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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#301

Post by scarface74 »

makomk wrote: post #182
always_good wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet you left your entire argument up to our imagination. I explained why I find the description fitting. You could at least entertain us with why "future users pay for your upgrades" does not fit in the context of one-time-paid "perpetual license" software beyond disagreeing with the phrase I chose to name the predicament.

It seems to me that there's one very obvious difference: once software is created, creating more copies of it is almost free. The reason pyramid schemes collapse is that they require an exponentially increasing amount of new deposits to keep up with the payments owed to existing depositors, and that's just not how software publishing works. So long as there's a sufficient stream of customers buying, it doesn't cost m…

But with the way that App Store economics work, you can't easily charge for upgrades but both iOS and Android have new versions yearly with new features that users expect you to implement.

Re: Subscription Hell

#302

Post by wutbrodo »

reitanqild wrote: post #220
wutbrodo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a LOT of effort put behind micro transactions for publishing, from companies that have all the resources and incentive in the world, like Google. The market simply doesn't want it. The average consumer isn't remotely rational enough to amortize a subscription cost and compare it to a unit cost. The way they process the incentives of a subscription is more like: "once you've reached the threshold where…

> There has been a LOT of effort put behind micro transactions for publishing, from companies that have all the resources and incentive in the world, like Google. I feel I used to follow Google quite closely before and I cannot remember seing any hints of this. My feeling has rather been that any form for paying has been looked at as second class compared to ads at that company. Youtube Red still isn't available here…

Eep, I may have inadvertently been referring to information about internal trials. Suffice it to say that a public offering isn't the first step to trying out a product direction, nor is it the only way to get feedback from the market (given that a tried and failed public product incurs substantial costs).

EDIT: thanks to the downthread comment, I see that the pilot I was thinking of apparently became Contributor. This is pretty much exactly what many in this thread are talking about, with the significant difference being that there are few participating sites, and the ones on there are generally targeted at the kinds of demographics who care an unusual amount about avoiding ads. The reason there's barely any buy-in on the content provider side is because most sites know that their readers wouldn't like it.

Re: Subscription Hell

#303

Post by scarface74 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #225
weavie wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but Marco said that only about 10% pay for subscriptions. That's why he created his own ad platform.

Re: Subscription Hell

#304

Post by zerowellies »

cube2222 wrote: post #299
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…

I must say I actually love the subscription model that is becoming the de facto standard. If you sell a one time license to somebody there is no incentive for the seller to keep making the product better, to care keep caring for you. With a subscription model - especially a non-annually-paid one, they have to keep working to keep you. It's also a way more sustainable business model and probably the only thing which c…

How many products need constant feature updates? Aside from security/compatibility there are plenty of products that already meet everything required of them (to near everyone). How many new features does a file manager need? An PDF reader?

For Facebook - I don't think forced subscription would work. People would be forced to think about how much they value the service (a less ubiquitous one at that).

Re: Subscription Hell

#305

Post by hk__2 »

zerowellies wrote: post #304
cube2222 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say I actually love the subscription model that is becoming the de facto standard. If you sell a one time license to somebody there is no incentive for the seller to keep making the product better, to care keep caring for you. With a subscription model - especially a non-annually-paid one, they have to keep working to keep you. It's also a way more sustainable business model and probably the only thing which c…

How many products need constant feature updates? Aside from security/compatibility there are plenty of products that already meet everything required of them (to near everyone). How many new features does a file manager need? An PDF reader? For Facebook - I don't think forced subscription would work. People would be forced to think about how much they value the service (a less ubiquitous one at that).

> How many products need constant feature updates? Aside from security/compatibility there are plenty of products that already meet everything required of them (to near everyone). How many new features does a file manager need? An PDF reader?

Do you have any example of file managers or PDF readers with a subscription-based model?

Re: Subscription Hell

#306

Post by paulific »

komali2 wrote: post #270

>One way we could fix that situation would be to allow subscriptions to combine together more cheaply. We are starting to see this too: Spotify, Hulu, and Scribd appear to be investigating a deal in which consumers can get a joint subscription from these services for a lower rate. Setapp is a set of more than one hundred OS X apps that come bundled for about $10 a month. I understand the attraction to this, but it ma…

Hope you're enjoying it anyway. I think the Japanese look on it more as a salad bar or smorgasbord "So many good deals!" but maybe I've been living here too long. Some of the variants have to do with JR being split up into different regional companies so each of them wants their own initiative on top of the common one.

Re: Subscription Hell

#307

Post by jaydz »

makecheck wrote: post #202
scarface74 wrote: post #2

You can't have it both ways. Either you pay for high quality content or you deal with intrusive ads.

You’re overstating the two options here. The choices might be to pay or see ads , but there is NOTHING requiring them to be “intrusive”. They weren’t intrusive in printed magazines, and publishers survived. Over-engineered attention-stealing data-hungry tracking ads are something invented in the Internet age, and I see absolutely no reason at all to include any of those features in the other option.

Magazine publishers survived because they had subscriber info which allowed targeted advertising (name, age, address, etc).

Re: Subscription Hell

#308

Post by paulific »

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #218
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content.

>Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the advertising funded content. Since you clearly haven't put much thought into this comment let's just start listing things that are funded by ads - News - content creators on youtube - music - twitch - search - blogs - websites with tutorials - a thousand different things which I have missed and then facebook, snapchat, instagram, and twitter which…

Well there are genuinely people out there who don't use the content. Our attitudes to media and who should be watching what haven't changed much from the broadcast era. "I'm not one Facebook" is the new "I don't watch TV.

Re: Subscription Hell

#309

Post by scarface74 »

Zanni wrote: post #176
imh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems counter to what makes moviepass so successful. I pay a fixed monthly cost, and now the incremental cost of each movie is $0. Decoupling the consumption from the payment changes how I think about going to see a movie. It seems like consumers may prefer this model, at least with regards to movies in theaters (moviepass), movies and tv at home (netflix), and music (spotify).

On the flip side, sometimes to a service's detriment. I think this model works well for MoviePass, Netflix, Spotify, but MasterClass recently shifted to an all-you-can-eat subscription model (before you paid per class), and even though the service is the same and the price is cheaper (for me), my interaction with the service suffered. Before, I'd carefully carve out time for a MasterClass I was interested in, knowing…

I've had a subscription to PluralSight off an on for years, but I recently started paying for one off videos from Udemy. I think I like that model better.

Re: Subscription Hell

#310

Post by bitL »

wpietri wrote: post #240
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…

A model I really like is the one IntelliJ uses. They encourage you to buy a subscription. But when you buy a year at once, you get a "perpetual fallback license" such that you can always keep using the version that is current when you buy: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... That means I always will have access to my projects and to the level of functionality I start with. But I keep getti…

They had a much more customer-friendly model before - you pay yearly updates and keep the last update. Now you keep the very first version only.
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