Why is everything a subscription?
Subscription services are everywhere effecting personal finance the average person is now spending $273 a month on subscriptions and at the same time less than one third of them could afford a $1,000 expense without going into debt…
This only includes software services like netflix, disney plus, hulu, spotify, adobe, apple music, xbox games pass and others. it does not include other recuring expenses like gym or club memberships.
Service companies are doing this to attract venture capital investment. These investors favour subscription businesses because they provide consistent cash flows and can be scaled rapidly before being sold through a traditional IPO, a SPAC or to a private equity fund.
But these businesses are not always perfect and there are some products that just make more sense to sell through a one time direct sale.
So it’s time to Learn How Money Works to find out how everything became a subscription.
All part of the enshittification of the world. I hate where we’re going.
I would gladly rent my car if that covered all vehicle repairs and maintenance and insurance.
Isn’t that always an option? Car companies push that kind of leasing like mad.
Not that I have seen. I have been offered packages that cover the drive train or something similar, but the maintenance is up to me, the insurance is up to me, and that makes for a hell of a car payment each month.
Volvo actually had this very program for a bit. They don’t seem to now which tells you how it went…
Subscriptions are such a pain, I just keep things simple. If I can buy and own a product I pay for it, if I have to choose between paying for a subscription or getting the product for free, I choose owning the product for free. The only services that I pay for are things that are more services than products, example: VPNs.
There are some services I pay for using a subscription service. My password manager, because my whole family uses it. Various streaming services, mostly because they have stopped providing physical media and have now created a monopoly on their content. But that’s it. I used to pay for PathFinder, a Mac Finder replacement. I would happily upgrade my license on every major release because it was a perpetual license. When they switched to a subscription model, I just stopped.
What I think these companies don’t understand is that keeping track of a bunch of subscriptions results in a huge cognitive load. Not only do I have to keep track of which prices are fair relative to many other similar services, I have to keep track of when they renew so I’m not taken by surprise. In most cases, not having to deal with that cognitive load is a better deal for me than the service they’re offering.
Yea I’m not against any and all subscriptions in principle. When I was taxi driving, having unlimited music on Spotify was totally worth it and a great upgrade over radio. I even had Audible for a while, where you get one book a month to keep (DRM aside, which can be dealt with), so you know exactly what you’re getting.
The major problem is how much everyone is pushing subs now for every stupid thing, how markers are fracturing and worst of all, with most services once you subscribe, you take a massive hit and lose everything you’ve paid for until then - such as with the game passes. So one can only keep sucking up the ever increasing prices, further fragmentation and be at the provider’s mercy whether the thing even keeps going at all.
There was this neat, but totally unnecessary ‘water cooled’ mattress cover thing I stumbled on. It had a series of tubes they ran water through to keep your bed cool at night. Nifty little product. They also had an app and built in sensors for that sleep tracking stuff. Also neat and a nice value add.
Except that the app required a subscription and you could only adjust the temperature through the app. Oh and the subscription was $250/year. Talk about bullshit. You know they’re already selling all the sleep tracking data and then they want you to rent the product forever on top of that??
@WhoRoger Thanks to Adobe shitheads!!!
Also the only subscription that I can stand is Humble Choice which let me keep the games that they give on my Steam account. So if I cancel I don’t loose them.I keep HBO MAX for the sole reason that it has newly released films. So is cheaper ($8 monthly) that paying for a cinema ticket.
Golly I remember when Adobe came up with that shit, everyone was up in arms about it.
If only professionals had enough foresight to reject that, maybe we wouldn’t be so deep down in subscription hell.
TBH, I’m quite happy with the Affinity alternatives, although I never used Lightroom and I guess that’s the hardest to replace for the average user
@lol3droflxp @WhoRoger I also use the entire Affinity suite. In case of Lightroom some friends have told me that they love to use DarkTable which is a close substitute.
DarkTable is really good, I encourage anyone to give it a try.
keep the games
Steam account
Hmm
