Why is everything turning into a subscription and when will it stop?

[mrochester]

There seems to be a worrying trend over recent years of products moving to a subscription model. It started with music (which is bad enough) but now you can ‘subscribe’ to razors, toothbrushes, boxes of cured meats, meals, TV etc etc.

It’s a cunning business move as it’s designed to extract more money from us and tie us into subscribing for essentially forever.

What’s it going to take to make this dangerous business model stop? How do you make people aware of how bad this model is for consumers and influence them to stop supporting it?

M

 

[mrochester]

I love my spotify subscription.

£16.80 a month with vodafone for unlimited txt, mins and 12gb data inc spotify. I listen to it everyday.

What about when you stop paying for Spotify?

 

[mrochester]

I think the OP is implying we were better off under the traditional purchase method for films and music ie you purchased either physical or electronic copies of what you wanted and they were yours forever with no further charges. I think what he fails to see is plenty of people spend more than the cost of the annual subscription to spotify on new music every year so it's cheaper to pay a subscription! Some subscriptions I hate like the door to door charity people but others like Netflix and spotify work and represent good value for money especially when like netflix you can just cancel and rejoin when ever you like so if your not using it your not tied in.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about. These subscriptions cost a lot more than the vast majority of people would ever usually pay for those things. If you are a tiny niche of users who spends more than £10pm on music, you are probably better off with a subscription (although you will still lose everything when you stop paying).

 

[mrochester]

Not sure I need a subscription service for a toothbrush.....https://ubersonic.co.uk/ but then again, £19 then £9 every 2 months for 2 new heads, plus a free yearly whitening kit.....where do I sign up??!??

A £1 pack of 4 from Sainsbury’s lasts a year.

 

[mrochester]

indeed, but if you do the maths its still more expensive. but then its a psychology thing, i remember a mate of mine getting a contract for an iphone 6s when i knew damn well he had the free capital to just buy it outright, his reasoning was "yeah but it didnt feel like spending a lot of money"

the issue is that its combined, the giffgaff way of doing things is much better- finance plan for the phone and an entirely seperate sim contract (that you can instantly cancel if thats what you need), but of course doing it that way exposes the customer to the fact that they're charging interest, which the bigger companies have no inclination to do.

Buying a phone on contract is at times cheaper/better than sim only + unlocked.

 

[mrochester]

Absolutely correct. Messed up thing is Virgin Mobile is doing THREE year contracts now

Back when I started buying mobile phones the maximum was 12 months, and the phone would last 5 years!
Now your contract will be 3 years, and the phone is useless after 2 years because battery is dead.

You could just replace the battery of course.

The iPhone 3G was £350 for the 8GB model on O2 PAYG.

 

[mrochester]

Milkage milkage milkage.

Well yes I've replaced the battery in my 4S about 3 times, but it's not just the battery. Apps and software themselves become more and more bloated to sell newer phones.

Apps get up to 1000 times more CPU hungry while performing the same old basic functions.

https://sensortower.com/blog/ios-app-size-growth

You can afford to have more sloppy code when hardware performance makes up for it. The price of hardware progress.

 

[mrochester]

Because some models work out significantly cheaper for the consumer? Netflix for instance let's say I watch 20 films a month, with a rental fee of £0.99 - £3.99, let's call it £1.50 to be generous, that's £30 a month, I pay Netflix £7.99 I think, net saving for me. Same with Audible and Amazon Prime, subscribe and save offers me significant savings on items that I will buy anyway compared to supermarket prices. Where's the downside, they're all 1 month rolling contracts anyway.

Who on this planet watches 20 films per month?! That’s obscene! I’ve seen about 20 films in the last 20 years.

 

[mrochester]

1 film a year? wow ! Out of interest what 20 films have you watched?

Can’t remember, I’m not really that interested. Last one I saw is the latest Star Wars. The one I saw prior to that was the Star Wars the year prior.

 

[mrochester]

Quite a lot of people I suspect

Can’t possibly believe that! Surely people can’t waste that much time?!

 

[mrochester]

What’s wrong with subscription music?

I get a lot more out of my £10/month on Spotify than I ever would by spending the same buying CDs.

When you stop paying that £10pm, what do you have to show for it?

And/or when Spotify goes out of business?

 

[mrochester]

Yeah, I buy the stuff I really like for keeps too... but grumpy OP was asking what else I could have got with the price of the Spotify subscription and what I had left over...

I own tracks I may never have found thanks to Spotify...

Sounds like you are being taken for a ride there.