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

Soldato
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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
 
I think it depends on the subscription model, how little you can get it for (workarounds for some things where you can share the cost) and how much of whatever it is you use that deems whether it's extracting more money from you or not surely?
 
I just refuse to sign up for anything that wants a monthly payment. I have enough of those for my bills. It's money grabbing at its worst.

I notice all of the charities want your bank details and a guaranteed monthly payment now too. One of my friends tried to give a substantial cash donation to one of the cancer charities and was turned down! They just wanted his bank details. Shocking really.
 
i don't mind subscriptions where you can start/stop them whenever you want (or that are just on a rolling monthly basis). I tend to avoid long term contracts/subscriptions as much as possible though.
 
I don't see the issue. Yes, I've got a number of subscription-based monthly bills. Are they worth it? Absolutely.

Broadband? Of course.

Sky? I want it...so I'll pay for it.

Apple Music? Well I could get it all for free illegally, but I'm happy to pay whatever it is a month, maybe £8, to get all the music that I could ever want. The database element of it is fantastic.

Netflix? I watch it more than I actually watch Sky, so great.

Amazon Prime? Maybe unnecessary, but I really want to watch The Grand Tour, so I'll pay for it.

Mobile phone? Of course.

Don't you use the internet? Don't you watch TV? Don't you have a phone??

When I want to stop paying, I'll go back to torrenting music and TV shows. But everything else is virtually essentially. I could cut out Sky quite easily, but my fiancée likes it and she's paying the bills too, so who am I to object?
 
Bit melodramatic OP.

Subscription business allows for easier management of stock and running costs.

It is not an underhanded way to get more cash from you as some people make it out to be.

I subscribe to Audible and love it. I get a credit a month at the cost of a small fraction of what an audio-book costs and when i am done, i can swap it for another book for any number of reasons. If i were to buy these audio-books separately, they would cost me 4 to 5 times more!

What about when you stop paying for Spotify?

If he stops paying for spotify, he wouldn't have a phone contract?

Do you expect spotify to forever host music for you just because you pay a one off fee?
 
"Free to play" games and their "micro transaction" that aren't so micro are what grate my gears. As I say, you can only afford to play 1 FTP game at a time :p

For example : this morning just one of the multitude of offers popped up on my game for a package of items and it was £47.99! That's more than just buying a AAA game! :mad:
 
I avoid monthly payments wherever I can. Including buying my cars outright.

Monthly subs are ok when you can just cancel and let them expire a month later. But things like phone contracts where your tied in for a year+. No thanks.
 
How would paying a one off fee work in the modern world for something like Netflix, Amazon prime and spotify?

Are they expected to deliver the service until you die or they go out of business?
 
I was paying for Spotify but now i get it with my phone contract however I was happy to pay the £10 a month for it. If you have to buy all that music it would be thousands.
 
How would paying a one off fee work in the modern world for something like Netflix, Amazon prime and spotify?

Are they expected to deliver the service until you die or they go out of business?

If they did offer a one off fee I imagine it would be well into the £100s then you have people like OP complaining about the cost of netflix.
 
How would paying a one off fee work in the modern world for something like Netflix, Amazon prime and spotify?

Are they expected to deliver the service until you die or they go out of business?

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.
 
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).
 
The thing is that subscription models have their place. Even with stuff like food, where people have a 'meat' subscription. The people who buy into it know what they want and how much they want to pay, they want the convenience and the price that comes with a subscription. Believe it or not subscription based selling allows for companies to control stock much easier, as people are committing to purchase something in advance. What they save in storage, wastage and general shrink by having a very accurate grip on business can make the difference between being a viable business or just a small business struggling to compete with giants that swallow up any shrink and wastage with sheer magnitude of profit.


It is all about money, but not so much having you pay more, it is more about being able to plan their spending better. Some subscriptions pass the money on to their customer for a cheaper deal...

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).

I pay for spotify because i get to listen to whatever music i want, whenever i want. It isn't comparable to having CD's really. whether i am in my car or at home, i can listen to a new or old album. Possibly my favourite thing about spotify is that it can create playlists based on the album you had listened to and queue songs of similar sound that you had not even known existed. For me spotify is as much about music i don't know than the music i do and that isn't something that can be so easily or cheaply replaced by a CD.

Given the success of spotify and the number of its regular users, i would say that people with my attitude is not rare.

You keep viewing spotify as a product you own but really it is a service they deliver. That is why you think it is a rip off and i dont. It isn't for everyone but it certainly isn't just a money grab.
 
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I'm not sure that is such a tiny niche tbh, people may not have spent more than £10 every month, but I bet a lot of people spent more than £120 in a year on cds
I regular spent that on CD's for years some of which turned out to be awful and the great thing about spotify is it allows me to listen to even more music without deciding if I can afford it and i can play stuff other people like when they come round without buying it!
 
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