Subscriptions for everything. Ugh. What if we want all of our money to be disposable for what we want to spend it on, not what it is earmarked for by some large tech company...
Subscription Hell
431–440 of 610 posts
Re: Subscription Hell
#432I don't mind subscriptions but I do fear the day when my favorite subscriptions start to run ads on top of their monthly fee.
Subscriptions are terrible business models as well. The vast majority of subscriptions work on users that pay but dont use the system. They are not economically efficient at all.
Re: Subscription Hell
#433I don't mind subscriptions but I do fear the day when my favorite subscriptions start to run ads on top of their monthly fee.
Or at least covertly collect and sell your usage data for data aggregators to use to advertise to you on other services.
Re: Subscription Hell
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the sublime folk offered a “bug fix only” monthly subscription, I’d buy that. My grandfather went through a half day’s paycheck of tooling a month on his own dime. I figure bug fixes are the software equivalent of sharpening chisels, buying new bits, surfacing a mill, etc. Except bits don't rot?
New OS versions (especially from Apple) regularly create new bugs or completely break compatibility with old software. The cost of upkeep is not entirely predictable and easy to "price-in" to the upfront cost.
Can't speak for Apple I guess, but this isn't exactly the normal case on Windows.
Re: Subscription Hell
#435I 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…
Maybe it's possible to create a sort of tiered system. The latest news and top stories are always free, but the detailed analysis and exposes (the stuff that usually wins awards) require a subscription. On the more local news level, maybe require a subscription to read the restaurant reviews or something. I'm not going to pretend that this is the end all solution. But both the open web and journalism cannot survive i…
Gigaom tried that before, but it didn't work that well. Very few people care about the topic that they will purchase the analysis. Not enough for the business to be sustainable.
Seems like there is a market for deeper analysis done stratchery, the information and couple of others, but it barely sustains a few writers, hardly able to compete with the large scale newsrooms of WSJ, WaPo, NYT, ...
Re: Subscription Hell
#436I'm surprised that nobody mentioned foreigners or children.
As an immigrant, it's not possible for me to get a credit card, only a debit card. When I was under 18, it was also very difficult to do online shopping (I just made Christmas & birthday lists and asked my parents to eBay things for me then).
Every time I change country, which has happened 13 times and counting, I lose access to whatever services I had enjoyed. Subscriptions have really messed me up. For example, my bank accounts at UBS and the Swiss Post Office started charging me monthly fees after age 21. I didn't know, until my parents got nasty letters to their address telling me I was overdrawn. I hadn't used the accounts for 3 years, and when I left, they were free, so I didn't think to close the accounts. I had to pay to bring the account above zero just so I could close it. Not to mention phone subscriptions, Internet bills, rent, etc.
The lack of a stable home means I can't subscribe to Spotify. This pushes me towards the few pre-paid models that are left. I have MP3s that work offline with no need for cellular data. When I finally do get a chance to pay (e.g. a band I like is playing a show on the other side of the country), I make a huge effort to go there, buy their CDs, t-shirts, and everything else so I can support them - because that might be the only chance I get to pay them. Having been to over 300 concerts, I actually think I'm a bigger fan than most passive consumers, even though I'm excluded from the business model that record companies like. I feel like artists make more money from touring than ads/subscriptions, but I have no data to support that feeling. If there were a way to support journalists/programmers like touring bands, I think that could provide an alternative source of revenue.
Re: Subscription Hell
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the EU, the GDPR will make data takeout APIs (or some guy exporting as CSV and mailing it to you) mandatory.
Mandatory, yes, but the GDPR does not say it should be done for free. I offer data exports for all my services, so I'm compliant with the GDPR, but you will have to pay me for my time
This is not the case. (Article 12 (5))
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-12-gdpr/
Re: Subscription Hell
#438I'd be interested in an 'aggregator' service where I can subscribe to sections that interest me from a number of agencies.
Re: Subscription Hell
#439Earlier 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…
Regarding bags, that's a strange reaction given that everywhere else I've heard of that introduced a bag tax has seen usage drop dramatically. It's not the price - clearly most people can afford what they charge - it's the psychology that makes you stop and think whether you really need a single use bag for what you've bought.
Re: Subscription Hell
#440I don't mind subscriptions but I do fear the day when my favorite subscriptions start to run ads on top of their monthly fee.
A lot of good media properties are sold BECAUSE of the ads.
Think magazines like Vogue, with 800 pages of ads that people are looking at for the season's trends. Or other shopping magazines. Also, local newspapers provide useful local business advertising.
A good media property knows that ads are as useful as other content.