
The subscription-pocalypse - dschuetz
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/12/the-subscription-pocalypse-is-about-to-hit/
======
wodenokoto
Does this guy know that before the internet most people paid money to
subscribe to newspapers and magazines?

"The growth of the subscription model has been one of the biggest developments
in online journalism in the past few years ... The subscription model makes a
lot of sense for publishers. The advertising-based model that supported the
industry for 100 years doesn’t work in a digital world where ..."

No, the subscription model has been the basis for the industry for the past
100 years.

He goes on:

"You can’t expect people to subscribe to their local paper (which is vital to
democracy, we tell them) AND The New York Times and the Washington Post
(because Democracy Dies in the Dark) AND Netflix AND Hulu AND HBO Go AND The
Athletic AND ESPN Plus AND their favorite podcast on Patreon AND …"

Yet people were subscribed to a daily paper, 1 or 2 monthly magazines and a
cable package with added charges for sports channels.

~~~
rnbrady
You have a good point but I feel overwhelmed with subscriptions today. Between
personal and business I have easily got 40 or more _paid_ subscriptions. It's
not just media but software too. Mac apps, iPhone apps, web apps. They're hard
to cancel and easy to forget (until I check my bank statements). And they dip
into my bank account with no renewal confirmation or approval. And they'll
happily self-renew for the next year without being used once in the last year.

Of course I signed up to and pre-authorised all of this, and forgot to cancel
when I stopped using them, so it's 100% my own fault. But something doesn't
feel right about it.

~~~
titanix2
> But something doesn't feel right about it.

Why did you suscribe in the first place? The best way to avoid paying is to
not register.

------
alias_neo
The subscription-everything model is something that has really bothered me for
a while.

As a person that doesn't do things "regularly" I don't want to be stuck paying
per-month for certain things. More importantly, is that some of these things I
will use so infrequently, and that you can't "keep" after you've paid your
subscription, they become cost-ineffective.

I have video streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, Now TV, Crunchyroll), email,
back-up storage, software licenses, music, coffee, gym membership... the list
goes on.

When I got married, I subscribed to Photoshop CC to create something as a gift
for my wife, I used it once, and was then stuck in a 1 year contract, I missed
the renewal and got stuck in another year contract. I ended that as soon as I
could, but having had no need to use it up until that point, I'd paid for 2
years worth of CC (~£200) to use it once, and now the subscription was done, I
couldn't use it again.

I have an IDE I use 3-4 times a year, but I have to pay monthly subscription
with a minimum 1 year contract. After that year you fall back not to the
version you're on, but the version before it.

More and more services are moving to this model, with no alternative model for
those like myself that don't need, nor want to use something every week, or
every month, or even every year.

There is a point where I have to draw the line at adding more monthly
subscriptions to my outgoings.

I don't mind this model for some things, consumables, such as coffee, fine,
Netflix, which I use frequently, fine, but this only suits my usage, and
others probably have other things in that list they use frequently.

This model might be working for a lot of companies right now, but there must
be people like myself that will happily pay X for some software/thing I get to
keep and use indefinitely (within reason) and are simply not buying at all
because the pricing model doesn't work for us.

~~~
simias
>When I got married, I subscribed to Photoshop CC to create something as a
gift for my wife, I used it once, and was then stuck in a 1 year contract,

To be fair in your situation I would have a hard time justifying the one-time
purchase price if they still offered it. Back when they had this business
model Photoshop CS6 cost about $700, there are cheaper alternatives for a one-
time use unless you absolutely required Photoshop and piracy wasn't an option.

But more generally I feel your pain. I prefer the model where you get updates
as long as you pay for the license but if you stop you get to keep whatever
version you're currently using as-is. Photoshop on the other hand becomes
unusable if you stop paying for the subscription.

>I don't mind this model for some things, consumables, such as coffee, fine,
Netflix, which I use frequently, fine, but this only suits my usage, and
others probably have other things in that list they use frequently.

I actually wouldn't like that for coffee because my usage is not always the
same. Sometimes I have guests and I need more, sometimes I'm on vacations and
I use less.

I think the subscription model works best for things that are constantly
moving and require constant updates and maintenance. Netflix's catalogue is
always changing so it makes sense to pay a subscription. Some software is
updated constantly and it makes sense to pay to always have the latest
version. Often you also get support which might be absolutely necessary with
some expensive professional software.

For applications like Photoshop that arguably don't need to be updated that
aggressively it seems more like a scam to get more money in the long run
without having to come up with meaningful new features to motivate the users
to buy newer versions. Just purchase a Photoshop license and pay forever and
ever.

~~~
alias_neo
Absolutely, there are many companies whose pricing model is designed to
maximise the money they make from you without being what I'd call "fair".
That's their prerogative though, they're a business after all.

As for the coffee, I buy it for at work, so it's just me, and I know I'll be
at work every day, again, a model that suits me. My "home coffee" I buy as and
when, and don't use a subscription model, because it's a different
requirement. I guess this is one case of a single person needing two separate
pricing models for the same product.

------
ajuc
Twitch/youtube/patreon subscription model is the future.

Why subscribe to several newspapers (where you don't care for 90% of the
content), if you could subscribe to the exact 13 authors that write about
stuff you like, and never miss any of their articles, and never need to look
through 30 pages of crap to find that?

I'm seeing a lot of business models that would never work without twitch - a
guy that's streaming pen&paper RPG sessions. He's not even streaming in
English, but in Polish (much smaller audience). And he earns very good money
(it helps he's awesome at storytelling :) ).

Another guy earns a living by streaming his commentary on interesting
starcraft matches.

Another streams coding his game (but he's not doing it full-time).

The best thing is - if the community is in the sweet spot (like 100-1000
people) - you can interact with the people in chat, and it's not fake
interaction like on TV or in radio - when you write something you know the
"celebrity" will read it and likely respond to it. It makes the audience much
more engaged than with traditional media.

Every niche hobby is now a marketable skill if you have a little charisma and
a lot of time. There should be something like that, but for text.

~~~
johannes1234321
> Why subscribe to several newspapers (where you don't care for 90% of the
> content), if you could subscribe to the exact 13 authors that write about
> stuff you like, and never miss any of their articles, and never need to look
> through 30 pages of crap to find that?

Because looking through 30 pages confronts me with topics and perspectives I
wouldn't have selected otherwise. Which enhances my perception. A well written
op-ed to which I disagree is among the best things a paper can deliver as it
challenges my view.

~~~
Jolter
I certainly agree that it's beneficial to the consumer, but... I subscribe to
the local paper which shares my political view, and I only read one of the
opposing papers whenever I get a chance. I appreciate the same aspects as you
do, it just doesn't seem likely I'll spend actual money subscribing to the
other paper, when that would in fact be equal to financing a political
movement I disagree with. I bet others feel the same.

What GP writes about, though, reads more like the future of entertainment, not
news. I don't see the harm in that, as long as there are ways to get
recommended other stuff than what you watch every day.

One side effect of this narrowing of channels is, I seem to have fewer and
fewer cultural references in common with my more senior colleagues who still
watch broadcast TV.

Them: Did you watch the game last night? Me: Do you mean CS GO Katowice
qualifiers or the big DOTA tournament?

~~~
johannes1234321
> I only read one of the opposing papers whenever I get a chance.

A point to this is that a "good" paper also publishes op-eds from "the other
side" And sometimes those are really well written, really trying to convince
you instead of just preaching the choir.

The thing I saw often pre-Internet was that people had a local paper, a
national paper and maybe a weekly magazine/paper.

I myself currently am subscribed (as in paying, my RSS Reader has lots more) a
local epaper and a national weekly printed paper. The later is nice (except I
often disagree with many views stated) as it lives outside the fast breaking
news cycle of the inline world and by being paper I really look through it
(unless I spend too much time elsewhere ...) page by page instead of quickly
scrolling through my RSS feed or quickly scanning over news sites.

> What GP writes about, though, reads more like the future of entertainment,
> not news.

Yes, the amount of ways to spend leisure time increased a lot. The amount of
media one can consume is incredible, which leads to ...

> , I seem to have fewer and fewer cultural references in common with my more
> senior colleagues who still watch broadcast TV.

... less of a common experience. The big TV events, the big news, ... it
becomes all a more unique experience. Even with TV shows "everybody" watches:
In the morning, after an episode of some show was released there is this one
guy in the office "oh please don't spoil, I haven't watched that episode, yet"
in the past there was this guy "oh damn, I missed it, please tell me what
happens, so I can follow along next week"

------
alanfranzoni
I think that the point he'd like to make (a bit clumsily, IMHO) is that we
should NOT rely on SUBSCRIPTIONS only. We need more micropayments for single-
shot buys.

When I was younger (but then, I'm from Europe), me and my parents subscribed
to almost nothing, EXCEPT what we really and totally bought every single time
- that was one (1) comic book magazine that I was buying every single week.

Newspapers? Sometimes my parents would read it at the local bar, sometimes at
a friend's, sometimes at work, sometimes we would buy it, I'd say 2-3 times a
week. But then: WE COULD CHANGE the newspaper every time! And, we DID switch
what we bought, cycling between 2-3 newspaper we liked, so we had a kind of
360-degree view on what was happening.

Subscriptions prevent that kind of behaviour.

~~~
imglorp
Big agree.

Micropayments turn the model upside down: the newspaper subscribes to a
micropayment service, and web browsers have a whitelist of sites and prices
they're willing to pay, by pageview, by word, etc.

Everyone gets paid, malware and ads are not necessary.

------
BariumBlue
I have wanted, for a while now, for news sites to get together and figure out
some shared form of monetization - pay a single rate, and get access NYT,
Huffpo, bloomberg, etc., maybe with an option to pay more depending how much
or on which sites I read the article.

Or a single site where I could access and manage subscriptions to multiple
sites. I WANT to subscribe to newspapers/new sites, but I don't want to be
subscribed to 5 different subscription schemes and juggling that.

~~~
wsc981
In The Netherlands some start-up is trying that business model and they also
recently became active in the USA [0].

\---

[0]: [https://launch.blendle.com](https://launch.blendle.com)

~~~
BariumBlue
Thanks, I just signed up for the beta - it looks genuinly intriguing

------
owaty
> How many news organizations or writers or blogs or podcasts do you pay for
> every month?

Honestly, zero. There's just too much great free content. If a podcast I like
to listen to or a blog I follow dies because they don't earn enough from it,
fine, that'll free up the time to follow something else.

And I say it as someone who has their own blog and podcast and doesn't expect
to be paid for it. The fact that someone spends their time listening to what I
have to say is a sufficient reward for me.

------
gman83
For streaming video this was for the most part not such an issue due to
Netflix, but as we're seeing more streaming services launch, this is going to
become a problem again. There's CBS All Access if you want to watch Star Trek.
Disney & Apple are launching their own streaming services. Want to watch the
Lord of the Rings TV show, I guess you'll need to get Amazon. Then there's
still HBO and services like that. I predict we'll see pirating ticking back up
after it fell in recent years.

------
knolan
If you think newspaper subs are bad try looking at some specialist software.
Maintenance costs for software like Ansys and Matlab are insane and can run
into the tens of thousands a year. The situation with Ansys has gotten so bad
many research groups are moving to OpenFOAM and Python and I doubt they'll be
back once they figure out how much more powerful their new tools are.

We're seeing something similar with Adobe. Their Creative Cloud suite is now
subscription based and ends up costing much more than buying the older
software did for a perpetual licence (but a drop in the ocean compared to the
above). Everyone seems to hate it. There aren't even enough new features to
warrant updating from your old CS6 license other than the required 64-bit
support (several components of their management software still aren't even 64
bit).

The only good thing is that their team licence is pretty permissive if you're
not a heavy user, we were able to share three license across a larger team,
the sales guy even suggested it.

Now we're seeing developers like Serif come out with apps like Affinity Photo
and Designer to challenge Photoshop and Illustrator with exceptionally
polished desktop and iPad apps with a once off purchase per OS. The apps are
performant and can do 99% of what Adobe can. With a _full_ version of
Photoshop coming to iPad it'll be interesting how users respond. Adobe don't
have a great track record on iOS not that their desktop backend is much
better. In fact I'd say that the standard set by Photoshop and Illustrator in
terms of primary features and UX over the years has become relatively easy to
replicate on modern devices, even with web apps, that Adobe have painted
themselves into a technical debt corner with their awful backend (compare raw
performance of Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X).

Then there's the video streaming fragmentation. Now I need Netflix, Amazon and
HBO subs to watch the shows I want to see, if they're even available in my
country and I also need to pay for a VPN. There's no way I can afford that so
if I'm selfish I'll just torrent the ones not on my preferred platform. Unless
these services introduce some form of syndication where popular shows appear
on competitors platforms after a period of exclusivity then they'll burn what
ground they have taken from piracy.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Adobe software was expensive before they introduced subscriptions. There were
always cheaper alternatives available but Adobe had lock-in through their file
formats and product familiarity.

In many ways I can see the products are better because of subscriptions. It
takes away the need to pile on new features in order to justify selling
upgrades. Instead they can focus on retaining existing users by fixing bugs
and annoyances and adding real improvements.

------
icebraining
I agree there's a limit, but why 2019 specifically? How do we know it hasn't
plateaued already, or that it won't only do so in 2025? Is there any data on
it?

~~~
dschuetz
I believe it has something to do with the layoffs at Gannett, HuffPost and
BuzzFeed, although they don't get mentioned in that article.

Further reference:
[https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1088503510184927233](https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1088503510184927233)

------
huffmsa
I think the solution from a consumer perspective is per article 1-click micro-
transactions.

It needs to be easy, seamless and not require a new account for each site.

"Click to pay 10¢ with NewsBuyer to read this article". Boom done.

~~~
discobean
This would be ok if the articles were worth a 10c read, but I feel like with
the majority of articles being of low quality, paying for an article would be
a gamble that rarely pays off and I'd "just stop trying".

~~~
rorykoehler
Companies could use the popular below the fold design to unlock the article
for 10c. This way you can read the first paragraph or two to decide if it's
worth it.

------
walton_simons
I've also become completely overwhelmed by the amount of "set and forget"
auto-recurring subscriptions that exist now, and it's simply led to me opting
out of almost all of them. It's not even the monetary amounts, which tend to
be fairly small, but more the cognitive load of keeping track of payment
dates, amounts, and (especially) cancellation terms. I just can't be bothered
to deal with it all, so I don't. If I was to put a number on it, I'd say five
monthly subscriptions is as many as I'd be prepared to have at any one time.
That would have to cover everything—news, entertainment, charitable donations,
and so on.

For video streaming, for instance, I subscribe to Netflix only. If something
isn't on Netflix, I just won't see it, and I can live with that. I already
have access to more than I can watch anyway. Should I find something better,
I'll stop my Netflix subscription before switching to the new thing.

If the service is harder to cancel than it is to subscribe, I'll pass
irrespective of how good it looks (no, I'm not prepared to call you on the
phone to cancel when subscribing took three clicks). I won't subscribe to
software at all. Let me buy it outright. If it's a monthly subscription or
nothing, I'll pick nothing.

Perhaps I'm showing my age by saying this, but I'd be more interested in
subscribing to your magazine or service if you send me an annual invoice,
which I'll happily pay in one explicitly non-recurring payment, like a bank
transfer. Then after a year or whatever the subscription period is, I'll make
a decision about whether it's still worth it to me. If I'm considering
actually subscribing to something, it won't be on a whim, and I'll already
know whether or not I like it enough to pay, so signing up for an extended
period is fine. Same with charities. Let me send you money once a year, and
don't pressure me into signing up to a monthly payment plan, and I'll be much
more prepared to do so.

~~~
gamesbrainiac
> It's not even the monetary amounts, which tend to be fairly small, but more
> the cognitive load of keeping track of payment dates, amounts, and
> (especially) cancellation terms. I just can't be bothered to deal with it
> all, so I don't. If I was to put a number on it, I'd say five monthly
> subscriptions is as many as I'd be prepared to have at any one time. That
> would have to cover everything—news, entertainment, charitable donations,
> and so on.

I know what you mean. I create a calendar event every single time I subscribe
to something that is recurring so that I can cancel if I want to, a few days
from the end of the subscription.

------
jwildeboer
I have online/digital subscriptions for the New York Times ($48/year) the
Washington Post ($19/year) and The Guardian (€60/year). Totally worth it for
me.

~~~
huffmsa
Do you feel your money was well spent on the guardian's fabrication about
Manafort visiting Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy?

~~~
jwildeboer
Or the NYT posting opeds full of unchecked lies? Journalists and editors will
make mistakes. The question is not about that one story, it’s about the sum of
what it delivers IMHO. And in that regard The Guardian still wins my support.

~~~
huffmsa
Just ribbing you btw.

Serious question, would you prefer being able to support quality reporters /
reporting at these publications and not pay for the lies and fabrications? If
you could do that (versus having to pay an all encompassing subscription).

~~~
jwildeboer
No. I wouldn't want to directly support certain journalists. It creates the
real problem of "writing to please your audience" and moving the focus from
reporting to serving the patrons. The best journalists are not necessarily
nice people, in my experience. They should focus on the story, not waste time
on optimising their social reputation. They should be protected by their
editors and the institution they work for from exactly this kind of influence.
IMHO.

Also it is hard to go undercover for an important story when you have to make
sure you grow your audience at the same time.

~~~
huffmsa
Fair. But you and I would pay for "not nice, but brutally honest journalism".
I bet a lot of other would too. Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is historical
proof of that.

There's no reason a the authors couldn't write under pseudonyms, or publish as
a collective. You still buy the articles one by one as you see fit.

~~~
pjc50
Very difficult to maintain a pseudonym _and_ publish articles with quotes from
named sources in, avoiding the Manafort fiasco.

The Economist manages the collective byline thing fairly well, but it's almost
unique.

------
kbos87
The dynamic explained here isn’t some cliff we are collectively approaching as
the article seems to say. Instead, it’s been a drag on people’s willingness to
sign up for subscription services and likelihood to churn off of them all
along.

------
newscracker
Subscriptions will see declines across platforms because of fatigue and people
realizing that they’re not really using the subscriptions or deriving adequate
value from those.

I only bother about subscriptions if it’s for visual media (selectively) or
for online backups. Everything else is what I use only occasionally, and don’t
see the value in getting stuck paying for those. As the article hints at,
services that aren’t niche or highly focused on one topic (it closely related
set of topics) or voice will not find many takers.

For software, I like having a free trial and then paying once and deciding
when I want to upgrade, at what price/discount, etc. I believe it’s up to the
developer to provide adequate value to tempt people to upgrade, and then leave
it to them to decide. Most app subscriptions make sense for those who create a
lot more monetary value with the use of the apps. That’s a small percentage of
the population.

Subscriptions to news sites don’t make much sense when what I read all the
time is highly selective and through news aggregation sites (not Facebook!) or
applications (like an RSS reader).

I personally can’t wait for a bigger and wider backlash against subscriptions,
since every producer or developer seems intent on pushing that as the only
option to users.

------
INGELRII
Current news syndication model is outdated and will change in next 10-20
years.

Current model:

Newspapers & media platforms use syndication. They get most of their news
syndicated from others journals and media. The editor chooses what to print or
publish.

Future model:

Newspapers & media platforms use syndication. They get most of their news
syndicated from others journals and media. It's the reader who decides what he
reads from the syndicated news.

In the future you have an account in your favorite content news syndication
service/newspaper/platform and pay flat monthly subscription fee by default.
You can surf in the internet and read anything you want. Every month the
service you subscribed distributes payments from the syndicated media
according to what you read. There are different levels of payments. Some
content is more expensive than other. You can also sponsor, tip etc. Some pay
more because they consume more expensive content or more content.

ps. The same model will work for movies, games etc. You can watch HBO movies
from Netflix and vice versa.

------
zeroxfe
Wow, this problem is exactly what my startup is trying to solve. (Not sure if
I'm allowed link to it here.)

A huge issue here is that there's no way to pay tiny amounts for one-off
content. Like, it's impossible to charge 10¢ to your credit card.

So publishers resort to ads or subscriptions or obnoxious bundling schemes to
get over the fee thresholds for credit cards.

------
JazCE
This is a good thread to read that might give some more backstory:
[https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1088503510184927233](https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1088503510184927233)

~~~
gamesbrainiac
Thank you so much for bringing this into perspective. Especially the part
where only 10-15% of revenue came from subscriptions. That really puts things
into perspective in terms of free news articles!

------
kieckerjan
It seems ridiculous to subscribe to, say, ten publications since you cannot
realistically keep up with them all. However for me things changed when I
started looking at this as a form of charity.

I subscribe to a number of publications that I only read every now and then,
but that I find important or sympathetic. A free and healthy press that
stimulates debate is worth my money even if I am not part of the core
audience. This is money that I would otherwise spend on other laudable things
like disaster relief or coral reefs, i.e. altruistic money without any
immediate personal ROI.

------
orbifold
What seems like an obvious solution is to decentralize the ad market again.
Especially news papers should be able to sell ads to buisenesses directly, as
they have in the past.

~~~
Shivetya
changing the ad market will not fix the problem, the problem is the papers
existed quite well when they had a captive audience.

that is no longer true so many publications are finding that they only were
prosperous not because of their content but because they were the only game in
town.

------
Tepix
What we need is a meta subscription service where you pay for a certain amount
of articles available from dozens of participating magazines and news outlets.
If you consume too many articles you need to pay a bit more.

The content creators are missing out by refusing to license their content to a
services like this.

------
bitwize
I almost expected a little popup to appear mid-article that said "Whoa, slow
down there fella. You've read four free articles this month. All you need to
do to get subscribed is give us your email and payment info."

------
mozey
Something like coil.com might be a viable alternative. At the moment I don't
subscribe to news sites because of this issue. If I could pay upfront and then
split it by usage I would definitely go for it

------
JulianMorrison
Subscription implies advantages for unbundling - you get more from a Patreon
linked to a preferred author, than from the NYT.

------
garmaine
> How many things are you subscribed to?

Zero.

Am I the only one?

------
ykevinator
I wish tv and news was pay as you go. Not $4.99 an episode or $1.00 / article
but $.25 / episode and $.10 / article. Bitcoin is a perfect medium for this
but whenever people try to do this they price it irrationally.

------
peteforde
This post is light on new information. Why would I trust a sports writer to
predict an imminent and dramatic behaviour change? I'm not trying to be shitty
to sports writers, but there's nothing to suggest that this guy has done any
research or has any background in consumer spending behaviour.

That all said, I think that it's much more interesting than "consumers have a
finite spending limit". The first mistake is in believing that there's such a
thing as "consumers". In reality, you have a population and an infinite number
of slices within it. Some of those slices will be able to afford a huge number
of services while others can afford none.

With the obvious stated, the next filter gets more interesting: at what point
does an option become more convenient than alternatives? For example, people
had no choice but to buy CDs until MP3s came along. Massive libraries of MP3s
were common until streaming services offered a legal, frictionless option for
a flat monthly fee. For a huge number of people, Spotify wins. And while you
can keep clearing cookies, at some point you want to read Forbes, WP, NYT, etc
stories enough that you decide paying is easier than circumventing paywalls,
based on how much you value your time.

Finally, there's also a long list of other dimensions that influence
subscriptions today: I'm a Canadian with a NYT subscription because I hate
paywalls but mostly because I genuinely want to vote with my dollars to
support quality news. This isn't so different from backing a Kickstarter
project or a Patreon.

The blend of these services and likely other ones that don't exist yet give
the population the opportunity to truly personalize their consumption if they
wish to take it.

What I wish is that there was a consolidated location where I could manage all
of my subscriptions to everything, period. Right now, every subscription is
managed in a silo. This sucks. A more generalized payment mechanism would
allow me to subscribe to the NYT, pay a small fee to unblock a single article
and share it with my friends or even pay to sponsor a single writer... all
from the same interface.

A guy can dream.

~~~
shortformblog
That's because it's not intended as a post that aims to explain new things so
much as predict their impact in the coming year. Harvard's Neiman Lab does an
annual list of predictions. This is just one of the predictions.

------
ceautery
I expected this to be about box subscriptions.

------
nicky0
tl;dr "people have a lot of subscriptions so they might start unsubscribing"

