It's Time to End Our Subscription Addiction

It is not that we are addicted to subscriptions as consumers, it is that the businesses are addicted. For one thing, business analysts like it, because it is easy to put a value on an annuity.<p>In the case of entertainment &quot;it&#x27;s expensive&quot; is both true and false. Not long ago a lot of people had $130 a month cable bills but you got a stupendous amount of content and if you looked at it that way it was cheap (it certainly doesn&#x27;t dwarf rent, mortgage, student loans, and many common expenses.) Today even if you subscribed to Netflix + Apple TV + Peacock and also watched some Tubi you&#x27;re paying a fraction of that.<p>If you were buying one CD a week that is many times the cost of a Spotify subscription. As much as I believe it will be the end of gaming as we know it, GAME PASS is a great deal in the short term compared to buying an AAA game every 3 months. (The AAA game is a risky business model though because I have a choice of which one to buy and if your game sucks... Sorry) Game developers really want to get you playing a service game like <i>League of Legends</i> and never stop.

From the consumer side, I also feel like I want to end my own subscription addiction. Subscribing to media had a real benefit years ago when you could get access to content ad-free with a subscription.<p>Now that benefit largely is disappearing. Many of my subscriptions now jam in ads and charge per view. As a simple example, Amazon video is just as likely going to require I &quot;rent&quot; or farcicaly &quot;purchase&quot; the movies I want to see.