Subscribers are the new, new thing in business | Hacker News Reader

Subscribers are the new, new thing in business

economist.com

135 pointskawera134 comments

As a consumer I really dislike subscription services, they quickly add up to a lot of money. I can see how it works for businesses but by definition that means its not so good for me.

To be honest the main problem for me is I gladly pay 10$ for Spotify or Netflix but I just can't bring myself to pay 8$ for a todo app or 10$ for Dropbox when my hosting with 500GB and the ability to run my own cloud costs 4.99$. Most of the time it's just to much for just the convince. Besides I despise apps like Dropbox or Evernote that nag people I share stuff with to sign up for their service.

For this reason I feel that SaaS services that fall in the $10-$30 bracket are problematic. The price is too much for consumers who compare it to Netflix, whereas for businesses it's often ridiculously small and effectively leaves money on the table.

I like Discourse's pricing model: https://www.discourse.org

Their plans start at $100 / month, which is not a problem for real businesses. For everyone else, the software is full open source and it's reasonably easy to install on that $5/month cloud server instance.

The "free or $100+" model conveniently eliminates the support hassle of $10 / month users who typically are the most clueless and demanding.

It’s also flawed for business when applying price to the wrong "user role". Especially in saas business intelligence where some companies want to charge service per users. This seems nice on paper and might work for big Corp with too much money. But for smaller business paying 50 licences while in reality there is 2 publishers and 48 readers is really messed up.

Anyone even slightly computer literate known that it’s a simple as fk login system that won’t cost more for 2 than for 50 users. So how exactly I’m supposed to suggest your product to my boss? He will just laugh. You must provide free "reader only" accounts or at least propose a bundle offer for small business. Unless it’s not your target, but really why go with per/user plan in the first place then?

The only worst business model for BI is bandwidth based payement for anything that involve open-data. Because I would then fear that my dataviz make some buzz on Twitter an that I blow my budget.

Interesting. Do you think they miss out on a fair amount of customers at that price point?

They probably get customers that they actually want: businesses who are fine with paying >$100/month for their service and individuals who will likely be very, very supportive of their service since they value it enough to pay that much per month for it over other alternatives

I wonder if the free tier that appeals largely to enthusiasts and nerds also helps as a lead generation process. People use it and like it, they get jobs where they have a say in procurement decisions, and they advocate for platforms they like when they do.

It’s also a good “eat your own dogfood” way to make sure your platform is up to commercial standards for UI/UX and feature sets. A lot of enterprise software is garbage specifically because the people doing the procurement aren’t the people using the tools.

I wonder if the free tier that appeals largely to enthusiasts and nerds also helps as a lead generation process.

That seems like a reasonable business strategy. Software companies have long offered heavily discounted products to home and educational users, or simply turned a blind eye to piracy within those demographics. Then everyone leaves school and equates "word processor" and "spreadsheet" with Microsoft Office, "graphics program" with Adobe Creative Suite, etc. These days a lot of those big players seem to be trying to pull in more direct revenue from those markets with lower-priced versions of their subscription offerings instead, but that doesn't mean their previous business model wasn't good for them.

I watched the NCAA basketball final game and Dropbox ran what had to have amounted to several million dollars worth of ads. There comes a point when in order to drive revenue growth you need not only the businesses who are willing to pay top dollar and the individuals who are easily convinced, but a much larger swath of businesses and individuals. They want any customer with a wallet, and they may want bigger businesses more, but they’ll sell to anyone who will pay.

Maybe, but the support hassle they save probably makes up for it.

The consumer pricing structures, when you start getting services like Dropbox used extensively in professional settings, such as graphic design for advertising, is a problem. When we've got to go back to the original files with a press deadline that'smissed at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, where do we expect to find the customer service, if we're impacted by a degraded node in Dropbox's cloud? I accept the problem is with the community of freelance designers, and equally the disinterest if agencies and other line of business data consumers to provide adequate alternatives (we do, with real enterprise grade systems and support contracts) but even Draconian measures to enforce control only back up a community who have been backed up and disenfranchised plenty enough by the large agencies pushing work off the payroll for the length of my career (decades...) and it just happens to be a hard sell to make any extra work for a highly talented community who are now treated as least cost providers.

Just curious, how do you get 500 GB and your own cloud for 4.99$. I use Dropbox and always felt their price is fair.

It is a vserver from server4you.de with a special christmas offer for returning users but you usually get the 500gb two times a year.

For Mac, there’s a $15/mo app subscription bundle: https://setapp.com/apps

That feels like an odd service to me - my use cases for my Mac don't change often, so minimizing the churn of my toolkit is important to my productivity. Why would I pay $15/month to be invited to churn on a system that isn't broken?

Or even spend the $8 on a thumb drive which goes on your keyring and will store 32GB or whatever that you'll have with you literally everywhere for the foreseeable future.

That’s not really comparible to a cloud service that provides 1TB of storage and allows me to access my files from anywhere, or delegate access to others.

As a consumer, I think I'm starting to prefer subscription services. They ensure the company continues to provide good service, with the threat of customers leaving if they don't.

Adobe's switch to the subscription model for Photoshop/Lightroom is an excellent example. I'd much rather pay $10/mo for both (plus a bunch of cloud storage) than a few hundred bucks outright (especially considering that we had to re-purchase the software anyway roughly every two years when a new version came out anyway). The subscription model is much cheaper for me, I don't have to decide between $$$ and new features anymore, and it guarantees Adobe will continue to provide support and updates to the software. The added benefit is that suspending a subscription is quite easy (away for vacation for a few months, busy semester at school, etc etc).

The downside is, of course, is that subscription software can look artificially cheap but can add up quickly.

The other downside being that if you stop paying, or Adobe stops providing, you can no longer work natively with your PSD and DNG files.

That's a huge business risk. And as searching for 'Creative Cloud suspended' shows, it's not theoretical.

DNG is an open format: "Use of the file format is royalty-free; Adobe has published a license allowing anyone to exploit DNG, and has also stated that there are no known intellectual property encumbrances or license requirements for DNG. Adobe stated that if there were a consensus that DNG should be controlled by a standards body, they were open to the idea."

Adobe's Creative Cloud is a bad example (compared to say Netflix or Spotify) because the plan is annual, but paid monthly. The photography plan is $120/year, but they let you in effect finance the fee at 0% by letting you pay $10/month.

$10/month is more palatable to many than $120 all at once, but it nullifies the threat of customers leaving.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

"I can see how it works for businesses but by definition that means its not so good for me."

That seems to assume that transactions between businesses and consumers are zero sum games. It's possible for something to be good for a business and good for you. For example, I subscribe to The Economist. It's good for me (cheaper than buying individual issues, and cheaper that suitable-quality alternatives) and good for them (up-front payment, lower distribution costs).

I have a completely other sentiment from the top post, and a good part of my friends circle as well. I work as a developer and the business model is much clearer to me. The thing is to distinguish a service and a product. Buying a game, I expect a 1 off purchase and to own it. However if I want to have access to all the games in existance for a flat monthly fee like 50$ per month, thats a completely different story, and there's strong reasoning behind it. To run a service it perpetualy costs money so one off doesn't cut it. Either you have to pay an upfront cost of the lifetime value (which would be way to expensive) or you have to keep buying "DLCs" since the cost so far doesn't cover the furhter development.

Also Dropbox and services alike might be cheaper to host for yourself, like many other things in life - car repair or home improvements, but that only cuts it if you are savvy enough in that particular trade. Thats the first part where it adds value - it simplifies things a lot. The second part is the ecosystem of integrations and sharing, and this goes to many other services as well. I usualy host my own for a large majority of services since its low volume use a free or small instance on any cloud provider does the work, however I still have Netflix, GSuite, Drive, Play Music and a range of others since they give to me more value than just doing it myself or are not worth the time effort.

Also as a software engineer by trade I really hope more people start understanding that if you want baddass apps and games which constantly update and run on online servers, it has to cost money perpetually and you have to either pay for a subscription, look at ads, or have a freemium type of model to support the cost and eventually earn a couple bucks.

That works because they didn't lock the subscription yet.

Compare subscription to Netflix vs. buying a movie on a DVD (and maybe ripping a personal backup copy). The former is a subscription - you stop paying (maybe because of financial emergency), no movie. The latter is a one-time purchase, after which you keep the thing you bought forever (so when shit hits the fan, you still can cheer yourself up with your favourite movie.

I know I definitely prefer buying over renting/subscribing. Businesses prefer the reverse. It's a conflict of interest.

However, with Netflix, if you do have disposable income again in the future, then you can restore you position exactly. But if you had to sell your DVD collection due to a financial emergency, the cost of replacing it is greater.

It doesn't work with things like cloud storage. Stop paying, you lose your data. It also assumes that Netflix in this example wont go out of business.

The mental model is what is different. I pay X per month for Y value per month. Rather than, I pay X now for Y value forever. I may not use that Y value now, I may use it in 12 months time (for example, I still have DVDs in sealed packaging because I thought I needed the value up front).

Then I use Audible where I subscribe for X credits and once I use it on a book, I can use it indefinitely. I like that middle ground.

>However, with Netflix, if you do have disposable income again in the future, then you can restore you position exactly. But if you had to sell your DVD collection due to a financial emergency, the cost of replacing it is greater.

You could also never sever your Netflix subscription and still lose access to your favorite movie because their licensing agreement ran out.

Even in your example, ownership wins out because you have the -option- to sell your residual assets in a financial emergency. There's nothing you can resell with your Netflix subscription money since you're just paying for the temporary privilege to watch a movie you don't own that might not be there tomorrow.

However, with Netflix, if you do have disposable income again in the future, then you can restore you position exactly.

If the business is still around.

Compare subscription to Netflix vs. buying a movie on a DVD (and maybe ripping a personal backup copy).

That's a good comparison, because it makes clear that both approaches can have merit.

For content I'm likely to enjoy watching or listening to again in the future, I too would always prefer to have a permanent copy. The medium doesn't really matter, but having the control does.

However, I've also seen a lot of content on services like Netflix that I enjoyed watching once but maybe wouldn't ever want to watch again. I got to watch it for far less money than I would have had to pay to buy a permanent copy, but Netflix still got some money from me in return. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

I was using The Economist as an example of a general point: just because something is good for a business, it doesn't follow that it is bad for consumers 'by definition' (as claimed by the commenter to whom I replied).

True, it's just that most of the time it isn't good for me.

But parent was speaking specifically about parent.

I think it's pretty reasonable to read the parent as making a general assertion about subscription models from a consumer's perspective, particularly as they began their comment with, "as a consumer" rather than "as tonyedgecombe."

It's all well and good to say "well, I just mean for me, personally" but I'm not sure it's adding to the public discourse without any further qualification.

Agreed. I have no problem paying for subscriptions when warranted (content such as Netflix, utilities, etc...)

The issue I have is when this model is applied to certain software that doesn't directly provide added value over time (like Office 365 or Photoshop).

When I purchase software, I want the ability to clearly compare the available features (value) vs the cost at that specific time. This is why Sendy (https://sendy.co) received my business over MailChimp (https://mailchimp.com). The software I sell is also a pay-once model and I feel much happier knowing my customers are getting good value for their money.

You can buy Office for a one time cost of $149 for one conputer. I don't have a problem paying $9.99 a month or $99 a year for Office 365 for 5 computers and 5 tablets and phones. With 5 installations, that's enough for my laptop, my wife's, both of my sons and my mom. I can also use it on my iPad.

DropBox and Apple charge $100 a year for a terabyte of storage alone.

I really like JetBrains perpetual license, after a year, you get a permanent license to the version that was current 12 months from the time you subscribed - if you cancel your subscription in April 2018, you get to a license to whatever version was current April 2027.

>The issue I have is when this model is applied to certain software that doesn't directly provide added value over time

As a professional photographer, Photoshop does provide value over time for me and my colleagues.

Why would you pay for something that you don't use?

I honestly don't understand what the problem is, if something doesn't add value, then why would you pay for it?. I don't see a real "issue" here.

He said added value over time in exchange for a subscription. Photoshop has value, that's why it's being purchased; GP is saying that the subscription doesn't add anything additional, which I kind of agree with for a program as mature as PS.

It's a lease vs. buy calculation -- one site who did the math says:

> However, once you get past the two year mark, all bets are off—the subscription is more expensive than buying, even if you plan on upgrading every two years.

https://lifehacker.com/5904416/rent-vs-buy-is-adobes-creativ...

If you just wanted Photoshop and not the cloud storage, your best bet would be the Photography plan, which is $10 a month and includes Photoshop and Lightroom. Placing the data in Excel, and assuming someone were to take the $585 Amazon price for Photoshop and upgrade every 2 years, it would take 14 years before that was a better deal than using the subscription plan. If you assume the $700 price tag, it takes 25 years. However, it only takes 3 years if you use the student plan numbers (though as a side note, it looks like the subscription plan is the only way to get Photoshop now).

The math is different today because there's a $10 photography plan that didn't exist when CC launched, and as you point out you can't buy PS outright anymore.

As a consumer, I dislike them because they take away control with the buyer/user. If you buy a product in the traditional sense, that's it, you own it and you can (mostly) do whatever you like with it. Resell it, trade it, modify it, keep using it after whatever DRM system is taken down... you get the choice there.

The subscription trends seem like an attempt to sidestep that and remove people's freedoms so companies can dictate how their products are used.

The mentioned price thing is definitely bad too though.

I would be happier to subscribe if <minor little tool> cost $0.50/mo instead of $10/mo. I only have room for a few $10/mo bills. But companies don't seem to be willing to drop below perhaps $5/mo.

With payment processor fees as well as per-user support fees (e.g. if a user asks a question), going to $6/year doesn't seem sustainable even if you have the market size which could provide a huge user base. For many projects they also have to keep in mind that their user base is not endless, so when it begins to saturate they need to have a reasonable income.

Not that it's easy to make money in mobile but there are apps that sell for a low number of dollars and they don't even necessarily have in-app purchases. I think it's more akin to micropayments albeit on a different scale. Personally, I'm very resistant to subscriptions. I don't want to be managing 50 $0.50/month subscriptions for this that and the other thing. Just too much mental energy to deal with.

Is that an entirely fair comparison? Personally I don't have the same expectations for a product where I have an ongoing subscription vs a one time purchase (i.e. ignoring the scale of $ I'd expect differences in support/ongoing development/community platforms/etc). Perhaps that's a minority view however.

Maybe? Certainly, lots of people expect app upgrades that handle new phone models and OS upgrades. Subscriptions probably do have a more explicit ongoing support relationship though.

Well of course, who wouldn't rather pay fifty cents than ten dollars for something? The question is really rather how can the average business survive after its revenue stream falls by 95%? They don't have volunteers staffing the offices and writing the articles.

It attracts the wrong kind of people.

Wouldn't it be just the opposite? If something is good for a business that creates a product you use, and a subscription makes it worthwhile to keep producing that product, that seems like a win-win.

The real secret in the formula is perpetual billing. Surprisingly few people cancel their contract even long after they stopped consuming the services. Money for nothing!

Always use a credit card as payment method. At least, it has an expiration date, which will force you into rethinking your subscription

Recurring charges are more often than not automatically updated when the card expires.

https://mobile.datamation.com/columns/executive_tech/article...

Even when you report the card as lost or stolen, sometimes recurring charges can somehow still be charged. Hulu was able to change my Citi card that I reported lost for three months. They sent me an email saying it was a courtesy and please update my payment to ensure no loss of service. I let it go to see how long it would change it.

This is a risk decision. I’ve been buying games on steam with a credit card that expired 5 years ago. Just did it last night. I chuckle everyone I see the address pull up. I get the game and when I check my real, diffrent numbered card from the same provider, the charge is there.

I also have a perfect payment history with Steam dating back to the day it rolled out. I’m sure I could buy a game, initiate the easiest charge back of my life, and then enjoy my steam account forcing me to update my card the next time I try and make a purchase.

If you issue a chargeback my guess is they lock your account immediately.

Since the credit card issuer just provides a new card with a new expiration date when the expiration date approaches, many payment processors have a facility for auto-updating cards upon expiration. I believe the subscription business I work for has a 75% recovery rate for those cards.

Isn't the CVV/CVC updated as well?

It's not needed for recurring charges once the processor already has the card number, any more than you have to re-enter it each month to authorize the ongoing charges.

Or PayPal. When NYT wouldn't let me cancel without a phone call, I simply canceled the sub via PayPal. They sent me nasty collection agency-style "your account is past due" emails before finally canceling, 2 months after I stopped paying them.

I now pay careful attention to cancellation procedures when signing up for stuff.

> When NYT wouldn't let me cancel without a phone call, I simply canceled the sub via PayPal. They sent me nasty collection agency-style "your account is past due" emails before finally canceling, 2 months after I stopped paying them.

I don't know how widespread problem this is, but definitely affects Germany too: companies have asymmetric requirements for signup and cancellation. We should get legislation that lets consumers cancel with the same method they used to subscribe.

In Germany companies won't accept non-payment as cancellation though, and will send your bill to collections.

I had the same issue with NYT. I find it terrible services that doesn't allow you to cancel subscription without talking to someone.

PayPal is a great option for services that support it. At least you can cancel whenever you want.

One of the banks I work with let you create a virtual credit card number associated with your physical credit card. You can remove it and create a new one at any time, without having to request a new physical card. So I try to use it strategically nowadays. In the worst case, I just cancel the virtual card.

Bojack Horseman had a whole episode partly about the lengths newspapers will go to to keep you from cancelling your subscription.

The person on the phone ended up being a ridiculously empathetic and impromptu therapist for most of the episode, but here's the punchline: https://youtu.be/Ml94NgOFxxE?t=1m22s

This is the only way I could get amazon to stop charging me after I lost my 2FA token.

Reminds me, I still haven't figured out how to unsubscribe from Amazon Video (the thingie that can let you stream shows, but is not Amazon Prime, as the latter is not available in my country). I've been paying ~$5/mo for the past few months for nothing, just because I can't find the appropriate area in account settings. Fortunately, my card expires soon.

It's the second thing on the first page of "Account and Settings', 'End Membership'. Hoping the below link takes you straight into the process.

https://www.primevideo.com/settings/your-account/confirm-can...

Didn't lead me directly, but I managed to click around that page and end up at the right page where there was "End Membership" button that finally worked. Thanks! I owe you a coffee.

I think in addition it's about shareholder value - I would argue that telling your shareholders and investors "We have 1000 paying subscribers" would be considered more valuable than "We have made 1000 sales", even if the total value of either is equal.

Subscribers have a lot of "lag", as the parent says, with a lot of people continuing to pay for a subscription they don't use anymore, or where they have to sit out a subscription for a full year.

Long term this isn't good for a business though. I want customers to find my service valuable and use it everyday otherwise it shouldn't exist.

One of the main advantages free market systems have for consumers is ostensibly that you can freely choose, switch and combine products and services as you see fit.

As such it's somewhat ironic that the article sees the main disadvantage of subscription models in that they don't combat "consumer illoyality" enough.

Because it's written from a business point of view. You and business have interests that are partly aligned, partly in odds with one another. In terms of loyalty, I think it's a little bit of both.

Yes, that absolutely makes sense. Of course, from the providers' point of view, subscriptions are absolutely desirable and customer illoyality is a problem.

I think what irked me was that the article somehow presented the advantages and disadvantages as absolute when in reality they only apply to one side. Though yes, of course, this is the "business" section, so maybe that makes sense in context.

>from the providers' point of view, subscriptions are absolutely desirable

It's fair to say that businesses mostly like subscriptions but balance against that a few factors.

- Consumers often do not which can make it harder to acquire a customer in the first place.

- It's an ongoing revenue stream that can be canceled at any time rather than a larger up-front purchase.

If 'illoyalty' is intended to avoid the negative implications of 'disloyalty', I suggest that in this context, 'independence' is more appropriate than anything suggesting that customers owe some sort of allegiance.

Most people aren't Econs [1], which is to say, we aren't naturally well suited to (constantly) freely choose, switch and combine products.

How long as it been since you tried to optimize the cost of your cellphone plan based on your usage data? Also, how much friction would be involved in doing so?

[1] https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/econs-and-humans/

Now that I think about it. I have a lot of subscriptions...

Hulu w/ no ads - $11.99

DirecTV Now - $35

Netflix - $2 (T-Mobile pays the base price. I pay for four connections.)

PluralSight - $30

BackBlaze - $5

Office 365 - $99/year

Amazon Prime - $129/year

Resharper - $10/month

Evernote - $3.99/month (I guess I could just Apple Notes)

My son has a subscription to XBoxLive and Playstation Plus. My wife has an Apple Music subscription.

For what it's worth, if you consider that most people used to pay $60/mo for TV, that would easily cover Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, BackBlaze, Office 365, Evernote, and Apple Music. That's a _lot_ of value.

(This is more of a response to the other comment saying that subscriptions get expensive. You just had a nice enumerated list to work with!)

It's even better....

The total price of cable for us would be:

- cable tv with the same subscription level ~$50 a month

- 5 extra set top boxes (yes we have 6 TVs) - $50

- various fees (network access, regulatory, franchise fee) - $15

- HD Technology Fee - $10

The numbers may make less sense if we didn't have unlimited gigabit internet for $70 a month from AT&T. We also have unlimited Internet on our phones (and my iPad).

In total $125 a month just fur TV. That's not to mention that our older son who doesn't live with us also gets to use Netflix and Hulu. Also, my wife has a split shift. When she isn't at the gym, she can watch content on her phone.

I've made back in increased salary more than enough to make the $360 year for PluralSight worth it.

Agreed, the value I get is far higher than it was in the past.

“You reached the limit of free subscription”

The irony, now I can’t read about subscription addiction.

"Learn how this one hacker cured his subscription addiction!"

I think the thing that is most compelling about subscriptions is that it's much more difficult to extract e.g. $300 in lifetime value in a single transaction, versus over 10 months.

That psychological barrier is really the root of the reason it's so effective, in the same way that free shipping drives online retail and "discounting" drives retail clothing stores.

In software, at least, I've argued that subscription pricing is innately deceptive and, long term, deleterious to the quality of the product. It's a market distortion born of the App Store model, where it's difficult to charge for updates. And that, in turn, is an artificial constraint imposed by OS vendors who have an incentive to keep people on the latest OS (without breaking their apps). There's a full-length rant at https://www.grinchcentral.com/an-open-letter-to-subscription....

I respectfully disagree, at least that you can't generalize this to all software. For many products, incentives are better aligned for both the customer and the business if usage is based on an ongoing subscription. There are plenty of people who have spelled this out, but the recent switch of Ulysses (word processor) to subscription was one of the nicest explanations I've seen [1]. Sketch App also explained this when they made the switch, though perhaps not as eloquently [2].

[1]: https://medium.com/building-ulysses/why-were-switching-ulyss...

[2]: https://blog.sketchapp.com/versioning-licensing-and-sketch-4...

This trend is fast catching up in India too, esp with the food delivery companies.

Zomato's treats, Freshmenu's freshclub, Zomato's Gold, etc.

Others would be MakeMyTrip's black.

With companies that offer a free month such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and others, yet offer little to no incentive to keep the service afterwards, the only thing that keeps people subscribing is the incredibly slight inconvenience of signing up again and again every month with a new email. Spotify on the other hand does offer a valuable service because remembering history seems to me to be more important in music, where one often listens to the same music over and over again versus Netflix where one is unlikely to watch things multiple times and the few times one does that, it's fairly easy to remember the titles. I wonder if the run-of-the-mill customers will start figuring this out and if so, how these companies will respond. Until then, it'll be easy to get a ton of free services at the slight cost--usually a few minutes--of signing up again and again.

It's very easy to stop and start a Netflix or Prime subscription and, I believe, this is one of the ways they've managed to grow so quickly.

I've subscribed to other media services a couple of times and the process of cancelling has put me off even thinking about trying it again.

Cached: https://archive.is/wFAL4

I like this article but my favorite part was the Economist header subscribe button, a constant fixture of my read.

Good to see that the Economist is totally on top of the trends sweeping through commerce in 2014.

I don't get the last point in the article. Customers often have subscriptions to multiple, theoretically competing, services, sure. But why is that bad for subscription-based services? Surely that just means market share is easier to come by?

Subscription models create a haves / have-nots divide, which is fine for some things, but seems immoral for journalism. Too bad that model's been around since long before the internet.

New new thing? Every telco of this world was a subcription service since 25 years ago...

Subscription is a long-lasting, predictable revenue stream. Even if one-off sales bring more revenue the subscription system fares much better. I was listening to Sam Harris' podcast recently, and they seem to have discontinued the one-time donations entirely. You don't want to deal with the instability of exceedingly high revenue one month, and barely any in the other.

Another thing I noticed is that with subscriptions in place, you can understand—and grow—your customers in all sorts of ways. For eg, Netflix has analyzed that "if you have watched 15 hours of content per month, you're 75% less likely to cancel. If they drop below 5 hours, there is a 95% chance they will cancel." [1] So, now, they only have to figure out how to hook their users to watch Netflix for that many hours. I don't think it's very much possible in a traditional business setting.

[1]: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-netflix-uses-analytics/

It’s great when this model takes over; no one will own anything anymore. Simply rent. The concept of equity is a thing of the past. Good luck retiring cheaply/at an appropriate age.

Are you saying this model is gonna take over real estate in a new way and that we will lose our biggest potential source of equity? Or that we have so much equity to bank on from our old records, tapes, and discs? Or that this a new thing and that people haven't been retiring and using cable, phone or disposable news/media since forever ago?

It's more towards Volvo's Care [1] subscription plan than anything else (large amounts of money in return for convenience; a leased car, bundled insurance, maintenance subscription) - but yes - death by a thousand subscriptions.

A subscription here and there isn't going to change anyone's mind, but a dozen or so subscriptions every month as long as you need the service (sometimes lifetime) surely comes out to more cost over time.

[1] https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/new-models/xc40/care-by-vo...

Didn't see any mention of the Volvo Care thing, but leasing any car is typically a bad idea, Volvo is just packing more crap in for extra lazy people that like paying even more.

I don't see the death of a thousand cuts thing currently. No one needs a dozen subscriptions. Our household has 3: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Spotify.

- Netflix is cheaper than buying 1 movie/month.

- Spotify is cheaper than buying 1 album/month.

- Amazon Prime is a net savings on shipping and trips to the store plus videos, books and music and whatever else in there...

Comes out to an overall savings from most people's spending habits before these things were around, especially if you cut cable. What else does a typical family need to subscribe to that is draining all of their money?

We need bundles of subscriptions.

If I pay 10$ for netflix, you can't pay 5 for a todolist.

But i would pay 15 for netflix + todolist + calendard + others things.

Bundles are the reason that TV subscriptions got so odious. Setapp and other businesses will inevitably game the bundles to maximize profits and once again we'll be in a user-hostile environment.

Want netflix? You have to subscribe to the uber-ultra-premium-HD bundle which costs $200/mo and comes with 500 other apps that you'll never use, but think of the value!

My NY Times subscription came bundled with Spotify Premium for a fair discount vs paying for both separately. I'm coming up on the end of my 1 yr commitment. I think I'll be keeping Spotify but the Times has been disappointing over the past year.

I saw today that Hulu and Spotify are bundling, maybe that's where I'll end up.

This is coming, I think it's just hard work to be an effective aggregator. SetApp[1] is a good example of what I think will be more common in the future, plus things like TMobile paying for Netflix.

[1]: https://setapp.com

I don’t know about where you are, but here there are two cellular networks that give you a 480p Netflix account for the life of your contract.

I mean it’s not gonna cause you to cancel your netflix subscription but you might cut back on the simultaneous streams to save a few bucks.

My cellular network cost 25$ a month, I don't see where they would fit the netflix contract cost in there.

It’s probably cross marketing. Each side takes a couple dollars of loss for the increased in signups.

Like when amazon made a partnership with coin star. If you get an amazon gift card you don’t pay the coin counting fee, and amazon pays coinstar half the fee value.

Ironic that to read this article I have to subscribe to the Enconomist.

And while you can do this online, changing your subscription or cancelling it can only be done over the phone. You can't even change your method of payment online.

Cancelling at least can be done by email.

I'm not sure about the specifics, but in the EU it's not legal to offer a sign-up method that is not available as cancellation method.

Do you have a source for that? The Economist certainly doesn't, cancellation online is not possible but sign-up is.

The email method didn't work for me last time, I just got a reply asking me to call them.

Hm, I could have sworn I read about it a few years back that it was introduced. Also, it might have been only Germany? Can't find anything as google has the worst result for that search I've ever seen.

Just delete all the cookies. I do this all the time on `The New Yorker` because their followup/linked articles on a topic turn out to be a lot more.

Funny thing is, the article is there, I just deleted all the paywall elements in chrome then turned off the display:none styling on the blog-post__text element

Is this legal?

Your browser has downloaded it anyway, so you may as well read it. If they cared that much then they'd hide it better.

I'm not a fan of paywalls and believe a user should be allowed to do what they want with the data the browser downloads - but in general "if they really cared, they'd do more to stop me" is not how you should approach questions of legality.

I've paid for my internet connection and content that they willingly put on their server without any security protection has been downloaded to my computer. Now that I have that content I'll read it if I want to.

Try that with money accidentally put into your bank account.

You can keep repeating it over your shoulder to the judge as you are marched to prison for theft if you take it and can’t replace it.

Try that with a piece of mail that was sent to your house on accident. It’s a federal crime to open that envelope. The law doesn’t care that it was delivered to you.

Try removing the DRM from your DVD and making a copy of ‘your data’ on the disk you bought. A federal crime has been committed.

In this instance I would guess no laws are broken because no one powerful enough to make it illega has cared enough about the tiny fraction of people able to get around their tricks yet.

I think you're sort of comparing chalk with cheese there. I see what you're saying to a point but we're talking about a bit of text on a web page that's in the public domain, not money or copyrighted media. Last time I checked, it's legal to make a copy for personal use anyway isn't it? If I bought a DVD and wanted to convert it for playback on my iPad I'm pretty sure I wouldn't go to jail for it.

Absolutely - and in the given case, it's perfectly fine to do so because it's in fact legal (to my knowledge).

However, if you e.g. wanted to record a Netflix stream from the EME applet on their website, you could argue the same moral justifications - however, now you'd be breaking a law (circumvention of protection devices) and it wouldn't be legal, no matter how stupid the law is.

Haha fair point... recording a Netflix stream from the EME applet is quite a bit different to simply clicking on a link to visit a url though isn't it, in the same way that breaking into a bank vault is a bit different to finding a £1 coin on on the floor.

Isn’t the paywall a protection device which you are circumventing? Legally it’s no different

"I've paid for my internet connection"

Your internet connection bill is not the same as the bill for the content.

yes, well, at least where I live it is. you can just go "view source" and read the article in raw text. You can use anything to make the http request really. Completely up to you what tools on your computer you want to use to render it.

How would it not be?

Does it honestly matter?

I actually thought that article limit banner was part of a sarcastic intro. Was not.

I tried to read the article but I hit my max number of free articles a week

Have you ever tried to unsubscribe from The Economist? You have to phone them up!

You even need that to change your subscription. I love their articles but the subscription service is the worst I've encountered so far.

That's why I subscribe to The Economist through the iOS App Store. A couple of clicks, and unsubscribed/resubscribed. I've used their digital subscription service straight from the publisher, and yeah, what a pain.

Even phoning them is hard work, I might have restarted my subscription at some point but having gone through that I won't ever be subscribing again.

You can delete the cookies to read them.

There's a bright red bar on the bottom with buttons to subscribe to the economist for 12 weeks :-D

Website won't let me read the article without signing in.

Thesis proven!

It's ironic that I've reached my article limit with The Economist. Apparently it's a lifetime limit too, which means pretty soon we'll stop seeing posts from The Economist on HN.

Are you sure that the 'tracking' is not simply a cookie in your browser that were you to delete the cookie, would reset the limit back to zero?

It probably is, but so what? The Economist has made it clear they don't want me reading their material. So I'm obliging.

Try incognito mode

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