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> 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

> 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