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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#341

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Sileni wrote: post #160
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…

An alternative is intentionally packaging releases into tiers (performance, stability, feature, etc) and sell them as such. Something closer to Windows XP service packs than individual updates. I'd expect small, necessary updates to continue to exist as they do. A user can buy the base version, then a few months later when you create a release that allows processing widgets through the program twice as fast, they can…

> An alternative is intentionally packaging releases into tiers (performance, stability, feature, etc) and sell them as such.

That could quickly devolve into supporting a large number of distinct versions of the software, which would be difficult and costly. Nobody wants to do that.

Not to mention that, if this versioned software is a platform (for example, WinXP and its service packs you mention), downstream vendors would also need to QA and support their software on all actively supported versions of said platform.

Re: Subscription Hell

#342

Post by cube2222 »

koonsolo wrote: post #336
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…

> 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. I strongly disagree on this one. If they want to sell you version 2.0 (upgrade), they better make sure those new features are worth their money. With a subscription model, you either keep paying them or you lose it all. Why would they improve their product when you're alrea…

Because in this case their competition will catch up and I will switch. Exactly as I did with play music -> Spotify.

Re: Subscription Hell

#343

Post by notatoad »

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…

I love the idea of blendle and i keep trying to use it, but unfortunately they don't make it easy to find articles.

You can scroll through their list of recommended articles, but if you already know the article you want to read (if, for instance, i find a WSJ article on HN that i want to read) there's no easy way to pay for that article on blendle. They need a tool that lets me paste in a canonical article URL and get the corresponding article on Blendle.

Re: Subscription Hell

#344

Post by keyle »

Yes Adobe did the same thing, from $49 flat fee AUD, to 66 AUD which was $49 USD in AUD, then now it's 72 AUD/month! It's getting really steep if you don't use the software all the time.

Re: Subscription Hell

#345

Post by doingmything »

haglin wrote: post #337

What we need is a cryptocurrency capable of handling microtransactions. Then we need web browser support (a standard) for a cryptocurrency wallet. When you visit a web page, you can pay for the content by clicking Yes in a dialog box. When you don't have money in you wallet, you can fill it up using your credit card, or some bank solution. The price is shown in your currency of choice, but all the transactions happen…

This solution seems to be addressing a problem completely different from what the author is discussing. How would using a cryptocurrency solution reduce monthly fees for subscriptions? How would it help reduce the aversion to paying for previously free content? How would it help with bundling?

Re: Subscription Hell

#346

Post by mijustin »

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…

> Many founders choose SaaS simply because they want the recurring revenue. Just because you like the model as a founder, doesn’t mean it’s the right model for your customers!

(from https://justinjackson.ca/saas/)

Re: Subscription Hell

#347

Post by lucb1e »

smaddock wrote: post #147
lifeformed wrote: post #89

I wish I could just pay $x/mo for unlimited access to all media. It would get distributed to content creators proportionally based on my time using websites, music, videos, and games. No ads or subscriptions. I can't imagine how such a system would be implemented though. And I'm sure there would be new unintended consequences with such an incentive structure. But something like that would be nice!

What you're describing sounds similar to Basic Attention Token [1] which is used by Brave browser [2]. [1] https://basicattentiontoken.org/ [2] https://brave.com/

If the intro video is to be believed, that seems like a terrible idea in so many ways. The video explains it like "you view ads, your browser privately tracks whether you watched them, and awards the website and the user with BATs". So while we now have middlemen in the form of ad networks, with BATs we have an additional one to convert that currency into your local currency. Additionally, the ad network will have to believe the browser that the user actually viewed ads at all (DRM all over again). And what blockchain has to do with this is, as always, unexplained.

Re: Subscription Hell

#348

Post by BonesJustice »

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 also drop the subscription rate after the first and second years. And even at the outset, the “everything JetBrains” license is cheaper than any two individually licensed products. If you do, say, Java and C# or Python and C++, this makes it a pretty sweet deal.

I wasn’t aware that the perpetual fallback license only covered the latest version at the time of subscription/renewal. That’s less than ideal, but apart from that, I think they’ve pretty well nailed the subscription-based model. It’s actually the _only_ software I’ve used where I feel the subscription model terms were actually an improvement over what I had before.

Re: Subscription Hell

#349

Post by kosei »

"To my mind though, the question is not how to get 1% of readers to pay an exorbitant price, but how to get say 20% of your readers to pay you a cheaper price. It’s not about exclusion, but about participation."

A noble idea, but one not founded in much reality. The fact is, generally when you price lower, you don't get much more uptake in sales in a model like this.

Re: Subscription Hell

#350

Post by lajhsdfkl »

paulific wrote: post #308
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I'm sure there are but that has nothing to do with my point.

Anyway, I personally never use facebook because it is not something I find interesting. Do I feel pride in that fact? No I don't because I have an equally harmful relationship with reddit and hackernews. I always have to laugh when I see people state as a point of pride how they have deleted their facebook accounts on different social networks. If anything I think reddit and hackernews could be worse because I'm ingesting unfiltered opinions from random strangers.

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