Death by Subscription Fatigue

The peak of capitalism, the subscription model.

Photo by Zulfugar Karimov on Unsplash

Death by a thousand recurring subscription charges.

I am far from the only person in society that is sick of subscriptions. It’s not the dollar amount that is causing my sickness, rather it is the complexity that ails me.

Capitalism discovered the peak of financial commerce traps and we’re all suffering for it. As cable fails and streaming subscription prices soar, where are we to go?

I wish I had the answer.

All I can say is that the subscription model is heading towards a burst. Even here, right on Substack, subscriptions are, frankly, exhausting. (But obviously you NEED to subscribe to my Substack and pay me!!!!)

Every service is trying to sell you into a cyclical payment so they can keep you as a customer for a long time.

And for some reason, we feel like we need Netflix. Or Spotify. We feel like we can’t live without these services.

I’m reminded of an article I read a few months ago, The Death of Spotify, in which Joel discusses the impending doom of streaming.

Most of these platforms are losing money. Users are frustrated with rising prices, yet prices must rise in order for the businesses to spin a profit. A failure of this bubble is certainly coming soon.

With no alternative yet on the market, what will we move to?

I have wondered if we will go closer to a Substack/Patreon model where you pay the artist “directly” and subscribe to specific creators or content rather than one platform’s entire library.

Instead of getting free access to Kendrick Lamar’s next album on Spotify, you’ll pay $10 to buy it. That number almost sounds insane now. But that’s how it used to be all the way up until Spotify and Pandora beat out iTunes and CDs.

I don’t know where we’re headed for certain, but I can tell you, it’s exhausting managing so many subscriptions.