Some counterexamples, subscriptions that I and others are happy to pay and which tend to provide a worse experience when funded any other way:
* Email provider.
* Online Newspapers.
* Heavily online collaborative SaaS.
* MMO games.
The common thread is that the alternative funding model can't usually be a one-time purchase because the product is delivered over indefinite time, which leaves some combination of ads and microtransactions as the remaining viable funding models. Given a choice between the three, subscriptions have reliably produced the best experience for me as a user.
Obviously, I'll heartily agree that subscriptions are overused and abused (I'm looking at you, car manufacturers), but I tend to take a more measured approach than avoiding all subscriptions of any kind. And I would absolutely hate to receive and manage invoices for these things.
Yes, I'm highly skeptical of subscriptions, but there are obviously cases where they make sense (and I work for a SaaS company so it'd be pretty hypocritical if I said the never do). I subscribe to a gym and actually go regularly as an example. I'm slightly on the fence about music - it's nice to be able to own the file in such a way that no one can ever take it away, but the convenience of Spotify is impossible to match and I sometimes subscribe.
I love the idea of owning my own music and I own some but Apple Music allowed me to discover so much albums I love that it makes it impossible to buy them all. For the price I paid over 10 years of subscriptions I might have bought them all but the subscription is what allowed me to discover them in the first place …
The way I handle any streaming video subscriptions is:
- Have a list of stuff I want to watch.
- Once the list has enough on it from any one streaming provider (Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO, etc), I activate my subscription on that service, pay for a month, and immediately cancel.
- Use the month of access I just bought to watch the stuff.
- Continue with whichever service "fills up" next at some point in the future.
This method results in me typically buying a month of access on the usual suspect services once per year or so, and I never pay when I'm not actively using the services.
If I don't use it for awhile, then I unsubscribe. If I find myself in a situation where I'll potentially be listening to a lot of music (recently it was a road trip), then I'll re-up it. If they send me a good deal and I notice it, then maybe I'll re-up then. Given the cost, it probably doesn't matter, but as I said I'm very skeptical of subscriptions.
* Email provider.
* Online Newspapers.
* Heavily online collaborative SaaS.
* MMO games.
The common thread is that the alternative funding model can't usually be a one-time purchase because the product is delivered over indefinite time, which leaves some combination of ads and microtransactions as the remaining viable funding models. Given a choice between the three, subscriptions have reliably produced the best experience for me as a user.
Obviously, I'll heartily agree that subscriptions are overused and abused (I'm looking at you, car manufacturers), but I tend to take a more measured approach than avoiding all subscriptions of any kind. And I would absolutely hate to receive and manage invoices for these things.