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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#311

Post by maltalex »

cornholio wrote: post #35

I disagree with the author that subscriptions are objectively and inherently the superior model for web monetization. An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web it's is inclusiveness and strong worldwide redistribution effects. Everybody sees the ads, however the actual value of a pair of eyeballs is widely variable, by orders of magnitude so. It's therefore profitable to make the content free and distribute it as far as…

> Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases.

No one is saying that the fee should be flat. There are ways of selling roughly the same service for different prices - just look at air travel.

Re: Subscription Hell

#312

Post by zerowellies »

hk__2 wrote: post #305
zerowellies wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Adobe Acrobat Pro, Foxit Phantom PDF. I'll concede I can't think of a file manager though.

Re: Subscription Hell

#313

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to understand what people want. The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero articles). Now the pa…

People call this "nickel and diming" they hate it.

Re: Subscription Hell

#314

Post by scarface74 »

hinkley wrote: post #64
scarface74 wrote: post #2

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

And yet we have print magazines where you pay for the magazine and there are so many ads you can’t find the goddamned table of contents. I’m looking at you, Wired Magazine.

They don't make enough off of subscriptions to make publishing worthwhile and if they give it away for free, the advertisers don't value the customers as highly. That's why free magazines like MacWeek and PCWeek forced you to take surveys to qualify for a free subscription back in the day.

Re: Subscription Hell

#315

Post by 3pt14159 »

always_good wrote: post #116
3pt14159 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle ground doesn't work. See MS Windows update hell. The way things should work is like this: Subscription for when you want to use the software and open format data files that you're always easily able to export and download. If a company goes out of business or does something stupid then another one will pop up to handle your needs. This aligns incentives correctly while still allows a healthy dose of compet…

Actually, it works in software that many of us use every day. Once again, there's more nuance to making an argument than being able to point out a single absolute example. Why is this such popular rhetoric on HN? Especially in such a varied imprecise world of pricing structures? I use various bits of successful software like Transmit and Alfred that let you update until the next major version in which you must pay ag…

It "works" in the way that having insecure software on your computer "works" which is to say that it doesn't work, we just put up with computers where the non-technical don't know the mess they are in. Every major operating system (iOS, Android, Windows, QNX) or widely used software application (MS Office, any browser, any widely used app) issues emergency security patches.

The reality is that having everyone on the same version drastically simplifies not just security, but also interoperability. It isn't 1998 anymore. The default is internet connectivity and we should stop pretending our apps are secure when they are not.

Re: Subscription Hell

#316

Post by paulific »

rossdavidh wrote: post #246
sincerely wrote: post #242

>Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format. do they really want these immersive experiences? Do consumers even have a choice?

I strongly disagreed with the same paragraph. "Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format." No, they don't want that, especially not the video, and the rest is just a nice-to-have, not a want-to-have. You WANT consumers to want that, but they don't; it's being forced on them instead. Plain text with the occasional still g…

As a net user since 1995 I preferred it back then. Admittedly this is probably tinged with nostalgia, but I remember people just sharing information without needing to charge you for it. Maybe I just started with low standards, but when people tell me I need to pay for this content, I go "meh, I just won't read it then". I don't feel the loss, but possibly I don't know what I'm missing.

Re: Subscription Hell

#317

Post by chad_oliver »

bitL wrote: post #310
wpietri wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not entirely true. You can keep any version that you've paid one year worth of subscription for. That means that if you subscribe for three years then cancel your subscription, you'll always have access to the version that was released one year before you cancelled.

Re: Subscription Hell

#318

Post by gkya »

Reedx wrote: post #295
gkya wrote: post #154

> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format. Citation needed. This comes up quite often, and people like to assume they know what users want all the time. But is there actual, scientific evidence that, given the same content,…

Well, they say they researched it: "Yet, all of our research shows people want high-definition images with their stories, instant loading of articles on the site, and interactivity." They understand how much more expensive an image and JS heavy site is to develop and host, so they must have good reason to go through the trouble?

Very often institutions decide stupidly, when the decision is made by people that are not domain experts. Also, numbers may lie. If they did not study the same content with interactive and plain presentation, for example. I recall an article on a murder in Iceland on BBC IIRC, it was overtly interactive, every movement on the touch pad causing unpredictable changes to the page, but the content was so interesting that I put up with it.

Re: Subscription Hell

#319

Post by chrisseaton »

zerowellies wrote: post #312
hk__2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Adobe Acrobat Pro, Foxit Phantom PDF. I'll concede I can't think of a file manager though.

But those are PDF editors, not PDF readers.

Re: Subscription Hell

#320

Post by multibit »

I disagree with the premise that users today want all sorts of multimedia content to add icing to the text. Some floated pictures or a carousel might be helpful for a news article, but most other stuff is just fluff pushed by business analysts to increase "engagement".
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