3 ms·

I agree, I think that paying based on usage encourages people to use less, use only if they are sure that it's valuable to them. With a subscription you feel th

I agree, I think that paying based on usage encourages people to use less, use only if they are sure that it's valuable to them. With a subscription you feel the need to use more, just to not waste the money spent on the subscription. Using more is making a habit, and allows to see more sides of a product, which can encourage you to use it even more and pay for the next period of the subscription. I'm sure that if I was paying per song, I wouldn't be letting Spotify play random things with no end, or use it when I don't really have to, and then I wouldn't start to see the convenience it brings and that I don't mind paying that subscription. And now, after years of using it, I really wouldn't like to end that subscription, because I got so used to it.

n_ary 2y ago
> I think that paying based on usage encourages people to use less, use only if they are sure that it's valuable to them. With a subscription you feel the need to use more, just to not waste the money spent on the subscription. On the contrary, businesses make more money from people paying the fee and not utilising the service enough. If we moved to pay-as-you-go, the price would rise proportionally because the small fraction of 100% utilisation users would no longer get subsidised by forgetful folks forgetting their subscription or just hoping to use it occasionally. Think about a small data center. A small portion of users will constantly blast away the VM at 90% CPU and saturate(use) the bandwidth while the majority will sit idle at 2-5% utilisation. If all VMs are being pushed to 90%+, the cost of operation goes up immediately and the price will go up to keep the margin healthy. Not a decent example but hopefully gets my point across.
- rileymat2 2y ago
  This is only the case if the high users are not canceled by the service upon being detected. Many businesses use this model where it is "unlimited" but they cancel customers that are using it in an unlimited way.

n_ary 2y ago

> I think that paying based on usage encourages people to use less, use only if they are sure that it's valuable to them. With a subscription you feel the need to use more, just to not waste the money spent on the subscription. On the contrary, businesses make more money from people paying the fee and not utilising the service enough. If we moved to pay-as-you-go, the price would rise proportionally because the small fraction of 100% utilisation users would no longer get subsidised by forgetful folks forgetting their subscription or just hoping to use it occasionally. Think about a small data center. A small portion of users will constantly blast away the VM at 90% CPU and saturate(use) the bandwidth while the majority will sit idle at 2-5% utilisation. If all VMs are being pushed to 90%+, the cost of operation goes up immediately and the price will go up to keep the margin healthy. Not a decent example but hopefully gets my point across.

rileymat2 2y ago
This is only the case if the high users are not canceled by the service upon being detected. Many businesses use this model where it is "unlimited" but they cancel customers that are using it in an unlimited way.