Subscriptions just becomes unmanageable when you have to many. I do like your example of some software where you just need it for a month, but I don't think that should be a subscriptions then. That should just be paying for one or two months upfront.
The issue that I have with subscriptions is, as I said, they become unmanageable and they are frequently dishonest, betting on you to forget to cancel them. You do a one year subscription for something, forget to cancel in time, and now you're stuck paying for two years.
Both SaaS and many other type of subscriptions really need to drop the recurring part and just let you "rent" the product. That seems more honest to me.