Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Subscription Hell

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 610 posts

Re: Subscription Hell

#221

Post by lajhsdfkl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #74
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they win if they end up making less money? What you are paying for is journalists doing research every month to produce those articles so you could access them on demand. If you want that on demand access you need to pay them for the work they do every month not the work they do one off.

They win because they make more money. One of the challenges is that if you look at this as a single consumer / single producer model it is very hard to see the economics. That is why internet advertising is also hard to see sometimes. Nearly everyone I know tells me "How do they make any money on internet ads? I never click on them." And for lots of people that is true, but for another population it is not true. And…

>They win because they make more money.

You have no data to back any of your hand wavy assertions. You are not smarter than the people that decide the business model for these publications. People are not willing to pay 10 or 20 cents to read articles that they clicked on a whim. We already know this from the app economy.

Re: Subscription Hell

#222

Post by icebraining »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #46
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

> Sure, have a subscription service for something that needs upkeep, like a syncing service (but get out of here if all you do is just lump it into the user's iCloud storage) or a data feed. This. If you sell an app and service together, you can charge a recurring fee. If your app is more traditional, then a one time fee for the app is appropriate. Note, this does not mean that you can just add a service willy nilly…

That's crap is not exactly a great reason for why one can or can't do something. I'm reading a lot of people with strong opinions, but I'd like to see the reasoning behind them.

Re: Subscription Hell

#223

Post by AmericanChopper »

hedora wrote: post #79
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

The real innovation of the *aaS model is that you no longer need to compete with prior versions of your own software or hardware infrastructure. You can hike prices, cut engineering costs, cut some nines off your availability, defeature, or just plain embrace incompetence, and, in the short term, it will improve your balance sheet. Of course, in the long term, customers will revolt, and do so swiftly, and without mer…

Releasing new features and improvements is highly incentivized in the *aaS model. It’s the main way of boosting ARPC, and as you mentioned, if you fail to do it, you’ll be very vulnerable to competition. It doesn’t alway suit every situation, but in those that it does, it benefits both consumers and merchants.

Re: Subscription Hell

#224

Post by anfogoat »

techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

Ulysses has a custom markdown feature that I thought was great. The only problem was that you couldn't use it without opting in to use their own file based storage schema. So if you wanted to store your writings in "regular" files and sync them yourself etc., you couldn't use the custom markdown feature.

I thought this was absolutely ridiculous since the custom markdown would have simply gotten written as plain text. I asked why they're limiting the user like that and got even more ridiculous response: apparently they didn't want other people to get confused in case I ever shared the files that were outside their own file based schema. This non sequitur infuriated me enough to ditch the software.

None of it made any sense until they announced the subscription model.

Re: Subscription Hell

#225

Post by madeofpalk »

weavie wrote: post #183
FPGAhacker wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get this, but how much more predictable are subscriptions? I mean, unless you are holding customers hostage with data lock-in, they are going to come and go. And if you get a reputation as a hostage holder, you will likely spawn competition that avoids your negatives. I’m sure you will get some residual low hanging fruit in the form of people that buy subscriptions and don’t care enough to cancel. Doesn’t seem like…

Indeed they are going to come and go. But, generally this will be to a much more predictable level that if you are relying on upfront sales. Unless you really mess up your product, if someone subscribed last month, you can generally predict that there is a, say, 95% chance that they will still be subscribed next month. If it is a one off payment, then you know you aren't getting any income from them and you just have…

I look at something like Overcast. Great software that I subscribe to and give him his money. Almost by definition, and through great pains from the developer, there’s almost zero lock in for a podcast client.

Re: Subscription Hell

#226

Post by mike »

crooked-v wrote: post #185
rgbrenner wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About Ulysses specifically... they say when they were charging a monthly fee their users still expected regular updates after they paid.. and that sales would spike after a release, then fall to an unsustainable level: https://medium.com/building-ulysses/why-were-switching-ulyss... "that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of providing the software" That's just an unfounded assumption by the author. He sa…

I feel like Ulysses wouldn't have gotten nearly so many complaints if (a) they'd given some way cross-apply the license purchase price to a subscription, instead of expecting recent purchasers to shell out a premium price a second time to get updates, and (b) they'd actually had any substantial feature updates to show for it, instead of almost all attention since then going to just making the iOS app act more like th…

> some way cross-apply the license purchase price to a subscription

They did do this. From the footnote to to their original announcement[1]

Recent purchases of the Mac app will unlock up to 12 months of free use, and purchases of the iOS app will unlock up to 6 months of free use. Your individual free-use duration is calculated from your actual purchase date, respectively, and if you bought Ulysses on both platforms, we will add together both periods.

[1] https://ulyssesapp.com/blog/2017/08/ulysses-switches-to-subs...

Re: Subscription Hell

#227

Post by madeofpalk »

siidooloo wrote: post #198
ada1981 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been really stoked with Adobes offering around this, full access to all their products for $30 a month or so.

Except, if the only app you need is photoshop you can own Affiniy Photo for $30. Or, you can own Affinity Design for $30. And this one is the real kicker, Blackmagic is giving away most of what you need for free, and if you need more you can get a permanent license for a few hundred bucks. How long do you think it will be before Adobe starts really bleeding.

Adobe has had cheaper competitors for ever - basically the only move it’s competitors have is to be cheaper. Adobe still exists.

Re: Subscription Hell

#228

Post by [deleted] »

wutbrodo wrote: post #145
JauntTrooper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that model will work, honestly. There's friction anytime you ask someone to spend anything, even if the price is de minimis. Look what happens whenever a city adopts a $0.05 plastic bag tax. When Washington DC did it, plastic bag use dropped by 50% - 70%. I'd see people that just spent $30 bucks at the store with their arms overflowing with stuff rather than pay that extra nickel. I'd expect prompting u…

> I'd expect prompting users to choose whether reading a story is worth $0.05 to them every time will cause them to read and engage significantly less. The example that gives me a little bit of optimism in the long run is power: people don't really have a problem with the fact that their power bill is pay-per-use, and if it discourages them from unduly wasting power, all the better. But the problem you describe is st…

[deleted]

Re: Subscription Hell

#229

Post by amelius »

The reason for this hell is that it's so incredibly important for companies in this winner-takes-all world to be information gatekeepers. The eyeballs have to go through them first, so that people can be controlled into buying more of their content.

Re: Subscription Hell

#230

Post by Joeri »

sn0wfire wrote: post #88
xab9 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Webstorm? I do feel that I get value for my money and with the yearly fee I get all the updates (which are important in the ever changing world of web development), but sometimes it still feels like protection racket.

Jetbrains does not require subscriptions for continued use of any version. Purchasing a 12-month subscription (which is cheaper than their previous "perpetual license") gives you a perpetual license for the current version of software. This is actually my favourite licensing technique I have come across for software. https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...

There’s a difference though. Previously the version you ended up with was the one at the end of the year of updates. In the current model you have to reinstall the old version of the time of purchase, undoing the updates you got. It’s actually quite clever since you immediately notice what you’re missing by not paying.
Post reply on HN