One Low Price...Every Month

I remember when content providers started talking about subscription services several years ago. I thought to myself, "How can this be a good thing? Surely people will not fall for this?" Alas, just like we watch television and get a sudden urge for tacos that we cannot explain, everyone lined up and signed up without so much as a "have an apple". Indeed, there were lots of people that just started spewing the propaganda right back in defense of this horrible idea. Now, a few years later here we are, subscription hell.

I fully realize that there are use cases where subscription services are a better deal, but for the majority of us we end up paying more for content and software that are even less our property than they were before (which is saying something). Make no mistake, like most things, subscription services have nothing to do with providing a better service in order to increase value and thus increase profit. It is another case (often spearheaded by Apple) of providing something users do not need with fewer options and convincing them it is good for them.

Imagine you listen to new music every single day. Imagine you teach music at a college or university. Perhaps you are in a band? Maybe you simply could never get your hands on enough tunes. Heck, maybe you hated going to the record store. You sign up for Apple Music and bam, you have access to more music than ever before! Great. Now imagine you buy a few songs a year, and maybe an album or two...or seven. The cost to you just increased for something you do not need. Of course you can opt to not buy Apple's subscription music service, but it is so entrenched into their ecosystem that it plays havoc on your once intuitive user experience...an all to common occurrence with a once beautiful environment.

Still, let us forget content for the time being and agree for the sake of argument that it is a good thing. The bigger problem, and the one I was afraid of years ago, is that once sellers realized how much was to be made from subscription services they all decided that their "content" would benefit from this amazing paradigm. The consequence? You visit a software developer's webpage to purchase an application and guess what? Yep, $4.99/month! This goes for everything from virtualization software to freaking TextExpander. TextExpander!

Again, there are use cases where this stuff makes sense. The problem is that most of the time it only make sense for the seller. Here is the thing, I envision a world where sellers increase profits by increasing value. They do this through adding features, creating a better user experience, providing better customer support, etc. Instead we have a situation similar to the United States government. The sellers are telling us what is good for us, and we are eating it up. Things are great...for the sellers!