Why everything is a subscription 

Netflix and Spotify

The Verge people already rent phones. Leasing phones has been going on for around 3 years or more now at sprint and tmobile

Sun Basket

... I don't sub

Subscription services are starting to frighten me.

only subscribe to something that are really have a meaningful value for your life.

It doesnt have to be a recurring subscription. Take the coffe pods for example, youre not paying a monthly fee drink coffee, but you need buy more pods everytime you want to drink It, or else your coffe maker its useless

Surely everything you buy regularly is the same as a subscription?

No no no this is dystopia I do not want to be spending a little bit(which adds up fast and your paying lots more then you think) for the rest of my life on things that I need in order to live my life. What happened to owning things now we just rent.

I second you..

This is the exact reason why cable companies are struggling right now.

john pardon wow!!! How poor peasant are you! I can afford subscriptions Netflix Hulu RU-vid Red Amazon Prime Adobe Microsoft 365 VASA (Gym Membership) Costco Sam’s

you can afford everything if you steal and pirate it

@@seemysight yeah i have popcorntime. It's pretty sweet.

same

It also shows that people are more inclined to buy something which has an aspect of community, like the exercise bike. Because of all this technology, we're losing a lot of a sense of community, ironic isn't it

Yeah. Slow growth business will have a hell of a time trying to compete with Subscription ("magical") growth companies.

Things have changed nowdays if you don't act fast then you may find copy cats Taking on your idea...

Not toenrion how a lot of this is just gadgets, non-essentials. Can't believe a company selling interactive cycles is worth 8 billion bucks...

I don't think they need to mention it because I'm pretty sure all consumers feel the same

People love the *idea* of paying a premium to own stuff, they just don't actually like the paying part. That's the problem.

I agree except in the case of software I haven't used. But I've never understood office 365. Why anyone would agree to pay $10/month in perpetuity for software that's been around almost since computing began blows my mind

Eventually you'll have to rent everything instead of owning anything. 😒

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z some service like telecommunications cable TV, and Internet provider do give free hardware.

I mean it's interesting that a sharing economy basically works like feudalism. People rent their stuff to save money short term. And sure renting something short-term like drills or a truck makes sense. But when only some own things and the others rent from them and pay money to use it short term you are going to be depend on them long-term. A sharing econ works if there is an equal distribution of goods but in reality there just isn't.

Jonathan B This is so disgusting. Yet it’s being celebrated. There are only a few services that are genuinely subscription required. Everything else is extractive and downright exploitation in order to continue to support an increasingly financialized economy. Infinite growth is a myth that’s increasingly clashing with reality. “Innovations” like this only serves as a stopgap.

It drives innovation and better products than any other alternative. It's all about recurring revenue.

There not greedy, it an very smart way to keep revenue going. If you pay, then you give in. That be your fault. It what makes captialism great. You get choices. Real greed is randomness being exploited so we spend so we can win. Fun but not healthy. Unless you lose all the time then well, you did yourself a favor, cough cough gambling.

@@5DollarsUp What you think makes capitalism great is what I see as its absolutely worst quality. I can see how subscription is great for some companies and even a necessity for a couple of them too, Software in particular is a place where subscription can be a really great thing (i do have an adobe subscription myself). It works there because it allows the customer to not have to keep buying the software over and over again just to get the latest features that might be great for productivity (or not) without having a periodic interval where all the money one makes is sunk into something at great risk. For the company they get a steady income too so it is a true win/win. But then you got these coffeemachines that uses capsules. Worst idea ever. Why? Because lets say that these capsules was all there was, no more filtermade coffee that you brew and toss out the leftovers after. Those capsules are good for maybe 2-3 cups, but generally most people throw them out after one because that is how they where intended in most cases. That means the consumer probably pays a great deal more per cup compared to the can of coffee they can get from a regular machine with filter and where you decide the strength. In other wors, it favors greed and that is always a bad thing. For this reason alone I am very glad that I do not drink all that much coffee (i like it, but as little as i drink all i need is a small coffee press) The only reason this is becoming more popular is because they can offer some unique items that generally are harder to make at home without a bigger more expensive coffee machine that can steam the milk and all that stuff. But I would not call it a win/win situation just because of that.

I agree with the first sentence, but they could also call you greedy for expecting goods and services for cheap, we're not entitled to that (I don't think they're necessarily being greedy -> some businesses might not be able to survive or make a reasonable profit without this, and I don't think you're being greedy either, some services are probably more expensive than they should be).

It's not far off the model for gaming consoles. Traditionally consoles (except Nintendo's) were sold at a loss and they make their money on the games. It's a model that totally works for the consumer as it brings the console price down to one that is affordable to mostly everyone (further bringing the price down due to economies of scale) and then you pay-as-you go. For mass-market products selling-outright will always be the way-to-go but for somewhat niche, expensive products a subscription model can be a win for everyone.

@@zig131 Fair enough, then that's information that may not be translated to the consumer correctly. They may just see the initial cost and wonder why they need to pay more for subscriptions

ikr lol funny but sad

I used to think that I liked capitalism cuz I could buy my stuff and own them, but now like what even man

One is q choice the other there are no choice.

More like: also capitalists "this is great, you wont own anything, but WE own everything" Capitalism is just a fancy name for Oligarchy.

@@joelw2413 until you deal with software and suddenly, microsoft office is a subscription! adobe acrobat is a subscription! autocad is a subscription! end your subscription, you lose all of your software, but nice try.

I just re-watched that a couple of nights ago, such a good episode. The difference is in Black Mirror at least they get 'paid' for cycling - in Peleton you're paying $40 a month for the privilege!

i too felt same.

@@IgWannA2 what's the episode name

@@daviddiveroli9331 Fifteen Million Merits

I loved that episode.

Agree. This is an interesting and important topic but the reporting approach taken by The Verge here seems far too credulous and uncritical.

It not how cheap or not cheap since we don't know financial situation of each person. Most importantly they had all kind of business plan for each price point.

M. L. Hunt the difference is real estate tends to go up in value, while most gadgets don't.

This isn't meant to be biased.

No to mention how you're reliant on their customer service, which is often terrible or over-priced. Back in the day you could have your stuff fixed by anyone anywhere for a decent price, now it's all authorised resellers and technicians.

"Both sides" means Investor and Company. Nothing to do with the customer.

Adobe needs to continue to improve their software constantly - so a recurring revenue makes more sense

The only people this disadvantages are the people who still use Windows XP and Photoshop 3. The people who want to buy once and use forever. Technology just doesn't work at that pace anymore.

The fact is that despite the sometimes low cost of entry afforded by the subscription model, the customer almost always loses in the long run thanks to ever-rising subscription costs. Then there's the corporate monopolies which essentially eliminate consumer choice and prevent any future competitors other than fellow conglomerates. Meanwhile, these services track everything they possibly can about you in order to sell your personal data or better take advantage of you. Many of these services also make more money off of you the longer you interface with their platform each day, so they optimize their platforms to essentially addict users. If you think it's hard to quit using this or that app right now, imagine how much harder it will be in ten years from now, after a decade of using machine learning, behavioral psychology and data harvesting to target your time and attention.

@@GIPvideos Shaddup

Dishonest marketing, planned obsolescence, subscriptions, microtransactions... The cancers multiply.

Appliances that break down every 2 years can be considered a subscription. You need to replace iPhone every 2 years because it breaks down and you can't repair it?? It's also a subscription.

Same

Stephanie McKeon are you diagnosed with depression? If not, say you’re sad, not depressed thanks

Thanks, but I used the correct word.

Ditto. Nothing is going to send me "off the grid" faster than being tethered to a payment in perpetuity

Whose lifetime tho? Because any company could be gone in a year you just never know

nothing should grow indefinitely. the world has limited resources the more you take the less there is for others and you eventually have to resort to stealing. Even Bezos admits that limitless growth-the growth that made him the richest man in the world-is incompatible with a habitable earth.

I agree, though tell that to modern business

Our UNIVERSE is finite. A company can sell every elementary particle in the Universe for $100 each. They can only make $10^90 max. It may sound a lot but it's still finite. Capitalism demand infinite growth and that means the end goal is $∞. Our Universe don't have enough for $∞.

The only reason that cable companies might be able to survive is because streaming services are beginning to kill each other by branching out

there is a small but important difference. I will buy a new pack of blades if my old run out and not every 4 weeks bc otherwise my license would time out

Printers

They're renting/leasing it but calling it a sale. In other words, lying. 😒

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z You're buying but not owning.

Apple already did this with their iPhones. Late payment means having your phone bricked... and combined with the anti-repair mindset from Apple, you may as well have to buy a new iPhone with yet another subscription payment, and repeat the cycle all over again, ad mortem.

Same, I rather pay for a product in full once and be done with it

They won't though

I expect a lot of these companies to go under when the next tech crash happens.

You have to look at it this way, its like a personal trainer for $40, so it's actually affordable.

ishmam rahman I Agree with this statement but it’s “their”.

Yeah, or rather investors who want to see companies grow really fast.

But you need to make ALL the money! All of it! Anything less is unsatisfactory, especially to shareholders.

nope , subscription is better option , they will give us more cheap price than owning the software....

Exactly. How did companies make a profit in the past without subscription models for hardware, but apparently they can't today? Greedy companies want to grow infinitely, but our incomes don't grow infinitely, so it's unsustainable.

I think you're right. Moreover there's a serious ecological price to pay for constantly throwing out old hardware. Even recycling it is incredibly destructive.

Agree with you, Maxime, feel the same. But with the iPod you need to pay for music (unless you a have one eye and an eyepatch). How much money it takes to buy 250 Gb of mp3 music?

So I am a hardware creator and entrepreneur. Other wise known as a manufacturer in old world speak. This is how you make the hardware game work. You innovate in style, function and value. Sounds like hard work? Yeah tell me about it. Make it good and your cost of customer acquisition goes way down. Its called word of mouth. It works. If your product isn't basic as S#!t to copy it works. In the beginning, the iPhone was doing all three. iPhone 3,4,5,6 all had major leaps in style, function and value. Then it stopped. However the buy once and never buy again model is limited by how many customers you can reach that other people can't because you are unique. Like tesla. Lets face it what comes close to tesla. Nothing... by a country mile. This is where the buy it once model works great. The part they are not really talking about in the video is how the subscription model can offer value to people. A $2000 item on a monthly subscription of $45 a month looks awesome. So in fact what your really doing is accelerating you market saturation. The peloton bike is great if you were going to spin classes but if you liked to ride on the road it is just stupid. The subscription is value to the spin class rider and its an increase in convenience. This was a minor point in this video. Value to the client. This video was about value to the VC. A business is always always always floated by market interest not investor interest. If your investor interest is great than your market interest then what you have is a sophisticated scam/bubble that has not burst yet. You want an example.... Magic leap. Investors love it. customers are struggling to find a use for it and struggling to make it work. This will end in tears. I promise you. Compare it to Tesla. The largest pre-order in the history of manufacturing and they didn't even have a full prototype when that happened. Just the promise of it. If you compare those two you will understand what this post was all about.

- I would rent clothes and change them when they are worn out - Society survived without proper medicine for centuries, what does that prove?

@@fedirkryvyi Yeah, that works for the low quality stuff since they're likely going to get worn out in a year or two of normal wear anyways. Who the hell wants to rent a quality set of clothes, that is meant to last 5-10 years? The whole reason behind buying quality clothing such as denim, is so that the high upfront cost is amortized over the years of ownership.

@@rousseau327 Yeh but fashion changes quickly, obviously a suit is gonna take a long time before it's unfashionable but day to day clothes come in and out of fashion so fast people might want to rent them instead. you can stay on top of the fashion curve without having to shell out for "quality items" that last for 10 years when you stop wearing them after 1 or 2 anyway.

@@Aguycalledmax That's true if we're talking about fashion, if I were trying to keep up with the latest trends, I'd say renting might be a good choice, financially. But there are lots of things are are quite standard regardless of the fashion that is in season, such as quality jeans, t-shirts, shoes, crewnecks, etc. For the people who don't really care about keeping up with the latest trends, and just want to look good in a "normal" way, yet still want clothes that last, the subscription model for clothes just doesn't make much sense.

@@Aguycalledmax fashion itself is one of the original "planned obsolescence" industries. If you don't buy into the hype of believing you have to be on trend with each season's new designs, you're freed from that albatross.

SIKKY Phones were originally set up as rental (government subsidized) hardware until T-Mobile dropped that practice in 2014.

In many ways you are already renting your phone. Support for your iPhone ends after about 5 years. After that time you will no longer be able to update the OS and a lot of apps, especially cloud based ones, will stop working. Yes your phone will continue to work as a web browser, for text messaging and as a phone but that's probably not the reason why you bought an $800 smart phone.

Thomas Hofmann thats fine cause by that time the phone won’t be that great anyway ideally you want to keep a phone for 5 years, avoid updating too many apps and make sure that phone has plenty of space and power then buy another good phone and keep for 5 years, you can buy refurbished to get lower prices if you buy a refurbished iphone xs max it will last 5 years and never have a problem or you can just buy cheaper androids they wont last 5 years

TBH leasing a phone is not a bad idea. Batteries only last a few years, security updates only last a few years, features become obsolete quickly. Leasing is becoming very big with expensive smartphones, at the end of the day, if its a product you won't use forever, there isn't much reason to buy it. Not that i support subscription services, i cancelled all my video subscriptions after the media companies left netflix to start their own. Back to pirating for me i'm not going to spend 8x$12 per month to watch the same content i used to access for $12 a month.

Apple soon will be selling iDevices on a subscription basis. Even older iPhones are essentially a subscription because they break down every few short years and it's irreparable, prompting you to buy new ones only for it to break down again. Subscription-based economy is highly related to planned Obsolescence.

Hope you made that up~ it's a gud one.

in a world where stable jobs are harder and harder to find

zer0 that was indeed a dangerous wish

Honestly, i think you mean feudalism. Something tells me large corporations owning the product seems as Karl Marx's kryptonite.

@@cityscapes4ever I'm saying companies own nothing at all, the central government does as Karl Marx says

Technically we don't....socialrity.. It is ours.

Socialism actually allows the workers to own the means of production. That's right, OWN something. These modern capitalists want to deny you that. And your problem is Marx?

Absolutely. It's greed, pure and simple. Subscription models are not in the interests of consumers. How some of these companies have managed to dupe consumers into paying a subscription when they acquire a 'gadget' is beyond me. Ultimately, I think it will fail. People are going to get sick and tired of paying subscriptions for everything they use.

Exactly

@@richie1326 It's not that simple--some business can make sense of subscriptions, but sometimes for hardware startups it just make no sense at all. And all because the business models for VCs are to drive up valuation and exit via someone else acquiring the business. You're right, it's greed, but it's also greed at the expense of the startups themselves, let alone any consumer interests.

These type of companies deserve to have their propietry devices ripped off by China, where they will get rid of the subscription models.

Reality is worse than any work of fiction.

I feel like we need to change up this joke structure to be "in capitalist America..."

@@joeyC27 I understand if you find the idea of a subscription-based economy upsetting and I myself am skeptical as well towards some of these new platforms and businesses. However, to better understand what's going on and why this trend is happening, it's great if quality content like this is produced! On the other hand, I do agree with you that this series might benefit from taking a broader look at where current (tech) business developments might lead society as a whole and whether we all stand to gain from this.

Excuse me, are you not paying for RU-vid red or giving some patreon money to them? You're so old-school!

You Got me. Gud work.

Cable cutting and moving to streaming platforms is only worth it if you pick two or three services at most. I would say those with the advent of players like Disney and Apple we will see a massive drop in prices before too long. There will simply be too many offerings in the market. I think you are right in saying the subscription market will implode for most categories. Once there is saturation the only way business can compete is by either offering a service that people absolutely must have (an exercise bike is not one of them) or by dropping the prices (we are already seeing that in the coffee pod market).

Why do you need a 2 subscriptions for music? WTF is a furniture subscription?

I'd prefer quality over quantity!

If did right, what is extremely unlikely, most companies are greedy.

In fact, subscription services go hand in hand with planned obsolescence.

Screw it. I used 2007 version. Already a major improvement having grown up with MS Office 2003. Nope Microsoft. I don't want to pay monthly fee to use your softwares. Just gimme the product for one off payment and leave me alone.

Are you really sure it's not a case of "just get to market first and worry about legal later"? As a consumer, I am not a fan of it. But as a pragmatist, one has to admit this isn't the worst approach. You get to market, corner the market, make enough money and deal with the legal consequences later.

@@Tundey Yes, but rushing to market with out doing due diiligence is the major risk that could end everything, why repeat the same mistake someone else already made... one legal action could kneecap you at the wrong moment, if your trying to borrow capital or have your capital tied up in manufacturing or staff.