
Subscription Hell - Semirhage
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/06/subscription-hell/
======
techsupporter
At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content,
but I want to touch on the author's bit about software:

> It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write
> everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid
> $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual
> subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments illustrate,
> that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of providing the
> software (which I might add, is entirely hosted on iCloud infrastructure).

I have noticed this as well, that a not-small number of software programs have
turned from "give us one money for this version" to "give us slightly smaller
amount of one money per month, but do it in perpetuity if you want to keep
going with the data you've entered."

That, to me, is crap and is incredibly frustrating, especially when the
subscription model is coupled with a data lockout threat. A task manager, a
word processor, even a drawing program...none of these ought to require a
subscription to be able to use. Sure, have a subscription service for
something that needs upkeep, like a syncing service (but get out of here if
all you do is just lump it into the user's iCloud storage) or a data feed. But
it's almost insulting to say "we used to charge you $50 once, now we're
charging you $29.95 per month forever (if you want to see those notes in two
years, and no, we don't have a data takeout API); it's such a deal!"

~~~
wpietri
A model I really like is the one IntelliJ uses. They encourage you to buy a
subscription. But when you buy a year at once, you get a "perpetual fallback
license" such that you can always keep using the version that is current when
you buy: [https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/207240845-What...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license-)

That means I always will have access to my projects and to the level of
functionality I start with. But I keep getting upgrades as long as I keep
paying, and they get the steady revenue stream that means they don't have to
play weird marketing games.

~~~
rolleiflex
One thing that always rubbed me wrong about this is that, logically speaking,
if you buy a license for a year, the perpetual fallback license should be the
version you had at the end of the license, not the one that was on the market
at the beginning of it. It doesn't really make sense the way they do it, and
it feels like a particularly hamfisted attempt to grab an almost negligible
amount of money, so I'm puzzled.

~~~
lultimouomo
It's not the negligible amount of money that matters. The trick is that at the
end of your yearly subscription you have already upgraded to a newer version,
so falling back to the perpetual license means downgrading, which is both
often a practical problem and (perhaps most importantly) something that I
think many have an emotional aversion to.

I'm pretty sure that if the fallback license was to the most recent version
you're entitled to during your subscription way more people would take leaps
between the end of a subscription and the start of the next one (though
Jetbrains offers you a further discount if you don't do so).

~~~
rolleiflex
That makes sense, thanks.

In the end, though, when I discovered this was how it worked at the end of my
PyCharm subscription, it left me quite a bitter taste in my mouth, and I just
stopped purchasing any JetBrains products. These kind of details are akin to
trying to trick people via putting stuff into EULAs nobody reads, and for me
at least, it gives the distinct feeling that they're trying very hard to screw
me over, so I try to not frequent nor support those kinds of businesses, IMHO.

~~~
kittiepryde
So, is what they are doing worse than what most subscription models do (lose
complete access)?

I've been using them for awhile and I felt they were really up front about
what they were doing, but I don't know if they've always been as transparent.

~~~
sireat
Jetbrains actually wanted to cut off access completely at first.

Initially JetBrains didn't even want to offer rollback licenses when they went
to subscription only model a few years ago.

There was a big uproar among programmer communities (including here on HN) and
after few weeks of deliberation a compromise of sorts was reached.

Despite offering a nice product line, JetBrains did lose a bunch of goodwill
including mine. But goodwill does not pay the bills.

------
cornholio
I disagree with the author that subscriptions are objectively and inherently
the superior model for web monetization. An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web
it's is inclusiveness and strong worldwide redistribution effects. Everybody
sees the ads, however the actual value of a pair of eyeballs is widely
variable, by orders of magnitude so. It's therefore profitable to make the
content free and distribute it as far as possible, to have the best chance of
catching high value visitors that covert to ad action and revenue.

The net effect is that large swaths of society and indeed the world get the
internet services for free, subsidized by purchases made by richer westerners,
purchases and services they themselves could never afford. This model works
well with the economic structure of web publishing, where marginal cost of
serving an existing page to a new customer is essentially zero - even for the
obese, media rich pages the author is referring to.

Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases. There is a
clearly defined model of customer, say, those living in the middle class of an
OECD country, that is targeted to maximize revenue, and a paywall is put in
place that excludes 95% of the rest of the world. These are people for which
9$ might represent a tenth of their wage, and who might not even have access
to modern banking through which to purchase internet services.

The open web was created by hacker ethos, but paid for using ads; a flat tax
against widely variable income is strongly inequalitarian and exclusionary.

~~~
anarazel
> An unsung virtue of the ad-driven web it's is inclusiveness and strong
> worldwide redistribution effects. Everybody sees the ads, however the actual
> value of a pair of eyeballs is widely variable, by orders of magnitude so.
> It's therefore profitable to make the content free and distribute it as far
> as possible, to have the best chance of catching high value visitors that
> covert to ad action and revenue.

> Once you move to a flat fee, this massive redistribution ceases

I think this largely disregards the effects of targeting. A lot of the things
(payday loans as the prime example) advertised to people less well off are
reverse redistribution, exploiting the financial situation / needs of viewers.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Payday loans are an extreme case. I very much doubt that there enough such
things to completely dilute the redistributive effect of ad funding.

~~~
nojvek
Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor person.
A poor persons usually has little family/friends or they are poor too. Banks
won’t give them loans. If they are stuck in deep dark mud, the only way out is
payday loan. Sure, some outright gamble their life and their should be some
low against it. But paydays are taking huge risks in funding them, therefore
their higher fees as insurance.

~~~
jimmy1
> Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor
> person.

This is a false dilemma. There are many options before succumbing to a payday
loan. Depending on where you live, there are a myriad of housing assistance,
energy assistance, medical bills assistance, and food assistance programs on
the city, county, state, and federal levels. Heck, even bankruptcy can be
better in some situations. It really does depend on the situation.

The other problem here is availability of information. Everyone is 100% aware
of payday loans and the temporary relief it can provide you (advertising), not
everyone is aware of the upwards of 20+ programs someone in need can
participate in, and it can be exhausting to apply and follow up on everything.
Again, the reason the payday loan industry is so successful is they are
preying on human nature to take the quick and easy way, but to say they are
some sort of last option is not true at all.

~~~
josefresco
It's usually the last (legal) option for "straight cash". Most public
assistance programs have some sort of condition to the assistance they
provide.

------
ChuckMcM
I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to
understand what people want.

The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you
pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or
not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price
per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero
articles).

Now the pay per article model works so much better. You can charge me to read
a single article but I pay nothing if I read nothing. This is the model that
blendle.com uses and my experience was that even though their "per article"
price was much higher than I originally thought reasonable (9 cents to 50
cents) I was paying basically $50 a month for subscriptions to the
publications that I read (WSJ, Economist, NYT, WaPo, etc) and with Blendle I
end up putting maybe $15 or $25 per month into my Blendle wallet. So its half
as expensive for me and I still get to read, advertising free, any article in
those publications. Blendle's money back if its click bait policy is the
clincher. When you read a lemon you get your money back.

I win (save money) they win (they get paid for their journalism).

~~~
JauntTrooper
I don't think that model will work, honestly. There's friction anytime you ask
someone to spend anything, even if the price is de minimis.

Look what happens whenever a city adopts a $0.05 plastic bag tax. When
Washington DC did it, plastic bag use dropped by 50% - 70%. I'd see people
that just spent $30 bucks at the store with their arms overflowing with stuff
rather than pay that extra nickel.

I'd expect prompting users to choose whether reading a story is worth $0.05 to
them every time will cause them to read and engage significantly less.

~~~
wutbrodo
> I'd expect prompting users to choose whether reading a story is worth $0.05
> to them every time will cause them to read and engage significantly less.

The example that gives me a little bit of optimism in the long run is power:
people don't really have a problem with the fact that their power bill is pay-
per-use, and if it discourages them from unduly wasting power, all the better.

But the problem you describe is still significant: people are _already_ used
to that dynamic for electricity, and it's not clear to me how to get over the
hump where they'd treat micro transactions for publishing in the way you
describe. Most people aren't remotely rational enough to realize on their own
that stressing over each minuscule payment has a cost of its own and coming up
with a better strategy for handling it. (In the electricity example, this is
the difference between 1) calculating the power usage of each device in your
house and considering whether you want to pay a few cents before flicking that
light switch or 2) conserve in common sense ways and adjust if necessary based
on your monthly bill.)

> When Washington DC did it, plastic bag use dropped by 50% - 70%. I'd see
> people that just spent $30 bucks at the store with their arms overflowing
> with stuff rather than pay that extra nickel.

Case in point... This may be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. My
city has had a ten cent bag tax for a long time now, and the way everyone
reacts is 1) carry it in your hand if it's one or two small things, 2) pay a
freaking dime if you have too much stuff and be slightly more likely to
remember your reusable bag next time.

~~~
sleavey
Regarding bags, that's a strange reaction given that everywhere else I've
heard of that introduced a bag tax has seen usage drop dramatically. It's not
the price - clearly most people can afford what they charge - it's the
psychology that makes you stop and think whether you really need a single use
bag for what you've bought.

~~~
wutbrodo
Oh I completely agree. It's extremely effective as a reminder and has been
extremely effective in my city. I think it's great example of damn near
Pareto-efficient govt policy.

But when I _do_ forget my reusable bag for whatever reason and have an
unwieldy amount of stuff to carry, it would be beyond idiotic to ride that
psychological effect all the way into the absurdity of stuffing my arms full
of thing (I gather from the original comment I responded to that he wasn't
talking about carrying an item or three).

------
gkya
> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the
> original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-
> designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into
> a compelling format.

Citation needed. This comes up quite often, and people like to assume they
know what users want all the time. But is there actual, scientific evidence
that, given the same content, a plain HTML+CSS web page that's not interactive
but well put together is less compelling to users than a JS-heavy,
interactive, overengineered, ad-ridden, tracker-infested and bloated one?
Moreover, where do we get the backing evidence for the currently-popular
aesthetic choices other than the subjective taste of designers themselves?

~~~
Reedx
Well, they say they researched it: "Yet, all of our research shows people want
high-definition images with their stories, instant loading of articles on the
site, and interactivity."

They understand how much more expensive an image and JS heavy site is to
develop and host, so they must have good reason to go through the trouble?

~~~
hdra
While that sounds reasonable, I wouldn't bet on it. I have seen too many inane
bloat that was implemented simply because the designer/developer/project
manager thought it was a cool thing to have or because they read it on some
growth-hack thoughtpiece somewhere.

~~~
Reedx
Indeed, that's all too common. It could also be a fluid thing. Huge images and
lots of interactivity are in now, but it'll go too far (arguably has) and
people may want to swing the pendulum back.

------
makecheck
“Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts,
graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format.”

Oh come on, NO I do _not_ want that! One of the biggest problems with ads,
news sites and other stuff is that almost _any_ of these “experiences”,
especially with video, are a drain on data plans and implemented terribly.
Give me an _article_. If that article has some _simple_ images and plain text
as ads, that would be fine. The issue is that instead, sites take way too many
liberties and turn it into a pop-up, slide-out, scripted mess that destroys
the whole “experience” of _reading_ an article.

And somebody should tell web sites that it used to cost 25 cents for an ENTIRE
daily newspaper (that still contained ads), which can’t be more than a few
bucks a month. If your subscription is ANY more than a couple of bucks, it
_will fail_.

~~~
gnicholas
Yeah, not so much what consumers want as what succeeds on social media.

~~~
twblalock
If people don't want it, why does it succeed on social media, or anywhere at
all?

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Because we count success as someone clicked on the article _at all_ as opposed
to how they used it. People talk about the studies and A/B testing done to
support the claims of rich media being all the rage, but how easy would it be
for any of these studies to miss the forest for a tree?

------
Legogris
A standard for micropayment for content needs to evolve. Our relationships to
publishers have changed substantially. I would be willing to pay per read from
sources like The Guardian, New York Times, The Economist, etc, but I am not
frequent enough to want to subscribe. For the citizen who wants to get their
information from different sources across the globe and political spectrum, it
gets unreasonable to expect subscriptions.

While something like Netflix/Spotify would be nice from a user/consumer
perspective, there is both the difficulty of gathering everyone under one
platform and the risks of having a single (or a few) number of brokers of news
across the board.

~~~
overlordalex
We have a local news website that I think has a realistic model. When you view
an article with an ad-blocker it shows you a dialog with a variety of options:

1\. Whitelist the site

2\. "Nah, journalists should go hungry" \- this dismisses the popup and lets
you read the article with your blocker intact

3\. 5c - read the article ad-free

4\. 10c - 1 hour of no-ads

5\. 30c - 1 day of no-ads

I've converted to US cents, but even in local currency think these prices are
extremely reasonable, and I'd love to see more sites offer similar rates

~~~
vageli
Does the service require you to maintain a wallet with them? As in, you
deposit money and transactions are drawn from your deposit? Otherwise, I can't
see how accepting such a low amount per transaction could be feasible.

------
zenhack
> Take my colleague Connie Loizos’ article from yesterday reporting on a new
> venture fund. The text itself is about 3.5 kilobytes uncompressed, but the
> total payload of the page if nothing is cached is more than 10 MB, or more
> than 3000x the data usage of the actual text itself. This pattern has become
> so common that it has been called the website obesity crisis. Yet, all of
> our research shows people want high-definition images with their stories,
> instant loading of articles on the site, and interactivity. Those features
> have to be paid somehow, begetting us the advertising and subscription
> models we see today.

It was kindof upsetting to read this after having switched the article into
Firefox's reader mode, because the page was completely unusable.

If you want to talk about consumers' wallets not existing in a vacuum: if your
3.5 KB article is sending me 10 megs of crap, then your mobile users' carriers
are charging them more than the advertizers are paying you.

There are some real challenges in figuring out how to fund journalism, but if
bandwidth is one of them you're doing something very wrong.

~~~
vladdanilov
There are glaring optimization issues.

Over 6MB of those 10MB is just one bloated photo [1]. It can be compressed
down to 1-2MB. Moreover, if it was a proper responsive image, it would not be
larger than 100-200 KB for most readers because a good JPEG compressor can
pull 2 bits per pixel [2].

Ironically, image optimization apps don't get that much coverage.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/vikbajaj20...](https://techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/vikbajaj2018.jpg)

[2]
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04416.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04416.pdf)

~~~
QAkICoU7IDNkpFu
I just took that image (which is 3300 x 2200), resized it to 50% and got 1.05
MiB, instead of 5.85. Threw it through JPEGMini (a paid product, mind you) and
got 729 KiB.

Guetzli is nice, but it's slow as balls. JPEGMini is a decent alternative.
(I'm a happy customer of JPEGMini, BTW. No other affiliations.)

~~~
vladdanilov
I'm making something in between [1].

That image is a good example for any perceptual encoder. At 50% size it's
600KB (487KB with current master), and there's still a lot to be unhappy
about, e.g. a hidpi image like that can be compressed a lot harder.

[1] [https://getoptimage.com](https://getoptimage.com)

------
peterburkimsher
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned foreigners or children.

As an immigrant, it's not possible for me to get a credit card, only a debit
card. When I was under 18, it was also very difficult to do online shopping (I
just made Christmas & birthday lists and asked my parents to eBay things for
me then).

Every time I change country, which has happened 13 times and counting, I lose
access to whatever services I had enjoyed. Subscriptions have really messed me
up. For example, my bank accounts at UBS and the Swiss Post Office started
charging me monthly fees after age 21. I didn't know, until my parents got
nasty letters to their address telling me I was overdrawn. I hadn't used the
accounts for 3 years, and when I left, they were free, so I didn't think to
close the accounts. I had to pay to bring the account above zero just so I
could close it. Not to mention phone subscriptions, Internet bills, rent, etc.

The lack of a stable home means I can't subscribe to Spotify. This pushes me
towards the few pre-paid models that are left. I have MP3s that work offline
with no need for cellular data. When I finally do get a chance to pay (e.g. a
band I like is playing a show on the other side of the country), I make a huge
effort to go there, buy their CDs, t-shirts, and everything else so I can
support them - because that might be the only chance I get to pay them. Having
been to over 300 concerts, I actually think I'm a bigger fan than most passive
consumers, even though I'm excluded from the business model that record
companies like. I feel like artists make more money from touring than
ads/subscriptions, but I have no data to support that feeling. If there were a
way to support journalists/programmers like touring bands, I think that could
provide an alternative source of revenue.

~~~
falsedan
You can get pre-paid/secured credit cards in a lot of countries (especially if
Capital One operate there). Unless you're moving every 6 months, you should
have enough credit history to land one CC with a tiny limit: then you set up
automatic payments and let it mature.

May I suggest setting up a project board when you move with stuff like 'update
address for <SERVICE X>' & clone all the issues when you move? Helps to avoid
accounts getting closed for missed payments at least.

------
dvcrn
The subscription craze for utility apps as mentioned in the post is especially
frustrating. I'm not talking about apps that need to maintain a
infrastructure, but just normal apps that really should not be subscription
based.

I get it, monthly subscription is a constant flow of money which makes things
more predictable (and more profitable), but these things add up for the user.

Here are some apps on my phone that changed to a subscription model

\- Timepage: Really nice calendar from Moleskine

\- Day One: A journaling app

\- Ulysses: Mentioned in the article

\- Spendee: Budgeting app

Some other subscription apps:

\- Moleskine actions: A todo list from Moleskine

\- Carrot weather: Really cool weather app that already costs a steep $5 (for
a weather app), but still has a in-app subscription for extra stuff (arguably
not needed but still)

\- CamScanner: Usable on free tier, but watermarks scanned PDFs. Why does this
need a monthly subscription? Bought ScanBot for $5 instead.

\- Bear: Note taking app

There is absolutely no reason why a calendar or a journaling app should have a
monthly subscription.

I am glad that I went in early on apps like Day One and Timepage and got a
lifetime subscription out of it, but if it wasn't for this, these apps would
have been off my phone already.

It's odd that I am starting to get happy when a new major version of an app
(like OmniFocus) gets announced and it's just a one time price instead of a
subscription.

------
lifeformed
I wish I could just pay $x/mo for unlimited access to all media. It would get
distributed to content creators proportionally based on my time using
websites, music, videos, and games. No ads or subscriptions.

I can't imagine how such a system would be implemented though. And I'm sure
there would be new unintended consequences with such an incentive structure.
But something like that would be nice!

~~~
smaddock
What you're describing sounds similar to Basic Attention Token [1] which is
used by Brave browser [2].

[1] [https://basicattentiontoken.org/](https://basicattentiontoken.org/)

[2] [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

~~~
lucb1e
If the intro video is to be believed, that seems like a terrible idea in so
many ways. The video explains it like "you view ads, your browser privately
tracks whether you watched them, and awards the website _and_ the user with
BATs". So while we now have middlemen in the form of ad networks, with BATs we
have an additional one to convert that currency into your local currency.
Additionally, the ad network will have to believe the browser that the user
actually viewed ads at all (DRM all over again). And what blockchain has to do
with this is, as always, unexplained.

~~~
Aramgutang
Right now, earning BAT by watching ads is not yet implemented. After you use
up the free 10 BAT you get on first install, you have to buy more to keep
paying the sites you visit (this is reasonably frictionless at the moment, and
is likely to get more so). I assume there aren't many people right now that
buy BAT to send into the Brave wallet (though I do, and know of others that
do), but it's still early days.

The part of their proposal I would suggest fixating on is the fact that if you
make deposits into your Brave wallet, you get to block ads (right now, ads are
blocked regardless), and publishers will be able to turn off their anti-ad-
blocking measures if they see you're using Brave, since you'll be providing
them with revenue. The hope is that in the future, paywall sites like WSJ may
allow you to bypass their paywall if they can verify that you're using Brave.

There is a lot of uncertainty right now about how the whole ad system will
work, because the team is focusing on making the browser robust enough so it
can compete with FF and Chrome. But in the meantime, they're also getting
useful information about what real users and publishers are actually keen on.

I suspect that the more obvious flaws, like the ones you pointed out, will be
accounted for once the system is fleshed out. They have not shied away from
moving away from their original proposal to more practical approaches.

Regarding the earned BAT by watching ads, I believe that it cannot actually be
withdrawn, only used to pay publishers, but again, things may change. And I
agree that the blockchain may superflous here, but using it has allowed them
to get the funding to get things off the ground and attract users, which
counts as a valid use in my book.

------
TimJYoung
This is good. We need to get back to letting prices do their thing and provide
the proper signals to the publisher/producer and the reader/customer. Pricing
helps producers clarify who they want to their customers to be, and it helps
customers clarify exactly what they do or don't _actually_ want.

Someone already mentioned software subscriptions and Adobe Photoshop, in the
context of professionals vs hobbyists. If Photoshop is too expensive, then
someone will create an alternative that is cheaper. That's basically what
happened with shareware in the 80s and 90s. When proper price signals are in
place, the market will adjust and new opportunities will be created for entry-
level players that want to address gaps in the product offerings.

Finally, in terms of accessibility: remember that there are insitutions called
libraries that are the great equalizers when it comes to accessing paid
content. For many years now one can go in and read _any_ magazine or newspaper
that one could want, without paying a dime. If you find yourself complaining
about content subscriptions, you might be better served by making sure that
your local library is fully-funded.

~~~
samlevine
Ad-supported websites are about as pure of an example of revealed preference
as you can get. Advertisers target eyeballs that spend money, and the sites
that capture the attention of said eyeballs get ad revenue.

The golden age of journalism, pre-web, was based on price signals being
divorced from content because of classifieds propping up everything else.

We have been given the web that we want. It has been found wanting, because we
ourselves are wanting.

~~~
TimJYoung
Web advertising only works to reveal preferences through privacy-invading ad
tracking, and the public is showing less and less tolerance for such measures.

Newspapers were absolutely using classifieds to blow up their revenue, but
advertising still played a big part and I doubt if classifieds were a
significant source of revenue for most magazines (a quick look didn't turn up
much in terms of figures).

Web publishing developed the way that it did because publishers weren't
particularly good at foreseeing what the end-game was going to look like,
combined with a good bit of hubris about what actual effects the web would
have on print publishing. The resultant excessive ad tracking occurred because
publishers were trying to, ahem, "polish a turd".

------
TheKarateKid
I'm okay with subscriptions. Software and quality media (such as Bloomberg)
are things that provide excellent value, and people have gotten used to
thinking they should be free or dirt-cheap - even within our own community,
which is saddening (I used to have this mentality years ago, too).

Yet, most people don't bat an eyelash when paying $100-200/month JUST for cell
phone service, then $100/month for cable, etc. How about car payments and
insurance?

If you use these services daily, then a subscription model makes sense.
They're providing value to you every day.

~~~
jhall1468
The argument is that the subscription price is prohibitive. Bloomberg is
charging $35/month which is considerably more than the advertising they are
replacing. I don't have Cable, I can watch news free OTA and my cell phone
bill is $170/month for 4 lines.

Problem is I don't use most of these services daily. Had Bloomberg decided
$10-$15/month was the right range, I'd pay it happily. You can't charge
$35/month for something that was previously free with zero value add and
expect people to pay it.

~~~
chadash
I think that Bloomberg is making a smart move here. While they have general
news too, their primary focus is on high quality reporting on the financial
and business markets. Many people within those industries will happily pay
$35/month for this news if they find it useful, and I'd venture that many will
just charge it to their employer, who won't bat an eye.

They could charge $10-15/month and try to appeal to a broad audience, but the
vast majority of people wouldn't pay that anyway. Given the choice, I'd prefer
a smaller number of higher paying consumers within a niche anyway, since I can
make a more targeted product and still bring in revenue. If anything, this
lets them be laser focused on their niche.

------
chiefalchemist
Um. I think it's worth mentioning that these aren't subscriptions (in the
traditional sense). They're memberships.

If I subscribe to a print mag, once it's delivered I have access to that
content until I decide to throw it out. If I bought Photoshop, I get to use
that version (sans major OS up grades of my hardware) as long as I want.

Membership is binary, or has levels.

------
kemonocode
> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the
> original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-
> designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into
> a compelling format. That “quality” costs enormous sums in engineering and
> design talent, not to mention massively increasing bandwidth and storage
> costs.

Not really. Nowadays, it's truly a strike of luck if a page looks half-
readable- hell, perhaps even readable at all if I haven't turned on JavaScript
and let it load resources from three dozen different locations. And "immersive
experiences"? I'm sure people will have plenty of chances to appreciate them
when most sites bring their cellphones or laptops down to their knees, even if
they are at most a couple years old.

Ravenous subscription fees to replace formerly ad-supported content is not
really much of a solution, it's just shifting the problem somewhere else.
Sure, it might work for some services in which you effectively have a captive
customer base (Thanks to vendor lock-in or a monopoly in your particular
niche) or if said fees are kept low enough, but it's bound to end up as
saturated as ad-supported content ended up being. Expect a raise in reports of
freeloaders, account-sharers and see if the administrative/consumer support
overhead is well worth it in the end.

------
calebh
I'd pay money for a Netflix-like service for newspapers. I know it's probably
not as good for the newspaper business as the old subscription model, but it's
pretty much the only viable model that I can see working.

~~~
dopeboy
Me and three friends worked on a similar idea at the YC hackathon a couple
weeks ago. You'd pay us $10/month and we'd buy a lot of subscriptions to
different newspapers. You'd install our chrome extension and when you came
across a paywall, we'd autofill credentials that are just valid for one day.

We didn't win but it definitely piqued the interest of the crowd and the
judges (Sam, Michael, and Adora). We're not pursuing it but hopefully others
do.

~~~
matthewmcg
What did you plan to do when the publishers terminated your accounts for
sharing credentials?

~~~
jstarfish
Proxy and cache articles using a standard set of credentials from a set list
of origin IPs, most likely. The traffic would appear as that of an average
reader.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
That sounds very likely to get you sued for copyright infringement.

~~~
djsumdog
Or just provide a front end for caching via archive.is and other archive
sites?

------
nickjj
For a lot of digital businesses a subscription makes sense.

Imagine if back in the day Rails Casts was $3 an episode instead of $20 per
month for unlimited monthly access.

Suddenly if you wanted to learn Rails, you'd end up watching many dozens or
hundreds of 5-10 minute videos for $3 a pop. You would constantly feel like
you're being nickel and dimed. It's hard enough to get someone to buy from you
once, but expecting someone to make dozens or hundreds of small transactions
would be madness.

It creates a really high pressure scammy feel to it IMO.

Don't you feel the same way?

~~~
philwelch
Or you could pay $40 once for a book: [https://smile.amazon.com/Rails-Way-
Addison-Wesley-Profession...](https://smile.amazon.com/Rails-Way-Addison-
Wesley-Professional-
Ruby/dp/0134657675/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525658101&sr=8-1&keywords=the+rails+way&dpID=51K8QKlrljL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)

I think the greatest loss of the modern web has been this explicit move _away_
from literacy. It's like the dark days of television are back again.

~~~
nickjj
I looked through the table of contents for that 1,088 page book and I didn't
see anything that hinted on how to do sorting on table columns.

And this is exactly why Rails Casts was great. You would Google "how do I sort
table columns in Rails" and find the episode, watch it in about 10 minutes and
implement it in your code base. Rails Casts has been dead for years and it
still ranks in the top 3 today on Google for that phrase btw.

I don't want to flip through 1,000 pages in a book to find 1 specific feature
I am struggling with right now. I may never find it.

~~~
AlexandrB
> I don't want to flip through 1,000 pages in a book to find 1 specific
> feature I am struggling with right now. I may never find it.

I'd much rather do that than watch a video about it, where I'm forced to scrub
back and forth trying to understand the key concept _at the speed the
presenter is speaking_ instead of reading a section multiple times (which can
be much faster).

~~~
nickjj
But what if the video is 5 or 10 minutes long and it's focused on the exact
problem you have, plus it has a blog-post style block of text under it with
the code examples? And on top of that, there's a git repo which shows a before
/ after for just that feature.

That's the value in something like Rails Casts.

------
johnchristopher
> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the
> original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-
> designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into
> a compelling format. That “quality” costs enormous sums in engineering and
> design talent, not to mention massively increasing bandwidth and storage
> costs.

Says who ?

In other news: stuff costs money.

------
codazoda
I don't mind subscriptions but I do fear the day when my favorite
subscriptions start to run ads on top of their monthly fee.

~~~
euvitudo
Case in point: cable tv.

~~~
pkaye
Or Hulu.

~~~
millstone
Hulu did the opposite: they initially had ads for everyone, but later
introduced an ad-free package at a higher price.

------
haglin
What we need is a cryptocurrency capable of handling microtransactions. Then
we need web browser support (a standard) for a cryptocurrency wallet.

When you visit a web page, you can pay for the content by clicking Yes in a
dialog box. When you don't have money in you wallet, you can fill it up using
your credit card, or some bank solution. The price is shown in your currency
of choice, but all the transactions happens on the blockchain.

People who make web pages can paste in some javascript to charge for content.
No third party organization needs to get involved and the seller can't get
charge backs. The transaction fee will be low so that you can charge pennies
for a news article. This will work without you giving away you credit card
number, name, address, e-mail etc. to the seller.

~~~
profalseidol
Here you go:

[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

[https://basicattentiontoken.org/](https://basicattentiontoken.org/)

~~~
squaredpants
Was about to post the same! Brave has some pretty cool upgrades incoming as
well!

------
tdurden
$35 a month for Bloomberg is an insane amount to ask - even if they cut that
number by 90%, it is still very debatable if the content is worth the price.

~~~
gnicholas
I wonder if they set the price point so high so they can capture lots of
revenue from businesses, like the WSJ does. Then for consumers they can offer
a huge discount.

------
sincerely
>Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the
original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed
pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a
compelling format.

do they really _want_ these immersive experiences? Do consumers even have a
choice?

~~~
rossdavidh
I strongly disagreed with the same paragraph. "Consumers want immersive
experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos
coming together into a compelling format." No, they don't want that,
especially not the video, and the rest is just a nice-to-have, not a want-to-
have. You WANT consumers to want that, but they don't; it's being forced on
them instead. Plain text with the occasional still graphic, on a plain white
background, would be just fine.

~~~
paulific
As a net user since 1995 I preferred it back then. Admittedly this is probably
tinged with nostalgia, but I remember people just sharing information without
needing to charge you for it. Maybe I just started with low standards, but
when people tell me I need to pay for this content, I go "meh, I just won't
read it then". I don't feel the loss, but possibly I don't know what I'm
missing.

------
eliblock
I'd like to throw in my pay-per-minute concept for video content. It's been
tried before but I think it's the business model for media monetization that
will win in the end. Basically a platform like Youtube could charge users a
penny per minute and distribute to content creators after taking a platform
percentage fee.

Starting something like this would have a huge chicken and egg problem though
because no content creators would join a platform without a large existing
user base. And I think Youtube and others would have trouble trying out a new
business model because they might lose the confidence of their ad customers.

~~~
bscphil
This really isn't a bad idea. Of course they'd have to have a wallet you
deposit into, and disable ads completely for anyone using it for there to be
buy-in, but I like the idea of paying the people I watch directly.

1c a minute seems like exactly what I'd be willing to pay, as well. Just for
an example, a relatively small livestream I watched last week would have made
$1200; there's no way they're making that much on ads. If that's the case,
channels would market it as an upgrade too - "join our supporter's club, and
get a badge".

------
sturgill
“You’ve found market price when buyers complain but still pay.”

Subscription revenue is great business. And the optimization of price to
maximize profits is a set of fun math problems.

It sounds to me like the author doesn’t love how much he spends on things but
isn’t willing to do without. Also known as optimal pricing...

~~~
nixpulvis
To me the issues isn't directly about price (though it's often a part of it),
but more about the idea of paying for something continuously versus once.
Almost a form of out of sight out of mind.

~~~
sturgill
For me, those two points are inseparable. But I’ve also spent the last several
years of my career focusing on maximizing profits within consumer
subscribeables...

There are only so many ways to make money: ads, once off charges, term
payments, and recurring charges. A consumer license to use vs physical
ownership is incredibly interesting. Buying a Mario Brothers cartridge for the
original Nintendo vs games delivered online. You could see a compelling case
for the Nintendo Switch to offer a subscription service giving access to X
games every month.

I don’t find either right or wrong. They just “are” so to speak.

~~~
nixpulvis
The best example I have right now is with music... I am ALWAYS going to want
to be able to listen to my library, it's not really fair to assume I should
have to pay monthly for it for the rest of my life, but for every day I don't
buy the album and I listen to it on AM or Spotify, I'm in effect paying for a
redundant service.

I get the difficulty finding ways to make money, but we are pigeonholing
ourselves into a model that is against the best interest of the users.

~~~
sturgill
I’d disagree in that you _can_ buy an MP3 and listen forever using whatever
device. But Spotify isn’t required to sell you MP3s (or guarantee perpetual
playback). And, it turns out, that people (in aggregate) really like the
Spotify model. One fixed cost to consume all the music you want vs buying
entire albums to listen to the 2-3 songs that were decent.

There are still two markets in music. That’s not the case with most online
services, but I’m comfortable with that.

------
komali2
>One way we could fix that situation would be to allow subscriptions to
combine together more cheaply. We are starting to see this too: Spotify, Hulu,
and Scribd appear to be investigating a deal in which consumers can get a
joint subscription from these services for a lower rate. Setapp is a set of
more than one hundred OS X apps that come bundled for about $10 a month.

I understand the attraction to this, but it makes me think of a problem I
haven't yet been able to define well, so I've been calling it the "Japan
Tourist Problem" in my head while I chew on it.

Basically, it's pretty common knowledge for everyone thinking about being a
tourist in Japan for a week or two that the JR pass exists and is an
unbelievable value. Essentially, it's unlimited rides on the bullet train and
Jr lines for a flat fee of ~200usd. Round trip is nearly the same price
without the jr pass. It pays for itself.

Problem one, outside of the standard jr pass are about 5 or 6 "specialized"
passes with very unique usage rules, like "only good for rides within Tokyo
metropolitan area" or "only good for northeastern Japan rides" or "good for
tourist bus only" I dunno it's impossible to keep track, but that's the idea.

And then when you actually get to Japan, you'll discover the full almighty
power of the national Japanese tourism board. They got their fingers in
_everything._ If you're ever about to spend money on something, there's
probably some way you could save by exercising tourism board initiative
235.b:a, including a full on tax exemption. Little packages for bus + hotel +
hot spring pass, with a vending machine voucher and an exclusive packet of
stickers which have a QR code on the back you can redeem in the Line app.
Endless. I'll try to find specific pamphlets and flyers when I get home but
it's just so many packages, deals, all mandated from the tourism board itself
(I'm not talking private hotel package type things here).

My point is that should this concept of the author's take off, we'll just be
in some new decision-lock hell, where you'll never be getting"the best deal"
because to do so would require solving the most insane graph reduction problem
ever conceived.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_My point is that should this concept of the author 's take off, we'll just be
in some new decision-lock hell, where you'll never be getting"the best deal"
because to do so would require solving the most insane graph reduction problem
ever conceived._

This is _exactly_ how I feel about "travel hacking". Not the earning points
part, which is fairly straightforward, but the redemption part. If I want to
go to Bogota on vacation for specific dates and I have hundreds of thousands
of airline miles and rewards points spread across a half dozen programs, the
number of options is ridiculous. I can book with cash, pay with reward points,
or book via dozens of different airlines and partner airlines with various
fare classes, stopover options, etc. Worse, if you're fortunate enough to have
a lot of flexibility around when and where you travel ("I want to go to South
America sometime this summer"), the complexity skyrockets even further. It's
just frustrating because even when I do piece together a deal, I can't help
but feel that I'm still paying double what I would if I looked at the options
differently.

------
dschuetz
It was a matter of time that subscription plans hit the same level of
annoyance as online ads. But, subscriptions have a significantly heavier
impact than ads.

You cannot netflixify journalism. It's different to movies or music.
Journalism is _not_ art. The online subscription business model doesn't work
for journalism, because alternatives are far more easily accessible than print
media. _News_ are not unique works, news articles share the same base - things
that happened anywhere in the world. Why should I get multiple subscriptions
then?

~~~
goatherders
You CAN netflixify journalism. It's not different than movies or music. It is
art.

------
linsomniac
I think very carefully about adding subscriptions because, honestly, I feel
like the burden of a subscription it pretty high. Having to set it up,
remember what card it is on, update it when the card expires, remember to
cancel it before it auto-renews if I'm not using it...

I wish there was some way I could pay in a central place to support good
journalism, across multiple sites, but there just isn't one.

For entertainment I use Patreon, which seems to be doing a good job with the
Youtube channels I like, particularly the ones that seem to get demonitized.
One place and I can choose where my money goes. Though they did freak everyone
out a few months ago with a change to their policies, they rolled that back
after the outrage.

I wonder if Steem will help with this. I haven't tried that Steem-powered
decentralized Youtube competitor yet, but it sounds fascinating.

------
mindcrime
I can totally relate to this. If I added up the price of all the various
subscriptions I'm paying for right now, I'd probably be _very_ sad. Luckily
for the vendors, I'm too lazy to do the exercise right now. Sadly for any
_future_ vendors who might want my money, I'm vaguely aware of the problem to
the point that I'm highly, highly, unlikely to sign up for any new
subscription based service now, unless it REALLY offers massive value. And
even then it's iffy.

That said, I will still take this ala-carte world over Cable TV style
bundling. But if some vendors of Internet content can work out some revenue
sharing / cross-subscription mechanisms, I would be willing to give that a
look if it mapped to my interests cleanly enough.

------
multibit
I disagree with the premise that users today want all sorts of multimedia
content to add icing to the text. Some floated pictures or a carousel might be
helpful for a news article, but most other stuff is just fluff pushed by
business analysts to increase "engagement".

------
goatherders
Maybe I'm wrong or in the minority, but I think if publishers want to make
people pay for content then they should. Saying that people dont want to pay
for something they used to get for free may be correct, but that doesn't make
it right. Things that have value can be given away for free. Or they can be
charged for. And that decision should be made by the producer, not the
consumer.

~~~
zerostar07
Content is information which is goods (edit: not a commodity) and nobody has
the right to say it is "right" to force others to pay for it. The market
decides its price.

~~~
goatherders
Content is a commodity? Good lord. What color is the sky on your planet? You
pay for content already. All of it.

------
combatentropy

      > We didn’t need paywalls on the early web because we focused on plain text from other users.
      > Plain text is easier to produce
    

So can we go back to plain text?

Actually is this even true? Take a newspaper like the Washington Post. Now
I've seen All the President's Men, where two reporters spend days and weeks,
driving and flying around the country, for just a few articles. I know
Watergate was an usual amount of investigation, but I still would think the
research and writing is the most expensive part of an article.

    
    
      > Today’s consumers [...] want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts,
      > graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format.
    

I smirked because I have JavaScript turned off. In fact I run my own little
script that strips out all the CSS and starts over.

Of course a member of Hacker News is unusual, but I know my family members are
the same way, always complaining about how complicated websites are. Maybe
we're all just old fuddy duddies. But if it's the young who want all this
fanciness, those are the same people who aren't going to pay more than 99
cents for a newspaper subscription.

I still think pretty websites should not be a huge expense. Hire a graphic
designer to give you a framework, some stylesheets. Custom multimedia affairs
for each article have always, always, always been annoying to me.

------
mar77i
I don't really see the downside here. You can now literally not buy into
another newssite's BS.

~~~
Barrin92
this is actually what I've been moving towards. Over the years I've become
addicted to way too many news sites be it tech or politics and given that I've
noticed the same trend as the author I went the other way, just prune my
consumption habits.

I've cut it down to one physical newspaper subscription, use the BBC or DW or
other public news sources only once or twice a day, and that's pretty much it.

The most notable thing is that I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything,
I was just reading the same stuff obsessively before anyway. It's a little
hard these days to escape the event driven newscycle but it's not a bad idea.

~~~
zerostar07
a visit on reddit is enough reading material for most of the day, and its
free.

------
rayiner
I like software subscriptions. It’s a way to ensure that the software
developer is going to have a predictable revenue stream to continue to improve
features and fix bugs in the software. That is valuable to me as a user.

~~~
h1d
Do note that it depends on the subscription model. If they give you a
perpetual license when terminating the subscription, it would be good but if
they won't let you use it, they just get paid by locking you up with less
motivation to keep improving the software.

------
penguat
One of the awkward things about people is the more they spend on something the
more they value it and the better behaved they are to the creators of it.*

This may be why subscriptions are so expensive - because part of the cost of
the subscription is customer support, and the less expensive it is the more
customer support costs.

*alternate, complementary theory: the less it costs the more poor people have it where they have to do more financial juggling and get into weirder situations. Thoughts, HN?

------
pascalxus
Strictly speaking as a consumer, I would rather pay per article (say 10c-20c
per article), rather than a monthly subscription. The way I look at it, I'm
giving to the media outlet partly as an act of charity, to help out for better
journalism. I don't want another subscription, that's for sure.

As for cable, i pay 0$, because I don't need it, at all.

Cell phone bill is 23$/month for 2 people, using USmobile.com You get
100minutes and 100 MB of Data and 100 text messages per month. I don't need
all those data hungry apps anyway.

Car insurance: metromile.com lets you pay roughly 2c - 3c per mile plus about
15$/mo base. That's much better than 100$ per month.

Who the heck wants all this? "all of our research shows people want high-
definition images with their stories, instant loading of articles on the site,
and interactivity. ", " Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed
pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a
compelling format." Is this really what the majority of people want?

I'd gladly have a simple page with simple graphics with a nice readable
layout. that last thing i want is some stupid video playing in the middle of
the page, slowing things down.

~~~
Woofles
Maybe I'm alone here, but I feel like pay per article is going to discourage
readership. It now takes the one time decision (aka signing up for the
subscription) and makes it into a decision that happens every time you open
the site.

There's also a breakeven point with metromile (Google Fi, etc) and a standard
subscription. If I recall correctly, they are targeting people who don't drive
very frequently, which isn't what I'd imagine publications would want to do.

------
jonnycomputer
At one time we complained about the fact that we couldn't pick and choose our
subscriptions on cable tv. You got all the channels you didn't need, just so
you could watch Cubs baseball. Now, that's not true. You can just subscribe to
mlb tv (a pretty crappy product btw, despite my continued subscription to it).

the author just has trouble saying "no"

~~~
heartbreak
What world are you living in where the premiere live sports streaming service,
the one that provides services for the likes of HBO Now and PS Vue is:

> a pretty crappy product btw

~~~
jonnycomputer
MLB.tv/radio are crap services; their web apps and android apps are buggy
memory hogs that frequently behave unpredictably, drop streams, or wig out;
the service is also over-priced, blocks in-market games, and the package
doesn't include the (what is it now, month-long) post-season, whle the post-
season package is a bad joke (raw static camera feeds). I could go on.

 _IF_ it is the premier live sports streaming service (I wouldn't know, since
I only follow baseball), then that speaks more to sad state of live sports
streams.

------
mbesto
> One way we could fix that situation would be to allow subscriptions to
> combine together more cheaply.

“There are two ways to make money in business: You can unbundle, or you can
bundle.” — Jim Barksdale.

------
gesman
But it's a free market. If you think price is too expensive for offering - you
don't pay. Vote with your wallet.

Many subscription-based products or services are working non stop to update
their product or service. Whether it's to generate and curate content or
update/fix/improve software.

Not like it's a totally new, shocking concept.

------
2color
I feel like this might be a good thing. Money is a powerful mechanism of
transferring the percieved value of goods. If anything, this might cause good
quality content to live on. Of course, there's the transition period during
which free content has the potential weeding out the "quality" content.

------
amelius
The reason for this hell is that it's so incredibly important for companies in
this winner-takes-all world to be information gatekeepers. The eyeballs have
to go through them first, so that people can be controlled into buying more of
their content.

------
cbanek
I am so disappointed in bloomberg. I used to watch them fairly religiously,
and Emily Chang is just great.

That being said, I wonder how much money they will make from subscriptions,
and how much they will have to spend trying to protect their IP now. Youtube
and other streaming sites have people streaming the cable version of channels
from one subscription, and broadcasting it out to everyone. Even a reasonable
security team of half a dozen people to police these policies would seem like
a million dollar investment, and having a paywall makes it a cat and mouse
game of security.

------
djhworld
The thing I don't understand about this article is the author makes out like
he's been forced into this situation, the "hell" he talks about is entirely of
his own making.

~~~
Shank
I mean, the fact that paywalls are being introduced in front of previously
free content does make this something to be dragged into, not necessarily
something that's been walked into. If your habits for 5 years involved
following links to free content, and that content still exists but is now
paid, you're now losing access to things you previously had -- which is
tantamount to force.

------
rayj
Subscriptions for everything. Ugh. What if we want all of our money to be
disposable for what we want to spend it on, not what it is earmarked for by
some large tech company...

------
davidp
> We didn’t need paywalls on the early web because we focused on plain text
> from other users. Plain text is easier to produce, lowering the friction for
> people to contribute, and it’s also cheaper to store and transmit, lowering
> the cost of bandwidth.

This is jarringly bad analysis that says more about TechCrunch's view of
"content" than it does about anything else.

The cost of the "plain text" produced by the likes of true journalistic
organizations like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, WaPo, et al comes
from the salaries of the journalists and the resources needed to support them
(travel, domestic bureaus, foreign bureaus, fees, etc.).

We didn't need paywalls on the early web because... well, maybe we did need
them and we failed to build them or invest in alternatives: Look at what's
happening to journalism.[0]

The author may have a point about there being an opportunity to streamline
something, but if it doesn't result in money being directed to people creating
the content that _really_ matters (and honestly, people voting with their
pocketbooks is the only rational way to choose just which content that is,
unless you want someone else deciding for you), then it changes nothing.

Personally I'm happy to send subscription money to these organizations, at
least, and grateful for the privilege to do so.

[0]: lmgtfy [https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/13/2...](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/13/2016/06/30143308/state-of-the-news-media-
report-2016-final.pdf)

------
natch
I’m dismayed to see this is suggesting bundling, which most consumers hate, as
a solution.

------
zerostar07
Spending for advertising has not changed overall, however it has shifted from
newspapers to "online" which includes newspapers and google, but also
"everyone else" ( [https://www.statista.com/chart/372/quarterly-growth-of-us-
on...](https://www.statista.com/chart/372/quarterly-growth-of-us-online-
advertising/)). The newspapers maybe should pursue the ad revenue from TV, or
find a way to cut out google.

Relying on subscriptions is not a valid model for _every_ newspaper. "General
purpose" newspapers co-evolved with advertising, which made them pursue large
audiences. "News" themselves are advertisements, things to be disseminated,
unless we 're talking about some specialized report that only experts can
understand. The fundamental need of people to "get the news" is easily
satisfied with anything, from facebook to reddit, and people are not going to
be paying to have things advertised to them _en masse_. Subscriptions will
eventually lead to the content being increasingly less popular and
specialized, which means either the nature of the content will have to change
or some of them will shut down. It works when 4-5 major newspapers do it, but
when every newspaper becomes subscription-based, the model will break down for
all of them.

Also i find it hard to believe that readers "want immersive experiences, well-
designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a
compelling format". If anything those pages are annoying as hell (bloomberg
autoplaying the videos on its articles is a culrpit here). In fact this
techcrunch article is enjoyable because it almost pure text and it didnt need
any fancy fonts.

------
fuscy
Prices should be based on the 5Ws and the current models that are now used
seem similar to what was in the 2000s at the age of "we didn't know better".

What is being sold? If it's news, is it sold by category? Is the news sold or
is it the critical analysis that actually matters? Maybe news should be free,
the analysis paid.

When is it sold? Is today's news sold or all the news since the beginning of
time? Maybe today is paid but yesterday is free and then paid again?

Where is it sold? USA has a GDP, Hungary has another. Maybe Hungary should be
cheaper, tier the country, tier the price.

Why is it sold? Is it to make money or to improve quality? Slapping a price on
a product without making the proper changes hurts long term success.

Who is the seller and who is the buyer? Is the seller a B2B company, then
buyers should be businesses. Are intended buyers, investors, then target them.

How are you selling? Subscription is tried and tested. Perhaps using micro-
payments could also be a solution.

Without applying these questions, the future is segregating services between
those who can afford to pay and those who can't but need/want it. It can lead
to a virtuous cycle for the wealthy and a vicious cycle for the poor.

------
Luc
By the way, you can still get Matt Levine's daily newsletter for free by
subscribing to the email version. That's all I want from Bloomberg really!

------
thetruthseeker1
I think the problem is the pricing model. If I watch one Netflix movie a
month, it’s not really worth 11$ to me. These subscriptions should have tiers
starting from few cents - but it may be less a Netflix problem and more a
problem of labels and production companies who may not be willing to see it
that way and force higher Subscriptions implicitly.

------
chris_wot
The issue is that they are charging too much, not that they are charging. If
they consider that people start paying for everything they consider
worthwhile, at some point even some of the things they love that is worthwhile
will have to get the chop.

Now if they charge less, then that person (for instance, me!) can more easily
pay for everything they love.

They just don't seem to understand that people have a certain amount of money,
they cannot pay the prices for everything if they try to gouge too much money.
Basically, they will get the more well off folks, but the issue is that there
are only so many rich people - there are more ordinary people than there are
wealthy people so subscriptions that cost a lot won't be much for the rich,
but will be a lot of everyone else.

------
daniel_iversen
Interesting to see how far he pendulum has swung that a lot (well a certain
kind) of users aren’t even wanting ads to pay for their consumption anymore!
Is it because of the advances in deep and psychological/manipulative targeting
we’ve seen recently or just in general?

------
kup0
I'm torn when it comes to subscriptions. Things that come to mind:

\- For some products with high upfront costs, it makes them more accessible
for learning, etc. ($10/mo for Photoshop vs. hundreds). Though, I've moved to
one-time-fee Affinity suite of software now. However, for students and others
with low-income that want/need to learn software like Photoshop, this opens up
some options without having to go the piracy route

\- At some point I think it gets expensive fast, where we're shelling out a
lot per month for just a few services. This is good and bad. When there's a
lot of useful things out there, it can feel like it's just adding up to too
much. I think it may prohibit being able to use a wider variety of paid
products (especially when you paid once for something that now wants a
subscription). However, maybe this will help us use more discretion in the
subscriptions we choose, instead of subscribing to crap or things we never use
anyway. Not sure how much of "subscription fatigue" is a problem or just a
unfound worry

\- All this said, I'm still somewhat of a "I need to own X, not rent it" old-
man-yells-at-cloud kind of person. I prefer to own music instead of using
streaming services and so forth. It mostly comes down to personal and
philosophical preference. I don't always like ceding control to the entity I
am paying, when I could "own" the product instead. I tried streaming music for
a while, but then here and there, artists/albums/labels would no longer be
accessible due to a contract issue with Spotify/etc. I don't want to cede that
level of control. When I own music I can download the MP3s, put them on a usb
drive and listen in my car, etc. instead of hoping Spotify's DRM isn't going
to screw my library.

\- When it comes to online publishers, I just do not get enough value from
them to subscribe, and I only view an occasional article, when linked from a
site like HN. But because of security, privacy, and performance, I block ads.
Not sure what the golden "fix" is for this industry, or at least what my part
in it would be.

------
orf
One thing not mentioned in the article is the engineering cost of altering the
subscription and payment features of an app, so it's harder to AB test and
experiment with new ways of pricing or things like paying for groups of apps
together.

Maybe Bloomberg has a lot more resources to throw at this but for a smaller
company that has a hacked together or otherwise inflexible subscription system
is a risky proposition. Breaking it for some portion of users can result in a
lot of lost revenue and potentially effect your customers if the app
downgrades/restricts them while you fix it.

It's also often created early on, and moving to something like stripe which
helps with a lot of this still incurs the risks above.

------
TulliusCicero
There's so many things wrong with this article, but I'll focus in on one
particular thing:

> I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year
> annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments
> illustrate, that price is vastly out of proportion from the cost of
> providing the software (which I might add, is entirely hosted on iCloud
> infrastructure).

...does this person understand how software works? Yes, the marginal cost of
providing software to a particular person is almost always very low, sometimes
so low it basically rounds down to zero. But you're not just charging to pay
for the costs of delivering the software, but for _developing_ it, too. And,
of course, some goes to profit, which is perfectly reasonable in a capitalist
word.

With businesses who are mainly reselling a thing, looking at it as "cost of
thing + X% profit" is a perfectly reasonable way to frame things. There's only
so much value a retailer or middleman can add, and generally there are
competitors that could offer the same item. But when it comes to software,
each individual item costs basically nothing to provide, so that kind of
analysis fails and you have to accept that the price is essentially arbitrary.

------
keyle
Yes Adobe did the same thing, from $49 flat fee AUD, to 66 AUD which was $49
USD in AUD, then now it's 72 AUD/month! It's getting really steep if you don't
use the software all the time.

------
phil248
The article seems to focus on the worst offenders (aka outliers) and some
recent cost increases (when inflation happens to be going up after a decade of
stagnation).

I currently have 7 different subscriptions ranging from $5 to $15 per month.
They add up to $61/month. That's less than I used to pay for a standard cable
package. And combined they provide me so much more of what I actually want, at
an overall higher level of quality.

As a bonus, I spend less time viewing advertisements now than at any other
time in 40 years.

I'm living in subscription heaven!

------
alexashka
There was a short period of time when companies competed for monopoly status.

That time is now almost over - we have established monopolies.

Established monopolies use their power - that's why they fought so hard to
become monopolies in the first place.

This article is saying 'gee, I liked it when Uber kept giving me really cheap
rides, but now it doesn't anymore, such hell!'

The only reason you were getting cheaper rides was because it was a mafia
deal, I help you now, for free, but when the time comes, you do something for
me. That's how it works folks...

------
announcerman
I dread the day when Microsoft will start forcing me to pay a subscription for
my OneNote data. Maybe moving to .txt files and using grep for search would be
better in the long run.

------
tlrobinson
Not to be that “just add blockchain” guy, but this would be a great usecase
for permissionless cryptocurrency micropayments, e.x. Lightning Network.
Create an open protocol, build it into browsers, let content sites ask you to
pay $0.01 (or whatever) to view an article. Maybe you could set your browser
to automatically pay for the first N articles or M dollars per site per day.
Or maybe a site could offer an unlimited subscription option through the same
system.

~~~
brockwhittaker
Blockchain isn’t necessary. You can have a debit account system and change
cents per article without the high friction cost of making people buy some
cryptocurrency.

~~~
tlrobinson
Of course, but then it's not open, decentralized, and permissionless like the
web is.

In that respect there's always been an impedance mismatch between the web
itself and the payment systems you could use on the web. Cryptocurrency has
the potential to change that, which I find interesting.

------
mannykannot
In which the author, a proponent of subscription schemes, concludes that they
are doing it wrong, because he is spending a noticeable amount on
subscriptions.

------
dgudkov
The level of naivete in this article is frustrating.

>I’m frustrated that the web’s promise of instant and free access to the
world’s information appears to be dying.

Free access won't die as long as there are people who are willing to work for
free. It's not that subscriptions and paywalls charge money for something that
was made by someone for free.

>I’m frustrated that subscription usually means just putting formerly free
content behind a paywall.

That content was never free. Someone paid for it, typically advertisers. We
all know the downsides of cost-per-click based economy. It's time to grow up.
Kids eventually realize that food doesn't appear in the fridge magically, but
someone pays a price for it and brings it home. The author also should realize
that there is always a price to pay.

~~~
bencompanion
Agreed.

> the web’s promise of instant and free access to the world’s information
> appears to be dying.

That wasn't ever a promise, or rather, it wasn't "the web's" promise to make.
It might have been the ad-hoc default for a while, but it turns out that it's
not sustainable or scalable, no matter how much we'd like it to be.

------
scalablenotions
I'd be interested in an 'aggregator' service where I can subscribe to sections
that interest me from a number of agencies.

------
kosei
"To my mind though, the question is not how to get 1% of readers to pay an
exorbitant price, but how to get say 20% of your readers to pay you a cheaper
price. It’s not about exclusion, but about participation."

A noble idea, but one not founded in much reality. The fact is, generally when
you price lower, you don't get much more uptake in sales in a model like this.

------
nteo9843nhtnt
I think this is missing the bigger point. Ads are killing free but shitty web
sites due to their (ads) numerous problems (malware, annoying, tracking,
etc.). Subscriptions are going to kill mediocre web sites. We'll be left with
better for-pay web sites and hopefully better ads on free web sites at the end
of it all. That seems like a good thing.

------
ungzd
> Advertising is one such model, with massive privacy violations required to
> optimize it

Why they took as granted that web ads must be behavior-targeted? It does not
even work. Ads were much better targeted in 2005 with context-based targeting
than now. Now I see ads about things that I'm not interested in at all and
that I hate almost everywhere.

------
sprague
Amazon Prime is the right idea long-term. Get people to sign on for one anchor
subscription (free shipping) and then add other ancillary subscriptions over
time. I assume somebody at AMZN right now is looking into adding all-you-can-
eat access to newspapers, magazines, software, etc. as part of the Prime
subscription.

------
chrisseldo
This is cousin to what's happening to a large portion of the video game
industry: loot crates & pay-to-win.

------
gsich
Just charge the same amount a normal ad clicking (or viewing) user would make
you in revenue. I doubt it's more then 1€ per month.

On Youtube, depending on your source, you get from 1-4$ per 1000 views. It's
not the users problem that payment for micro transactions doesn't scale.

------
hackbinary
Honestly, the subscription model is more honest than a one time purchase
pyramid scheme. Software changes over time. It has to, new operating systems,
libraries and hardware dictate forward maintenance costs, nevermind bugs and
security flaws.

~~~
jmanderley
Selling a product for a set one-time fee is a "pyramid scheme"? Is someone
producing and selling apples running a pyramid scheme as well?

------
mythz
Personally I love Content subscriptions, $11 /month for Netflix gives you
access to their $7B in annual content budget. Google Play/YouTube Red (ad-
free) is also great value at $7.99 /month (early sub pricing). Likewise I got
Amazon Prime for the free shipping but they also provide access to great
content in their Prime Video catalog and the 2nd Music Sub is useful for the
Wife/kids.

I have a number of Software and Cloud Subscriptions which are justified as
cost of doing business but they're nowhere near the value offered from Content
subscriptions.

Personally I'm against subscriptions for Games or News, IMO both are time
sucks that are a detrimental the more you spend playing or reading them. I'll
look at an Amazon FreeTime subscription when the kids come of age because the
iOS Store is a mine field of dark UX patterns designed for kids addiction to
suck IAP's from parents.

~~~
h1d
Content subscription depends. I would rather just rent the few that matters
and feel I got a better deal than watching 5 average ones missing out the one
that looked the most interesting.

------
Grandison
Has anyone tried Agate micropayments? You can see it on
[http://popbitch.com/stories/](http://popbitch.com/stories/), click on a story
to see it working...

------
tmikaeld
Not all subscriptions are equal though, in the case of Setapp, I'd save about
300$ a year on licenses i still need to pay to get updates... Even more
considering they are on stacksocial currently.

------
make3
Where is the Spotify for news content? Make me pay a flat rate, and distribute
between the news outlets proportional to which I used the most? That seems
fair

------
whatever1
Maybe a pay per click business model where you get a monthly bill from your IP
for your internet activity in websites that require payment is an alternative

~~~
dvtrn
That seems fraught with peril for abuse, I'm already handing over enough money
to those crooks at my ISP..

~~~
aiCeivi9
It already is abused. I don't know anyone who used "Direct carrier billing"
on-purpose, it is only used by scammers.

------
gnostr
After reading such many comments, feel the problem is not about Subscription
this model; instead, it's about pricing.

~~~
gnostr
And the Subscription model can't be a replacement for one-time paid in
software. It should be better to be combined with freemium.

------
mud_dauber
This sounds like what happens to the pay TV business once there’s no
aggregator (a la DishTV) in place. Am I wrong?

------
merinowool
If people want internet without ads then need to pay for the service with
different means. I can see a problem that it is extremely difficult to find a
company that would process payments for you if the website you have is for
adults only for example. Potentially this could be solved by cryptocurrency,
so that you can run your own payment processor, but I have not seen a solution
for subscriptions yet.

------
scarface74
You can't have it both ways. Either you pay for high quality content or you
deal with intrusive ads.

~~~
whatever1
Was Bloomberg making $35 from ads from my 3 visits to their site per month? If
not why do they ask me now for $35?

~~~
quakenul
Welcome to the economics of ad free websites (for now, at least).

A large percentage of people simply _will not pay_ for website access, no
matter how low the price. So you get your money from those who do, who value
the service so highly that parting with it would be huge pain point for them,
and, so Bloomberg assumes probably after extensive surveys, those who feel
that way about their publication, will likely have 35$/month to spare for the
privilege.

~~~
d2p
Just because a large percentage won't pay doesn't mean that putting the price
high will maximise income. It's possible that at $10/month they'd get 5x the
signups.

That said, increasing prices is hard; reducing is easy. If you're trying to
figure out sweet spot for max revenue is it probably makes sense to start high
and slowly reduce it until you find it. If you're on a rolling monthly payment
and decrease everyones prices together, nobody will get upset.

~~~
scarface74
The biggest hurdle is not price elasticity between getting someone to pay $10
versus $35, it's getting people to pay _anything_ instead of something.

Look at the App Store as an example and how hard it is to get people to pay
$1.

Besides the people who are willing to pay are by definition people who are
willing to spend money - the same demographic that advertisers covet the most.
Meaning they can't target their best customers for advertising.

~~~
d2p
> The biggest hurdle is not price elasticity between getting someone to pay
> $10 versus $35, it's getting people to pay anything instead of something.

I'm not doubting that's tough; but it's _significantly_ easier to get someone
to pay $1/month than $35/month. People aren't completely stupid; they won't
just blindly pay any amount just because they'd decided they'd pay
_something_.

Like I said though; if I was making this decision, I'd start high.

------
eecc
"Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the
original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed
pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a
compelling format. T hat “quality” costs enormous sums in engineering and
design talent, not to mention massively increasing bandwidth and storage
costs."

Really? I thought "consumers" just want another shot of dopamine fueled
bullshit, prettily packaged of course but crap nonetheless.

The realization that so much "engineering and design talent" goes wasted for
this bullshit reminds me of what I said of - when I was 8 years old, 8 years.
and people call me a cynical but I softened up loads since then! - the
engineers sweating it out to run the Italian national broadcasting
infrastructure. All that effort just to run a program the whole Sunday
afternoon where a blondie that became famous for showing her thighs would ask
people calling in from all over Italy, how many peas there were in a big glass
jar: [https://youtu.be/tRZ5y9seiLA](https://youtu.be/tRZ5y9seiLA)

Of course they were waiting for the nuclear holocaust any day at that time,
some maybe even wishing for it, given the situation...

------
jiveturkey
the thesis is wrong, of course compromising the entire article. you/we aren’t
getting previously free content, now for a fee. you are getting content
previously paid for with ad dollars, dried up thanks to advertisers abuse
(leading to adblock).

------
mancerayder
It's fine that this thread turned into a software subscription debate, but
there's one thing troubling, very troubling, around the news subscription
model:

These paywalls are blocking information about current events and one can argue
that a society has an interest in keeping its population up to date on local
and world events. Now, if all the reliable media will appeal mostly to people
with means, what exactly are we expecting to happen?

~~~
frizkie
This does highlight the fact that before the internet, you paid for your news.
TV or Newspaper.

------
lsc
I actually think the root of our 'fake news' problem is that credible sources
charge for content, while crank sources don't.

And credible news has always spent more on content creation than niche news.
The cost of content creation has not fallen, while the cost of distribution
has fallen dramatically.

So, it's completely natural that the price difference at the consumer side
between high and low quality news would have changed dramatically.

The problem is that you hit a news story on the major aggregators (google
news, at least, gives you a bunch of stories on the same topic from different
newspapers) and you have to pay money to the more credible sources, while the
completely wacky takes are often free.

Personally, I'd really like it if apple (or someone similar with a history of,
you know, treating users as customers) would create a news service where I
give apple twenty bucks a month, and it lets me read 100 news articles from
the major papers, distributing some of that revenue to the papers in question.
(they could even have tiers. or an easy way for me to 'buy this article' for
two fifty or whatever. Heck, the NYT could setup an easy apple pay 'buy this
article for two fifty' button without more apple help than is required to make
apple pay work, and I'd probably use it at least once a week.)

As is, I periodically subscribe to the NYT on my kindle, but while the reading
experience on the kindle is wonderful, the discovery experience is terrible. I
usually read it for a while, then I cancel after realizing I haven't been
using it (see the discovery complaint)

~~~
PrunJuice
Check out Blendle [https://blendle.com/](https://blendle.com/)

They aren't Apple but they do the pay per article thing.

~~~
Paul-ish
Ive used blendle. I wish there was a browser extension that would detect
paywalls and let me use blendle to see the article. Right now I have to open a
new tab and search the article on blendles website. That adds friction that
causes me to use blendle less than I would.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Ive used blendle. I wish there was a browser extension that would detect
> paywalls and let me use blendle to see the article._

I designed such a system in 2012 and was granted a patent for it late last
year. I asked a professional about what to do next and the advice was "wait
until someone is infringing". Not hugely satisfactory.

I wanted to build the scheme described in the article. My goal was: _fix the
internet_. The way it's paid for breaks it. Fix the money and the rest would
follow.

Everyone who's thought about this problem for more than 10 minutes has hit on
the same basic business model. I hit on it in 2008, I wasn't the first. Since
then I've watched business after business fail in this area. The problem has
never been the technology and I'm not sure if a successful shared scheme will
ever emerge.

~~~
lsc
well, just sitting on a patent and waiting for an infringement isn't going to
help fix the internet. That would be the other thing.

Seems to me like a patent is a good start, a good nucleus around which you
could build some venture capital to actually try to start a company to solve
the problem.

I totally agree that the problem isn't technology, it's the business side, the
negotiation and that end. You'd need a very business-y business partner.

~~~
jacques_chester
In fact I got the patent for that purpose -- to act as a substitute for the
usual pedigree pattern-matching. I just didn't see it taking 5 years.

I go back and forth on whether to try and raise funds. It's an all-or-nothing
proposition because of my visa status. There are also personal considerations
involved.

Having worked for a mixed services/enterprise company, I am now keenly aware
that sales is a strategic necessity and steady PR is a massive force
multiplier. You can have the best everything in the world, but if nobody's
buying, it doesn't matter.

------
madeel
subscription is like selling "sliced oranges in a transparent box" these days

------
gwbas1c
I thought cryptocurrency was supposed to magically enable micro-payments for
web content? (joke)

In all honesty, I'd happily pay for Facebook, or Hacker News, if it included
bundled access to major news sources. I'd also happily try out a micropayment
service for articles behind a paywall.

Most articles I read are hacker news links or Facebook links. I think that's
the best way to monetize.

------
lajhsdfkl
People need to understand that the alternative to ads is paying hundreds of
dollars a month in subscription fees and then still not having access to all
the services you would have had access to in an ad economy world.

People in Europe will soon get this wakeup call. Services that were only
marginally profitable are already shutting down because of GDPR.

I'm confident that the EU government and its citizens have little idea of the
consequences that will result from their privacy legislation.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the
advertising funded content.

~~~
lajhsdfkl
>Honestly, I don't think it would be a great loss to forgo most of the
advertising funded content.

Since you clearly haven't put much thought into this comment let's just start
listing things that are funded by ads

\- News

\- content creators on youtube

\- music

\- twitch

\- search

\- blogs

\- websites with tutorials

\- a thousand different things which I have missed

and then facebook, snapchat, instagram, and twitter which of course you are
too good for

~~~
wott
_\- News_

Best TV and radio channels across the globe are government channels, funded by
tax.

 _\- content creators on youtube & twitch_

99,99% dispensable trash.

 _\- music_

Music funded by ads???

 _\- search_

The only point that holds in your list. Could perfectly be funded by ISPs as
part of our Internet subscription.

 _\- blogs & websites with tutorials_

No need for funding. Cost to setup is zero (provided by ISP) or close to zero
(basic hosting or domain name registering).

~~~
lajhsdfkl
>\- content creators on youtube & twitch

>99,99% dispensable trash.

Yes, the thousands of tutorials/guides and content that people enjoy watching
is trash. Everything that I don't find agreeable is trash.

>No need for funding. Cost to setup is zero (provided by ISP) or close to zero
(basic hosting or domain name registering).

Yes, no need to give people money for work they do.

Do you have any respect for the work that goes into the content you read and
or watch every day? Or do you think people should just be content volunteering
their effort for no reward?

>The only point that holds in your list. Could perfectly be funded by ISPs as
part of our Internet subscription.

Yes. Perfectly. Let's just tack on another $50 a month. Or are you actually
suggesting that ISPs should just do it out of their good will?

------
mozumder
Or, stop consuming so much shit.

It's OK to not have everything, you know?

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
It's a pity you're being downvoted as what you say really makes a lot of sense
and everybody would do well if they followed this advice.

~~~
d2p
Even if we choose not to have things because they're expensive, it doesn't
mean we should not complain about the prices. Companies make changes based on
feedback so if there's good evidence that people think something is too
expensive, the company may consider changing their prices or have offers.

I don't think people don't complain about stuff enough, we get taken for rides
by big companies all the time while their CEOs take home massive pay packets.
People should fight for better services and lower prices more; it works!

------
fwdpropaganda
> I’m an emphatic champion of subscription models, particularly in media.

> All of these subscriptions are starting to add up.

Just thought I'd save everyone the time of reading this article. Not much
substance.

~~~
sgroppino
Don't forget this one:

>"Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts,
graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format."

