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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#511

Post by reitanqild »

jacques_chester wrote: post #247
reitanqild wrote: post #220

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. 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…

They tried several variations for Google Contributor, each less appealing than the last. More recently they introduced Subscribe With Google.

I never got the chance to try.

Would anyone care to describe why it wasn't great?

(Short summary of why I think it should be great: I want to support the sites and blogs I read. I don't want ads as they are still next to useless.)

Re: Subscription Hell

#512

Post by AlexandrB »

dschuetz wrote: post #22

It was a matter of time that subscription plans hit the same level of annoyance as online ads. But, subscriptions have a significantly heavier impact than ads. You cannot netflixify journalism. It's different to movies or music. Journalism is not art. The online subscription business model doesn't work for journalism, because alternatives are far more easily accessible than print media. News are not unique works, new…

> Why should I get multiple subscriptions then?

My dad subscribed to both "The Edmonton Journal" and "The Edmonton Sun". Why? Because each had it's own bias and perspective on current events. What you're describing is not only not new, it's literally the dominant business model for print journalism for the last 100 years. Will it translate to the internet? I guess we're about to find out.

Re: Subscription Hell

#513

Post by reitanqild »

majewsky wrote: post #463
reitanqild wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I am more likely to pay for investigations than for gossip.

We're the minority.

I would think we would be the majority here though?

Edit: also, and this goes to the person upthread, even if mainstream media goes for gossip I'd still think we should make up a nice niche?

Re: Subscription Hell

#514

Post by beefield »

petra wrote: post #249
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…

In general, software has zero marginal cost, so in theory, it's price should fall near zero due to competition. So why is the subscription market behave so different ? And what can be done about that ?

Well, one could argue that the price is near zero. It is very rare software product that does not have somehow usable open source competitor. Then what you are paying for is something else than the zero marginal cost basic functionality. Like support, branding, network effect rents or something else.

Re: Subscription Hell

#515

Post by saiya-jin »

bscphil wrote: post #422
siidooloo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past Adobe’s competition wasn’t as good. Now, the competitors products are just as good. In the past PS competitors lacked features pros needed like PMS spot channels/CMYK/LAB. Not anymore. And Resolve is very compelling in the video realm. Many of Adobe’s core products have languished at the same time as many of the features that set them apart in the past are become less differentiating. The photo editing/ve…

Which is the "just as good" alternative to Lightroom? I've found its tools to be astonishingly high quality. Adjustments have exactly the effect you expect them to, instead of something closely adjacent to what you expect. The spot remover is basically magical. RAW handling is top notch. I haven't seen anything at all that comes close on a cheaper model.

LR performance with RAW is beyond horrible. LR unability to work properly with simple panoramas is pathetic - Autopano can fetch all info from RAW just as well as LR, perform the joining about 3-4x faster (no kidding), AND do a far better job at joining pictures where LR simply fails to find anything matching.

And those are just panoramas

Re: Subscription Hell

#516

Post by laythea »

baxtr wrote: post #37
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…

True. A subscription to Office 365 comes down to 99 Euros per years. Of course you’d pay maybe 150 every three years or so for a new version back in the days, but still that’s double. Also, I wonder whether this will lead to a slower development of the software. Before you’d have to create a leap forward to impress people to buy the new version, if the old version was still good enough.

That is a good point, regarding the stunting of the software industry.

Re: Subscription Hell

#517

Post by mkirklions »

BonesJustice wrote: post #348
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 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 apar…

JetBrains made me super salty at how expensive their package is.

I graduated from college and to see their lowest cost package was ~300 USD IIRC was infuriating.

I went full Netbeans for PHP. It does the job, the debugger works, and it doesnt cost me a yearly fee.

Re: Subscription Hell

#518

Post by prepend »

always_good wrote: post #58
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…

One-time payments for software amount to a pyramid scheme where you benefit from the money of future users. That's not without its downsides either, where your userbase grows indefinitely yet doesn't pay for its own support-email rent. There's obviously a middle ground, like being able to at least use the version you paid for indefinitely but having to pay a smaller price to upgrade. But which direction a pricing str…

Did you know that every physical good sold is a pyramid scheme using your definition?

In the US, companies have product liability to correct defects for the lifetime of the product, subject to routine limitations. [1]

So companies create business models to compensate for this limitation.

Companies figured this out with software decades ago, so it’s certainly possible (eg, Microsoft).

[1] https://injury.findlaw.com/product-liability/what-is-product...

Re: Subscription Hell

#519

Post by takluyver »

wpietri wrote: post #368
rolleiflex wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that always rubbed me wrong about this is that, logically speaking, if you buy a license for a year, the perpetual fallback license should be the version you had at the end of the license, not the one that was on the market at the beginning of it. It doesn't really make sense the way they do it, and it feels like a particularly hamfisted attempt to grab an almost negligible amount of money, so I'm puzzled.

It makes sense to me as removing the choice between, "Do I buy one-off license or a subscription?" If you get the subscription, you get a free one-off license at date of purchase. Your way also makes sense, but they both seem reasonable to me. And I don't really care much, in that I renew when I'm regularly using their product, as I want to support them. If I just had to open an old project for something, then I don'…

And at least the way I use it, there's no lock-in. If you stop subscribing, you can easily open your code in another editor.

Re: Subscription Hell

#520

Post by [deleted] »

tokyodude wrote: post #389
madeofpalk wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never became more expensive. They were extremely expensive to begin with and now they’re a lot cheaper. Previously it was like 500€ or so? That's too much for the casual user as well. Here’s the reality. I used to pirate Adobe software because there was no way I was going to pay 1500k or whatever Photoshop was. Adobe got $0 from me. Now I subscribe to get access to Photoshop. Adobe now gets £100 from me a year.…

they are way way more expensive now. I only upgraded every other version so $199 every 4 years or $50 a year. current Photoshop subscriptions is $239 a year or nearly 5x the price

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