Who's we? Nobody is forced to subscribe to every little fad. I have a subscription to Spotify and Github Copilot, that's it (and rent if we consider it a subscription which it kinda is).
I guess Spotify and Copilot are okay if all you do is listen to music while writing code, but consider more common lifestyles:
- NYT & other media publications are common subscriptions.
- YouTube can be pretty hard to watch without YouTube premium. Given that it's a wealth of information for fixing your house, learning to cook, getting better at your job, or just pure enjoyment, seems well worth it.
- Netflix and/or {HBO, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+} are hard to beat given how much TV an avg American consumes per day. Yeah it's not great for you and yeah you can do piracy to save money but it's not unreasonable to have at least one of these subscriptions.
- iCloud if you want to back up your phone without plugging it in to your computer (or if you don't have a Mac but you have an iPhone). Google One if you use Google Photos a lot.
- Subscription vitamins, shaving razors, baby {food, diapers, toys}, groceries, ____ <insert other item you use frequently but is a consumable>, etc.
- Some folks support creatives by way of patreon or pay for newsletters by way of substack.
- Amazon prime, costco membership, nest/ring camera, nintendo switch online, other annual subscriptions.
- Web hosting & domain names are also common for YC readers, since you mentioned copilot :)
"We" could be anyone with some combination of subscriptions that bring value to their lives. It's definitely a lot of recurring costs to manage, and many don't do a good job of culling things that once brought them value but haven't lately (e.g. I only canceled my HBO subscription 3-4 months after realizing I wasn't using it).
I'm not saying I'm against subscriptions, everyone can do whatever they want with their hard earned money but don't understand why Bloomberg, of all things, would have a piece about it.
Different people have difference life choices. "We" in this context, definitely doesn't include everyone.
About your common lifestyles, see how I live just fine besides coding and listening to music (my opinion, my life, ymmv, etc):
* I read the news for free online.
* uBlock Origin + Sponsorblock extensions on Firefox and NewPipe app in Android. No ads.
* I don't use Netflix, HBO, etc.
* I don't use iCloud.
* I buy all my frequent consumables in the supermarket when they're almost running out. I use reminders on my calendar app.
* Patreon and so on is something I don't use but totally understand being something people want to do and that's cool.
* I don't order enough from Amazon to justify Prime, no Costco here, I have a Tesco clubcard but that's free.
* I don't have anything to host.
* I don't even buy books! Library is amazing, even lets me borrow ebooks to read in the Kobo ereader.
> Different people have difference life choices. "We" in this context, definitely doesn't include everyone.
> don't understand why Bloomberg, of all things, would have a piece about it.
The fact this article is generalizing just points to the impression that it's very common now to have many subscriptions (it's just not about you). Indeed I'd consider people having some combination of the services I mentioned as being more common than folks like you. I don't think it would be that hard for you to get that sense even with a limited sampling of folks you know; another way to know it's common is to just look at the raw subscriber #s for these services which is often available in their public financial filings, and divide that by an estimated # of households in the US or whatever country.
edit: anecdotally, self-hosting your own video content on plex helps enormously, and plexamp for music (carplay!) helps too
The only difference with a subscription is that it's not automated.
If a huge percentage of content is only available via subscription, it becomes prohibitively expensive to diversify the content you buy.
The only solution (apart from abandoning the subscription model) is for all subscription services to merge into a small number of media empires that each contain a diversified portfolio. This only serves to exasperate the original problem.
Not strictly ethical I guess but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But that moral argument is not the issue here.
Subscription services distill the marketplace for content that you can pay for. They make diverse media production prohibitively expensive, because customers can't afford to pay for a diverse collection of media when that collection is distributed across many subscriptions.
What counts as “obligation” to you? You can also generally walk out of a restaurant without paying.
What I consider unethical is shoving them into my face in every way possible (frequently in ways to trick the user into clicking). I'd appreciate it more if ads were more like footnotes (with details on a separate page) that I'd visit and review if I wanted to.
Someone paid a fortune to put ads on busses to force me to see them. If I look away, am I somehow stealing from them?