Name: Subscription Affliction - Everything is $10/month
Uploaded: 2019-08-21T08:10:30.000Z
Duration: 11 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

If you watch movies, listen to music, or own a phone, You're probably familiar with subscriptions.

Which, for companies, are pure gold Or, green, I guess.

Instead of selling you today, and tomorrow, and next week, They only need to convince

Because each customer is so valuable, they can focus more on keeping them than doing

But it's no longer just newspapers and magazines, now it's everything:

Music, Movies, Food, Games, Storage, Clothes, Razors, Makeup, Software, Cars, animal bones?

Seriously - Bonebox ”includes various osteological specimens such as skulls, claws, and teeth”

Why does every business need to be a subscription?

Let's divide subscriptions into two categories.

Services, like Netflix, Prime, Lootcrate, and Spotify, kinda have to be subscriptions

Sure, you can buy music and movies individually, but here, you get everything.

40 million songs on Apple Music times the usual dollar twenty nine would be $51 million

Subscription boxes, which send you new things in the mail every month, are services because

they're more about fun and surprise than the stuff itself.

And then there are products - things that could be sold, but here are rented.

And this is where things get hairy You don't have to be a master Googler or Binger, or

DuckDuckGoer, but, boy do those sound awkward, to find a million and a half people criticizing

But it's not actually subscriptions they're angry about, nobody's complaining about

Netflix or Spotify, it's really this second category - especially software.

When companies want to reach in your wallet every month until you die for what could be

a simple, one-time purchase, it feels a lot like a cash grab,

Adobe switched to a monthly fee precisely to increase profit.

But it's not always so simple, Even when they seem unnecessary, subscriptions can be

Companies usually don't explain why, and when they do, it's easy to see as just an

excuse to make more money, but there is a why.

And since my thing is taking complicated, controversial topics and trying to explain

them in too little time - let's get to it…

The idea of a rental is nothing new, we rent apartments, and cars, and if you live in Alaska,

where there are still 6 Blockbusters, movies.

But, nobody wants to rent, say, their lamp.

Owning is just simpler, and usually, cheaper.

Losing what we already own is especially frustrating.

Apps like Ulysses and Autodesk were a one-time purchase, then one day, you get an email:

I know you already bought this, but if you want to keep getting updates, now it costs

Ulysses was absolutely flooded with 1 star reviews.

Probably the most life the Mac App Store's ever seen…

And fifty thousand people signed a Change.org petition against Adobe.

Which, as we know, is very effective…at spamming your email

But here's the problem: The way most people think about software just isn't realistic.

what if every year you got this popup: Hey, you need to update to a new version of your

If you don't, it'll be vulnerable to burglars.

Sometimes it goes smoothly, sometimes it permanently changes your wall sockets.

Maybe to these cute little ones from Denmark.

I bought that lamp and now it's suddenly incompatible with my house for reasons completely

The house is your operating system, the lamp, your software.

Programming may seem like build once - collect profit forever, but if an app isn't updated,

Knowing this, do you really want to own that lamp?

Truly owning software means owning all its bugs and future incompatibility.

Maybe your answer is yes, we'll get to that later.

But me, if I really depend on something, and there's a chance it'll break in a year,

well, I'd rather rent it from someone who maintains it.

Fixing bugs is like Sisyphus endlessly pushing his boulder up the mountain only for it to

You can't expect developers to do that forever just because you gave them 99 cents three

You might say “Obviously these apps don't need subscriptions because they did just fine

before” - but the truth is, they mostly didn't…

Big companies always find a way to earn a profit, Adobe has the power and prominence

to ask $53 a month, and make billions doing it.

But many apps, some of the best apps, are made by a single person, or a small team of

They compete with 2, 3 million others, and a feeling that if you can't hold something,

So, unless you trademark the word “Candy”, seriously that actually happened, or spend

millions advertising, your sales look like this: A huge spike in the beginning, maybe

some seasonal bumps, and then, almost nothing.

You might make half your salary on the first day, but by the 20th or 50th, things don't

You can get more customers - Do some marketing, keep updating the app, and cross your fingers.

Or, more accurately, pray to the App Store Gods

But the App Store isn't like YouTube, doing everything it can to bring audiences to your

Even a great app can get stuck in a corner and never be found.

And eventually, everyone who needs your app will already have it.

Plenty of happy customers, and no more income for you.

Or: if sales are so good at the beginning, just release as many paid updates as possible.

But it can also be a dangerous trap, because the incentive is to release as many paid updates

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Subscription Affliction - Everything is $10/month

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