Trying to avoid a subscription based model for anything seems to be getting ever more difficult. It doesn’t matter what the product/service is, all businesses are converging at the tactic of charging you some small change every month, and you pay that perpetually until you stop using the product/service or the business goes bankrupt. As someone that prefers ownership of anything I need, this is a disheartening trend. To keep things simple, this post focuses on digital subscriptions such as music or video streaming.
Why is this model working?
From a normal person’s perspective, things make sense. You pay a rather small monthly fee to have access to a great service, look at the catalogues offered by streaming services like Netflix or Disney Plus. Services like Spotify offer a free version where you can access a nearly endless amount of music with ease. Get a Funimation account and you get a nice library of anime you can view anywhere. Pay $20 a month for all Adobe software rather than $700 upfront for just Photoshop. The advantage of the subscription model seems to be the manageable looking bite size payments that lowers the barrier of entry for lots of people. The prices look appealing, the services just work, and the overall user experience isn’t bad.
My problems with this model
Really, my issues with subscriptions can be boiled down into one argument: I want to own my files instead of renting for eternity. When I want to listen to music on my desktop, I play them from my hard drive. I have some of those files transferred to my phone so I can listen on the go. I can use any music player in existence and get the same experience, that music is on my storage so the only way I would lose it is if the drive or device fails. I don’t have to connect to some Spotify servers once a month to keep them, no streaming services dictates whether I get to listen to a track or not, and I can actually access the files and copy, distribute, and edit them. Good luck trying to find the files you downloaded off of any streaming service because you can’t, you can only access those files through their official app and with your account. Whether it’s music, videos, games or software, you get no ownership with subscription services. Have fun with ridiculous problems like region locking or premium members access only too. I don’t want to be forced to access my media through an account that merely rents it and has no guarantee that the file won’t be gone tomorrow. Having my files offline means that if all subscription prices were to triple tomorrow, I would be immune. The whole global internet and electricity grid can be down, as long as I have a battery I can access my media.
There’s also a cost argument that can be said against streaming services, let’s look at video streaming as an example. How much has a Netflix subscription risen over the years? I remember nearly 10 years ago it was less than $10 a month, isn’t it nearly double now? How much has your wage increased by in that time? Then there’s competing streams, take HBO Plus, Hulu and Disney Plus as examples. Each one is bound to have some exclusives or your favourite service doesn’t support your favourite shows so you better pay up to watch those somewhere else. Oh, then region locking from dumb publishing rights is denying you some shows so now you’ll have to find workarounds for that. What you end up with is a super fragmented market with tens of services trying to lure you in, and all of them have some kind of problem. Then repeat this for music, software, and now games. At what point does subscribing cost you more than if you were to buy upfront (or find for free)? It’ll get more expensive sooner the more services you use.
Final remarks
This rant could extend to every other service or product that you can subscribe to, not just digital ones. I just want to make a one time upfront payment and have perpetual ownership instead of paying a monthly fee. I already pay for electricity and internet, is it so much to ask for? With the increasing power that streaming services gain, I think there’ll be a resurgence of people sailing the seas to find what they want and I recommend you to join as well. Break free from paying monthly rental fees to 10 companies and just own your media.