 4y ago
Check out your local library website. They likely offer free access to popular newspapers, magazines, services like consumer reports, streaming movies.
lapcat 4y ago
I like subscriptions such as Netflix and HBO where I can subscribe for a month or two, watch everything I want, and then cancel. I'm not sure how you can get an entire year's worth of value from them.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
We're drowning in monopoly. The problem with subscriptions is that they are for catalogues. In order for a subscription to have value, its catalogue must be diverse. But what does that get us? A small number of services each with their own relatively diverse catalogue. In other words: an oligopoly of media empires.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
So, speaking for the "other side" ... I'm a small software developer ($200k/year or so), and for us having subscriptions (i.e. monthly payments; no activation/license implications) smooths out our revenue so that we do not get caught up in "oh god revenue is down, we need to do a release!" mentality. I think this benefits our users; it certainly benefits development, which can instead be led by more natural processes.
- rdsnsca 4y ago
  1Password going subscription, on macOS, certainly didn't benefit Mac users. We lost a native app and got an electron replacement with less features.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    That doesn't like it has much to do with the subscription. Seriously, I could probably not have spent the last 14 years working full time on Ardour if not for a subscription model to smooth out the income flow.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > I think this benefits our users How? I think that subscriptions to pay for software is deeply user-hostile, personally.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    This is not a "subscription" that must be kept active in order to use the software. That, I agree 100%, is hostile. For ardour.org, it's more of a "pay over N months", smoothing out our income flow. If you stop paying, nothing changes about your use of the software you already have.
imgabe 4y ago
Who is drowning? You don't have to subscribe to Panera if you don't want to. Is it that hard to just ignore things you're not interested in? There are millions of products and services being offered that I don't want to buy. None of them make me feel like I'm "drowning".
tamade 4y ago
Is there a card program for subscriptions? Similar to how Ramp or Brex manage SaaS payments but for personal use.
jemmyw 4y ago
My parents bought a paper, now you can subscribe to a newspaper site and get access to more news stories than you'd care to read. We paid a license fee for having a TV (in the UK) which was about the same I now pay for Netflix (though if you still live in the UK you have to pay both, but I'd happily pay for access to the BBC). I used to spend a lot more on CDs and get access to far less music than Spotify. So my argument is that these subscriptions are better value for the money, provided you're sensible about it and don't subscribe to things you don't get value from.
- dudul 4y ago
  And now you don't own your music, your movies, your newspapers.
  - jemmyw 4y ago
    So? From that list the only one I'd care about is music, I'm not into watching films over and over. The number of CDs I've had that got all scratched up. I used to rip everything and had a massive audio file collection too. I do not miss it.
indus 4y ago
Lament the fact that businesses are being labeled as “evil.” Agree that reprimands have to be issued to services that have dark patterns. Majority of businesses provide a very legit flow of getting in and then exiting. When was the last time you tried canceling your Netflix and it wasn’t possible? Or the same for your local newspaper? As users we need to be mindful of what we consume. Bad habits of majority from smoking to drinking and now subscribing.
distantsounds 4y ago
https://archive.is/Yi331 https://archive.is/Yi331
butterlesstoast 4y ago
Shoot. I didn’t have a Bloomberg subscription so I couldn’t read it.
algustionesa 4y ago
Subscriptions are inevitable, but you can save a lot on digital subscriptions like I did. I wrote a blog post on how to slash subscription costs which you can find here: https://algustionesa.com/save-money-digital-subscriptions/ https://algustionesa.com/save-money-digital-subscriptions/
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I save even more on subscriptions by refusing to subscribe.
hnbear 4y ago
We have two Panera subscriptions. Our kids love their drinks, my wife and I like the iced tea and iced coffee. We'd spent more than that at Starbucks, or Dunkin per month, so it was an easy switch and actually saves a lot of money. In terms of privacy, the Panera staff were shocked the first time I went through the drive through and my name came up as Mr. Panera Bread. They asked if I was the CEO. Obviously I changed the name to "Mr. Panera CEO". Now they know it's us and laugh. Subscriptions are definitely becoming overkill, but in some ways it's also easier to manage recurring monthly expenses than random ones. I have a spreadsheet with monthly bills and creating a subscription section was easy. They all go on the same card (probably bad from a privacy perspective, but the names and emails are generally unique per vendor). Now I get better visibility and can easily change subscriptions. We chop and change pretty often reviewing what we spend on. We've also used Amazon's Subscribe and Save for years. It's pretty handy to have a continuous supply of stuff that's regularly in demand. We review it every quarter or so and cut out the unused items. In the past failing to monitor it well has meant we have a dozen gallon sized Listerines, or more Tide than we'll use in a year build up, but then either it lasts, or we donate it to a food pantry. What's odd with Subscribe and Save is how many weird and one-off products appear with a subscribe and save option. I'm not sure if it's hopeful merchants, or Amazon's funkiness in their algos, but you can find bizarre things on recurring subscription. No, I don't need a monthly Raspberry Pi, or quarterly set of speakers.
Reubenmento 4y ago
[dead]

94 points by redbell 4y ago

Being offered a subscription while reading an opinion piece about drowning in subscriptions is a meta joke I really enjoy.

michaelteter 4y ago
Especially given the monopoly cash cow that is Bloomberg terminal subscriptions.
- incone123 4y ago
  There was a post on here a few days ago about an open source alternative: openbb.co
  - michaelteter 4y ago
    Yeah, but the big problem is that a lot of deals get made in the terminal chat system. Access to that chat system can be very important to doing business depending on the user's role.
    - incone123 4y ago
      I hadn't thought of that, but I did wonder how it would compete for supplying data feeds.
inconceivable 4y ago
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Newspapers have always had a subscription. You used to pay 3-4 bucks every day, now all they want is a few bucks a month. It's not ironic.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  On the whole, I think paying for each day's paper is a lot "healthier" for the consumer. You only pay for the days you actually read the paper, and you're aware that you're making a payment each time. You can't just forget about it. You can also read five different papers on five different days depending on which one strikes your fancy, leading to a more balanced news diet. A problem I'm having right now is that I want to get news from multiple sources, but I can't afford to subscribe to all of the major papers, I have to choose one!
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Back when people subscribed to newspapers a subscription was cheaper than daily purchases by far. Having someone bring it and come to your door to collect was easier. This is back when this was the only way aside from word of mouth to be informed (daily news touches on stories but moves on quickly)
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  The fact that I have to pay for news is not what this article is about. It's about getting hammered with subscriptions left and right, while getting subsciption popups on the same page at the same time. I find that amusing.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I also appreciate the irony, although it is of course worth noting that different people were almost certainly responsible for the website and the article (and this type of firewall is in fact a mark of a good paper).
- yazzku 4y ago
  Except that then they make cancelling the subscription hard or impossible. https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/new-york-times-makes-subscription-cancellations-exceedingly-difficult-for-consumers-class-action-lawsuit-alleges/ https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/new-york-times-makes-su... Create a subscription? -> Click this button! Cancel? -> Oh, sorry to hear that. You will need to call one of our representatives. 8am-7pm Monday-Friday, EST.

crtified 4y ago

Hooking customers into some form of ongoing dependence must be one of the oldest business tricks in the book. In that sense, there's also a certain irony in this being 'news'.

janandonly 4y ago

The en and flow of bundeling and unbundling. Every couple of years “bundeling” becomes popular. Then, after some more years, people want to pay less and have more varied options, so “un-bundeling” comes in vogue again. I guess we have now reached peak-unbundeling. We pay for everything separately, like video to Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, PrimeVideo and so on. But already the cracks are beginning to show in this unbundled system. I heard recently that Disney is open to licensing their content for other platforms again.

acadapter 4y ago

I'm not

throwayyy479087 4y ago

I disagree with this - subscriptions align the price to users services with the cost to create them. Better than pricing Windows XP at $300 or something like they used to, then using that one-off cost to pay for ongoing support, security fixes, driver work etc.

xdennis 4y ago
Before you buy it you're told how long it's going to be supported. It's not like you pay 300 for the product and the company gives you support from the kindness of their hearts. If what you say is true, then subscriptions would get cheaper as more people subscribe, but that's not the case. They just pocket the profit. Subscriptions allow companies to extract more money from their clients, which is , of course, what companies are meant to do. But don't give me that nonsense about making it a more fair alignment between cost and price.
- spacebanana7 4y ago
  > If what you say is true, then subscriptions would get cheaper as more people subscribe, but that's not the case. They just pocket the profit. The OP’s point could have been better phrased by stating that subscriptions provide an ongoing incentive for companies to support products to minimise churn. Yes they’ll extract almost 100% margin on recurring customers but it’s better than the alternative of one off payment structures where the company is incentived to minimise ongoing costs to the extent they can avoid legal troubles. If you made a one off payment to a newspaper they’d be incentivised to write low cost articles forevermore because they’ll never get any more money out if you. If you make a one off payment for an OS there’s little incentive to bother with security fixes short of again litigation.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    In the other model terms are described up front and you are given terms for support which the company factors into the price. In both models minimizing cost is the goal. In your model the customer loses ownership which means after the break even period the company keeps getting paid vs the loyal user can keep getting usage for free. The customer loses control over the tool. The subscription model is designed against loyalty and needs to cast a wider net they do this by offering free tiers and free periods where the hope is to hook the user. This gets them many low value users who are looking to extract as much value without paying and they will wait for black friday sales, subscribe for brief periods, share services or abuse free tiers. Better for users to have a version that always works on certain operating systems than ongoing payments and out of your control system changes

grapesurgeon 4y ago

[dead]

thatwasunusual 4y ago

Great. I need to subscribe to read the article.

fidrelity 4y ago

The only subscriptions I have is my rent and a very specific podcast I chose wisely. Everything else was avoidable until now. While it's true that one is forced more and more into subscriptions, there is still choice involved. I recently looked for a coin tracking tool, trialing about 5 different solutions and in the end went for the one that offered a lifetime deal. Some businesses are waking up to this fact and potential competitive advantage, as are some indiehackers already.

justeleblanc 4y ago
You don't pay for electricity, water, internet, mobile phone, health insurance, home insurance...?
- rwmj 4y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily classify electricity and water as subscriptions since you mostly pay only for what you use. There is a fixed fee as well, but the supplier is providing and maintaining the infrastructure so that seems fair, plus we exist in a world where it's hard to live without electricity and water. I look forward to the time when we can practically go off grid with solar and using an EV as battery. Health insurance is an American thing, the rest of the developed world includes that in taxes. Internet and mobile phone (and in my case, landline) are the most unavoidable subscriptions. They are also far more expensive than they ought to be.
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    > we exist in a world where it's hard to live without electricity and water. But a home is not hard to live without? I'm just pointing out the contradictions in the comment. > Health insurance is an American thing, the rest of the developed world includes that in taxes. I'm French, but I can see on my pay stub how much goes to health insurance, and I have to pay for supplementary health insurance to cover beyond the basics. It's not an "American thing". > Internet and mobile phone (and in my case, landline) are the most unavoidable subscriptions. They are also far more expensive than they ought to be. Well, overpricing is an American thing then. I pay 10€/mo for unlimited calls, texts, data, and 25Gb roaming data, and 30€/mo for 5Gbps unlimited internet.

rr808 4y ago

I figure there are two types of people. Those that subscribe to services and mostly forget about them. And people like me who monitor everything and unsub as soon as they can.

Apreche 4y ago

Customers hate paying subscriptions, but I don't see any alternative under capitalism. Someone makes a piece of software. What are they supposed to do, just close up shop and fire everyone when it's "done?" You need people to maintain the software. Fix bugs. Add new features. The expenses for the company do not end. Therefore it can't operate if its revenues end. If every customer only pays money to the company exactly once, it would have to be an absurd amount for the company to be sustainable in the long run. The only way it's going to work is if there's a steady predictable influx of cash, and that means subscriptions. If someone thinks they have a real solution to this problem, message me. I want in on it.

mandmandam 4y ago
[dead]
endisneigh 4y ago
The solution (that I don’t really see happening) is some perishability that’s enforced cryptographically. Then you purchase one off, and as you enjoy it, it slowly will perish.
timthorn 4y ago
The software industry survived for several decades without subscriptions. The installed base grew, people paid for upgrades, publishers managed their expenses and road maps to keep them profitable.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  But also, tons of companies went out of business because revenue dried up. The industry survived, most individual companies did not.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I think it's pretty hard to say that was because they weren't doing subscriptions. Tons of companies will always go out of business because of various reasons. That was true then, that's just as true now.

esperent 4y ago

Everyone is going to comment on how ironic it is that Bloomberg, which sells subscriptions, published this article. Please don't let this comment thread turn into a thousand repetitions of this trite observation. Because it's not ironic. A news publication being willing to publish articles critical of itself is a good thing. It means it's a healthy publication. Whether you like Bloomberg or not, we should be applauding it for being willing to publish self criticism.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I absolutely applaud it, but it's still ironic!
jiggywiggy 4y ago
Haha I see even more comments how pious they are to have managed to have max 2 or even zero subscriptions!
woleium 4y ago
It's great that this is the top comment. It's sad but unsurprising that the second to top comment is a thread chain about how ironic this article is.
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  It always repeats itself: Commenters that pick the obvious and leave a snarky comment (me), and others, who damn the former. The truth lies somewhere in between.
jacooper 4y ago
Also aren't the writers separate from people who are developing the website and their subscription offerings? I see this all the time when news agencies decry privacy on the web, yet their websites are often one of the worst examples for any kind of digital privacy.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

world2vec 4y ago

Who's we? Nobody is forced to subscribe to every little fad. I have a subscription to Spotify and Github Copilot, that's it (and rent if we consider it a subscription which it kinda is).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wilde 4y ago
Do you just pirate all video? Or endure YT ads?
- t344344 4y ago
  YT has ads? Who is browsing today without malware filtering?
- jascination 4y ago
  On YouTube web if you use sponsorblock + ublock origin (or S-Tube if you have an androidTV), it becomes a quite amazing experience. Not strictly ethical I guess but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - wilde 4y ago
    I’d file that under pirating. I don’t judge folks for pirating, but I think it’s a little rich to be like “why does anyone pay for things they could steal”.
    - tomjen3 4y ago
      I skipped the ads in the (very excellent) podcast I listened to today. I used the forward button. Someone paid a fortune to put ads on busses to force me to see them. If I look away, am I somehow stealing from them?
    - paulclinger 4y ago
      I find this logic strange, as I'm not obligated to watch the ads (so I use adblock), even though I know they pay for the service. By the same logic, someone may complain that I'm paying by credit card balance in full each month and still getting all the benefits while someone else is paying for the service I use (plus whatever merchant/interchange fees CCs are charging).

stevespang 4y ago

[dead]

dumpsterlid 4y ago

[dead]

wand3r 4y ago

I use a dedicated credit card for my subscriptions so I can see exactly what I am paying per month. Subscriptions are pretty annoying but being able to accurately see them is at least something. You can go in and prune things with waning value and additionally see what monthly cost looks like as it is the full CC bill. I understand the fascination with subscriptions from a business perspective but of course it is annoying as hell as a consumer.

vmoore 4y ago

I reached subscription fatigue about a decade ago. Now I'm really economical about what I pay for online. There are certain things that I've committed to like web hosting & domain renewals which will be renewed for as long as possible. I have an agreement with my registrar that specific domains should NOT be allowed to expire, even outside of ICANN's ten year window. I paid my registrar in advance of ICANN's arbitrary ten year limit and my domains (and hosting) are golden for the next 50 years. As for Netflix, Disney+ etc I only pay if there's some show I will be watching. I nuke the account if there's no shows I will be watching. This is basic financial hygiene. Why pay for something you don't use?

saaaaaam 4y ago
If you’re that worried about domain expiry then how on earth can your registrar offer a warranty that satisfies you? Registrars can go bust. Hosts can go bust.
vladd 4y ago
Which registrar are you using that allows payment in advance beyond 10 years?
alwayslikethis 4y ago
Better to pirate content. Subscription services universally tramples on your freedom by forcing you to run DRM code.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

Spotify is the only subscription worth having due to its recommendations and convenience. I can pirate everything else.

listenallyall 4y ago
Thanks for letting everyone know you're a thief and an asshole, too.

Animats 4y ago

"Subscribe now for unlimited access to Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg app Global news that uncovers a new tomorrow. Cancel anytime. Claim this offer"

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

It's the never-ending game of get the maximum bag See, advertising was getting the bag for a while but that's crashing as people reject the constant surveillance that feeds it Now that they hooked you though, they need to make sure to keep advertising backed levels of profit growth in order to ensure that stock prices continue to rise, so the only thing to do is....raise prices. But shit, you don't pay anything now, or if you do it's too low to cover the spread and you won't like an annual dollar figure, plus if we have recurring revenue and dark patterns then we can make sure we just trickle and trick you into giving us way more than you ever would have if we had a regular subscription to start. So it's pretty simple - it's the never-ending game of, how can we use the promise of infinite money (raising money) to find high margin profit for our investors, make switching costs hard and then deliver the minimum level of service to ensure that you don't get so fed up that you easily switch.

Waterluvian 4y ago
> people reject the constant surveillance that feeds it I’m curious about this. Is this an opinion or is there data to support this? I’m interested because my intuition (not supported by data) is that the average person doesn’t care about that kind of thing, and the most likely explanation is that the volume of advertising is getting absolutely ridiculous.
- yazzku 4y ago
  Yeah, they got the effect right but not the cause.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  All you have to do is look at legislation globally around data, as well as the massive un-allocated advertising placement over the last year or two https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-digital-media-ad-market-is-getting-hit-hard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-dig...
dgudkov 4y ago
> It's the never-ending game of get the maximum bag Yeah, it's an ages old game. It's called capitalism.

metadat 4y ago

https://archive.today/Yi331 https://archive.today/Yi331

wenbin 4y ago

It’s time to advocate subscription by day! Instead of Monthly Billing, a Daily Alternative for SaaS: https://www.listennotes.com/blog/instead-of-monthly-billing-a-daily-alternative-48/ https://www.listennotes.com/blog/instead-of-monthly-billing-...

mvexel 4y ago

Check out your local library website. They likely offer free access to popular newspapers, magazines, services like consumer reports, streaming movies.

lapcat 4y ago

I like subscriptions such as Netflix and HBO where I can subscribe for a month or two, watch everything I want, and then cancel. I'm not sure how you can get an entire year's worth of value from them.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

We're drowning in monopoly. The problem with subscriptions is that they are for catalogues. In order for a subscription to have value, its catalogue must be diverse. But what does that get us? A small number of services each with their own relatively diverse catalogue. In other words: an oligopoly of media empires.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

So, speaking for the "other side" ... I'm a small software developer ($200k/year or so), and for us having subscriptions (i.e. monthly payments; no activation/license implications) smooths out our revenue so that we do not get caught up in "oh god revenue is down, we need to do a release!" mentality. I think this benefits our users; it certainly benefits development, which can instead be led by more natural processes.

rdsnsca 4y ago
1Password going subscription, on macOS, certainly didn't benefit Mac users. We lost a native app and got an electron replacement with less features.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  That doesn't like it has much to do with the subscription. Seriously, I could probably not have spent the last 14 years working full time on Ardour if not for a subscription model to smooth out the income flow.
JohnFen 4y ago
> I think this benefits our users How? I think that subscriptions to pay for software is deeply user-hostile, personally.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  This is not a "subscription" that must be kept active in order to use the software. That, I agree 100%, is hostile. For ardour.org, it's more of a "pay over N months", smoothing out our income flow. If you stop paying, nothing changes about your use of the software you already have.

imgabe 4y ago

Who is drowning? You don't have to subscribe to Panera if you don't want to. Is it that hard to just ignore things you're not interested in? There are millions of products and services being offered that I don't want to buy. None of them make me feel like I'm "drowning".

tamade 4y ago

Is there a card program for subscriptions? Similar to how Ramp or Brex manage SaaS payments but for personal use.

jemmyw 4y ago

My parents bought a paper, now you can subscribe to a newspaper site and get access to more news stories than you'd care to read. We paid a license fee for having a TV (in the UK) which was about the same I now pay for Netflix (though if you still live in the UK you have to pay both, but I'd happily pay for access to the BBC). I used to spend a lot more on CDs and get access to far less music than Spotify. So my argument is that these subscriptions are better value for the money, provided you're sensible about it and don't subscribe to things you don't get value from.

dudul 4y ago
And now you don't own your music, your movies, your newspapers.
- jemmyw 4y ago
  So? From that list the only one I'd care about is music, I'm not into watching films over and over. The number of CDs I've had that got all scratched up. I used to rip everything and had a massive audio file collection too. I do not miss it.

indus 4y ago

Lament the fact that businesses are being labeled as “evil.” Agree that reprimands have to be issued to services that have dark patterns. Majority of businesses provide a very legit flow of getting in and then exiting. When was the last time you tried canceling your Netflix and it wasn’t possible? Or the same for your local newspaper? As users we need to be mindful of what we consume. Bad habits of majority from smoking to drinking and now subscribing.

distantsounds 4y ago

https://archive.is/Yi331 https://archive.is/Yi331

butterlesstoast 4y ago

Shoot. I didn’t have a Bloomberg subscription so I couldn’t read it.

algustionesa 4y ago

Subscriptions are inevitable, but you can save a lot on digital subscriptions like I did. I wrote a blog post on how to slash subscription costs which you can find here: https://algustionesa.com/save-money-digital-subscriptions/ https://algustionesa.com/save-money-digital-subscriptions/

JohnFen 4y ago
I save even more on subscriptions by refusing to subscribe.

hnbear 4y ago

We have two Panera subscriptions. Our kids love their drinks, my wife and I like the iced tea and iced coffee. We'd spent more than that at Starbucks, or Dunkin per month, so it was an easy switch and actually saves a lot of money. In terms of privacy, the Panera staff were shocked the first time I went through the drive through and my name came up as Mr. Panera Bread. They asked if I was the CEO. Obviously I changed the name to "Mr. Panera CEO". Now they know it's us and laugh. Subscriptions are definitely becoming overkill, but in some ways it's also easier to manage recurring monthly expenses than random ones. I have a spreadsheet with monthly bills and creating a subscription section was easy. They all go on the same card (probably bad from a privacy perspective, but the names and emails are generally unique per vendor). Now I get better visibility and can easily change subscriptions. We chop and change pretty often reviewing what we spend on. We've also used Amazon's Subscribe and Save for years. It's pretty handy to have a continuous supply of stuff that's regularly in demand. We review it every quarter or so and cut out the unused items. In the past failing to monitor it well has meant we have a dozen gallon sized Listerines, or more Tide than we'll use in a year build up, but then either it lasts, or we donate it to a food pantry. What's odd with Subscribe and Save is how many weird and one-off products appear with a subscribe and save option. I'm not sure if it's hopeful merchants, or Amazon's funkiness in their algos, but you can find bizarre things on recurring subscription. No, I don't need a monthly Raspberry Pi, or quarterly set of speakers.

Reubenmento 4y ago

[dead]