Why are we often hesitant to spend money on digital services?
This is sort of a "does anyone else?" type question, but I think it can create some interesting discussion.
We have become accustomed to having many things for free online. Search, social media, news, videos, games etc. The price of course is ads and our personal data. But spending money on these kinds of services that exists for free sometimes feels like a hurdle to overcome. I recently gave the paid search engine Kagi a try, and I spent way too much time pondering whether it was worth the $5. Yet I can spend ten times as much on random physical purchases or a round drinks with only a few seconds of decision making.
Even though we have lived with digital products for decades now, having something tangible and physical between your fingers still feels better. With some exceptions, because most people are paying for streaming services but renting movies in the video store have always cost money, so we are used to that - unlike stuff like search and email which many of us have gotten used to being available for free.
Can this ever change outside very tech-minded people? Because services that rely on subscriptions rather than dataharvesting and ads do exist, but with the exceptions of maybe the big streaming services, few get wider appeal and the masses flock to the so-called free services instead. I find it almost depressing that we have all these brilliant and innovative tech companies around the world doing amazing things, but a good deal of it all ends up with the goal of showing more ads. It is hard to compete with free, but is it possible to challenge the current most successful business model of "paying" with ads and data?
I mean seeing ads costs me literally nothing, and is the only kind of payment I would consider for an online service run by a company I have 0 to negative trust in (Meaning I refuse to be invested financially in it). But imo what matters isn't whether you pay with targeted advertisements or out of pocket.
Say you buy a book.
And say the publisher goes brankrupt.
Or, for whatever reason, the publisher discontinues that book and starts burning all the copies of it they can find to try and eliminate it.
In both cases, you still own your copy of the book.
Say you buy an ebook on an online e-reader platform.
And say the company behind it goes bankrupt, meaning their servers go down.
Or say the company removes that book from their store.
Or even say your subscription to the service expires.
In any of those three cases, you no longer own that book now. In fact, you never actually owned it, you were essentially renting the book from that company.
The first case is an example of a product. Software can be a product.
The second case is an example of a service. Software can also be a service.
Services are great for companies, terrible for general consumers.
Imo the prevalence of SaaS today is a cancer and indicatice of a larger problem where companies don't want anyone to own anything anymore.
Just off the top pf my head, you can also see this in how corporations are buying up all the housing to force people to have to rent.
Companies used to make high quality products at a high price.
Then they realized they could sell a crappy product at a lower price and people would have to buy another one when it breaks, leading to more revenue and more recurring revenue.
Services are just the next step in evolution for this trend and I honestly fear for the dystopian corporatocracy of a future we're heading for. They want to maximize recurring revenue and the easiest way is to ensure their customers don't actually own anything and are always reliant on them for access.
"You'll own nothing and be happy".
Okay, but what about consumables?
A latte may cost $5, but it’s gone immediately after. Meanwhile, I could get the Adobe suite for $55/mo. (yes, not a direct price comparison, but I assume you drink more than one espresso drink a month), but that final product is mine. I have complete rights to anything that I create with the Adobe suite.
I could go to the theatre and pay $10 for a 2 hour film. I may remember that film and enjoy the experience, but I don’t own the film. Meanwhile, I could pay $10 for a month of the Criterion Channel and watch dozens of films for the same price (or less if you live in a metro area, some of those ticket prices are crazy).
Let’s move away from subscriptions since these aren’t direct comparisons (although I could get into memberships) and most people’s hesitation doesn’t seem to be with subscriptions (a lot of people have Netflix).
So, let’s use your example of books. I could pay $24 to get Victory City by Salman Rushdie (randomly picked from my to-read list) in hardcover (the softcover is actually more expensive right now), or I could pay $7 for the eBook.
Already, I’m saving $17, but what else do I get for that? Well, I can read it on any device, so it’s available anywhere (you could bring your book with you, but the convenience there is undeniable). I can search through the book, or use X-ray through Kindle if I lose my spot. Speaking of losing your spot, it keeps where I’m at, so no bookmarks or memorizing page numbers. And finally, I can use Calibre and remove the DRM, so about not owning the book…
Meanwhile, I could lose my book, it could burn up (my family has gone through two houses burning down), or get damaged in some other way.
An alternative is the library, but you don’t own those books either!
Now, before I start getting framed for hyperbole (although, is it really?), or for overusing parentheses (no comment), I buy physical books and use the library. I go to the theatre (a lot, actually). I’m (slowly, but surely) building up a physical movie collection. I drink coffee! (though I typically make it myself)
I’m not anti physical products, but the ownership argument is way overblown. Software takes time, effort, and money to make. I think that’s worth something.
I fele like this ignores the fact that these companies switch to the model specifically because they know it will make them money. It's rent seaking behavior.
I won’t deny that it increases profits, and I’m not against having perpetual licenses either, but, there are benefits for the user too.
For one, there’s a lower bar of entry (Photoshop CS6 was $699, that would take three years to match if you got the Photography bundle, which also includes Lightroom), and you get all the updates with your membership (CS6 came out two years after CS5, so that would be another $700 if you wanted to upgrade, in which time you would have spent $480 instead of a combined $1,400).
I’m personally a big fan of the way that JetBrains handles it. You pay monthly, but after 12 months you get a perpetual fallback license to keep.
Just to point out; you didn't have to fork out the full cost for upgrades to Adobe products. I believe it was something like $200 to upgrade from CS5 to CS6. I've tried to find a source, but searching has led mostly to dead adobe community forums.
I’ve found a source on the $200 upgrade price. Still puts you at just under double the amount you’d have spent with Creative Cloud.
Of course, if you’re willing to hold on to the older software, you would come out ahead price-wise after four years.
Ah well done. There were a lot of dead links and articles to trawl through. I agree that it does not undermine your point, but I think it was a better model than the one they have now if you weren't upgrading every time (which I certainly wasn't).
I get how you could see it that way. Perhaps I'm just a jaded old, but I see the subscription model as a borderline scam with it deliberately confusing pricing, it neverending nickel and dime app upgrade horseshit, it just wrankles my behind.
Back in the old days you could buy Photoshop and edit photos and mess around and it was fun. If you needed a new feature you could upgrade but the base was always there. Maybe I'm wrong but I think about it in terms of a tool. Like if I was Carpenter and bought a chisel on the "subscription model" perhaps I would be upgraded to the "laser cnc" version of what ever Photoshop is offering. Which would be cool but maybe I don't do that kind of construction. But there would be a lot of years there where I would have been fine with a skill saw. (I feel like this analogy fell apart)
I guess what I'm trying to say is offer your products ala cart and I'll pay for the upgrades I need. Let my stuff be my stuff. Harrumph!
Do you really own the final product when you lose the Pantone colors used to create it?
Yeah, that was pretty silly—though yes, you still own whatever you had made with it.
As an alternative, if you used the palette, there’s Freetone which is an exact replica.
Your example is casting a rather wide net which likely means that any explanation for one thing won't necessarily reply to everything. So, I will address the following...
Certain things (ex: latte) are known to be to be something I will (in almost all cases) enjoy. There is not a risk that I spend $5 and I don't receive that benefit. The benefit is worth the cost.
The Adobe suite, on the other hand, is more of a risk. I may not be able to create the final product that I want in the month time frame. I may not be able to create something that would be worth $55 to me. While I will own the final product, the files I need in order to edit that project are locked to software needing a monthly subscription fee (with a minor possibility that the software won't even be available at some point in the future).
(Software purchasing means that I have "forever" to use that software and to receive value from it. I feel that I am not pressured to figure out all out within a limited timespan.)
I'm not saying the Adobe suite is not worth the price. People tend to make impulsive decisions. Without much thought, people will spend money for something. Items that are more "software as a service" encourages people to think about if it is worth it or not. That thinking removes the impulsive aspect and makes purchasing less likely.
What also snaps people out of "thoughtless impulsiveness" is if something costs more than the person is expecting. A $200 latte is likely to even cause a billionaire to pause and wonder why that drink is so expensive compared to many other examples. With may items on the Internet being free, items that cost money also cause people to think and pulls them out of impulsive consumption/purchasing.
Finally, people have less risk in the real world when purchasing anything. Giving money over involves no risk and credit card fraud at the point of purchase is typically not thought of. The Internet, on the other hand, is considered a risky place where my financial information is more likely to be stolen by "company I never heard of" being hacked or that site just wanting to steal your information. I feel more at ease purchasing from "company I never heard of" when the purchase is being done with "pay with Amazon" since that unknown company will just get the money from Amazon and will never see my financial information.
Thinking isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, there will be a decent amount of people who prefer not to think and would prefer the impulsive actions. That is why you hear such things as "your website has to catch a person's attention within 10 to 20 seconds or they leave". I better rephrasing is that you have 10 to 20 seconds to tickle someone's "impulsiveness" and you are hoping that they ride that emotion clear through checkout.
I think it's a great example. Let me explain my mindset.
If I'm ordering delivery every day and realize I can make my own latte for less than $5, yes. I will probably re-think the decision and see it as not worth the value..
But when in person, there is the atmosphere component to Starbucks. It's a semi-quiet place (not a library, but also not a busy subway) with a good enough atmosphere for doing some light studying and overall getting out of my house. Paying $5 for that, even every day isn't too much as a soft cost of entry. $150 a month for some short stay in land when rent is $2000+ a month in my area? Hell, buying a tiny storage space these days starts at $200. And I also get coffee.
There is no "atmosphere" for software per se. It's not the biggest reason by far, but it's an important one to consider on why people have a mental divide that mathematically makes no sense.
I should note I have no problem buying tools. I just paid 150 or so for a year of Jetbrains Rider (Long story short for the unaware, coding tool alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio, which has a free tier). I also paid $70 for Sublime Text with no regrets years ago, despite no longer using it personally. But it's my professional career so I'm ofc very biased on that front.
I'm in full agreement, I prefer ebooks. But again, biased. I'm typing this on an $800 flagship Tablet so I clearly care a lot about reading and note taking.
I think for me, subscription services make me think more about how often I'm going to use something.
Lets say Adobe Suite costs $250 one time cost. That's a lot, but then I own it. If I choose to sit on the program for 2 months before I really get started, it doesn't cost me any more. However when I subscribe to a subscription service, every minute I'm not using feels like a waste of money (whether it is or not). I'm inclined to only subscribe to something that I feel confident I'm going to use a lot, because if a month goes by where I didn't use the product, I'll feel bad about having the subscription.
This for me is the biggest reason I tend to be reluctant to subscribe to digital services. I don't want to feel pressured to use various things just to get value out of them.
Wouldn’t that mean that renting shouldn’t exist either? When your long term car rental provider goes bankrupt, your car has to be returned, likely for no money in return. The same could happen to a rental apartment.
I agree that planned obsolescence and quality loss is a real issue, but also you cannot always invest a lot of resources to make something last a lifetime.
If e.g. car or printer parts can be replaced with carbon fiber or something less resource intensive than metal. Or the material is cheaper, etc.
Renting things long-term shouldn't exist, yes. It's predatory, especially when combined with someone (especially the rentee) actively sabotaging the possibility of ownership, like with apartments. Cars don't have that problem and perhaps never will* given they're inherently mobile.
"Buying" a DRM'd ebook means paying for the book and the download. Everything else is the publisher's cost of holding the file hostage, like the DRM R&D, DRM servers, the "service" of putting DRM on the file, and so on. It's not necessary to "last a lifetime."
*this may age like milk
No, what I'm saying is that renting shouldn't be the only option, and that's what companies are currently trying to do, and not just for tech, but it most if not all aspects of our lives now.
Renting is definitely a service, but the circumstances are different, including the fact that you (for now) still have the option to buy a car/house instead.
When you rent a car or an apartment, you're guaranteed access to that resource for the period of time you pay for. And when that period ends, you move to a different car rental service or apartment, you didn't actually lose anything, and if the company wants to break the agreement, they usually have to refund you at least for the time left, and there are laws governing it.
Even when a company goes bankrupt, I don't believe that means they don't have to refund you.
What I'm talking about would be more like you pay a car rental service to install a "smart-garage" on your yard that houses a rental car that you slot your card into to pay for to unlock the garage for each drive.
They can immediately and without warning deny you access.
This scenario is probably coming soon if not already real with remote kill switches in cars.
If you've seen the news recently, a man was accused by an amazon driver of being racist and so Amazon disabled all of his smart home appliances for a week in retaliation. No warning, no due process, no regulations to protect the consumer, he loses access to a service he was paying for over unproven allegations that he uses to control his home.
Luckily it wasn't that bad for him but that's potentially losing the ability to turn on lights, losing security cameras, losing your doorbell, losing acces to your thermostat, etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/amazon_echo_disabled_allegation/
Nothing against renting as a concept. You have to upkeep a house, make sure it passes code, etc. These are continual issues, and renting moves those issues to the landlord.
But the housing market as of late has a whole storm of issues that make me think otherwise. But that's a huge tangent.
I generally do agree with a few exceptions where software can't solely be a product:
Of course, doing any of the above yourself as opposed to using a service does give you more control and ownership. Which I think is a good thing, but only feasible for technically minded people and most certainly not free and also not a one time purchase.
How does that not apply to essentially every online service?
I suppose there's a difference in what the service provides. email providers aren't serving you things they can monetize, branded content, or any of that - its just the bare minimum service. but something like amazon prime or netflix have some mechanism to control what content they offer to make it work out even better for them.
services like vpn's and email certainly feel like theyre in a different category in my mind than the netflixes just because of the control they have over what they serve
Some online services don't strictly need to be online services is what I was trying to convene. Some others don't always need to be online services to the extend they are.
Good luck with your own email server when Google blacklists it as potentially malicious spam because it's not from a trusted domain. What good is email if it gets blackholed from reaching most personal or corporate addresses?
Also that, so for mail I did actually end up using a service to host it (mailbox.org at the moment). Although I do own the domain (in so far as you can own it) so if the service ever goes down I can easily move my mail elsewhere.
I have two personal real-name email addresses. One is a custom domain my father set up, and is paying for hosting, and one is a gmail. The custom domain absolutely just.... does not receive email from certain services. I had to move multiple online accounts - mostly video games, like minecraft and bethesda.net - to the gmail in order to receive one-time security tokens and other important emails. Luckily, the critical services like banking and so on seem to be working fine with the custom domain, but it's definitely an issue.
That's not due to the custom domain. That is due to where it is hosted.
Properly hosting a mail server is non trivial and a lot of work.
The problem is that a lot of the time hosting providers aren't mail providers, so you get a domain/website package which also happens to include e-mail. This is where a lot of people run into issues with stuff getting blocked.
However, if you go for a reliable dedicated mail hosting service which supports custom domains it will work just as well as gmail.
As I said, I use mailbox.org and have no issues. Fastmail is one that is also known to be reliable and there are a few more.
Yup tried to run my on mail server and while I did get it working, secured and not banned, configuring/administering it was a huge PITA and I was constantly paranoid of being hacked.
I mean I don't pay for gmail.
I've never paid for email.
I don't pay for my google drive either.
I'm sure I'm paying for it in a way, but I'm not losing anything so it might as well be free as a user.
I'm not trying to say all services are bad, there are genuinely things that need to be recurring, I agree with that.
But there are a lot of things that don't need to and shouldn't be a service, or are made a service in a predatory way to lock you into recurring payments.
In the case of gmail and google drive you most certainly are paying for it in different ways. Which is fine as long as alphabet/google can make a profit through that.
They still do, if you buy from the right companies.
What's more, selling absolute crap isn't new either. All that's changed is that the crap has gotten more reliable, so that the crap nowadays will barely work very consistently, instead of some of some units working better than expected and some units not working. See: cheap cars.
Please note that the high-quality stuff will be significantly more expensive than the cheap crap. If you can, see if there's an industrial version of the device you're buying - companies are often willing to pay an extra $200 to avoid a day of downtime, so those versions tend to be more solid.
I pay for email, VPN, blockada, Adblock, tildes and Mozilla.
I used to pay for reddit, Youtube and some streaming services but cut them out of my monthly bills for different reasons.
I would pay for news apps, but they're asking ridiculous prices like 20€ a month per newspaper. It's too much in my opinion.
I wouldn't call myself reluctant to pay for digital services if I'm getting value.
How do you pay for Tildes? Is there a premium version?
No it's a non profit you have to support it by donating. Same as Mozilla.
For me it's the predatory behavior that emerged over time. Back in the day you could buy a license and be done.
Nowadays they try they milk you dry one 12$ sub a time. Nothing is ever enough for these services and the consumer is there to consume and leak his money/information endlessly. No regards for destroying lives and getting people addicted with dark patterns and whatnot. The
spicemoney must flowPaying for digital services feels bad when the corpo can just pull the rug from under you at any moment. Favorite show on a streaming platform? Oops, removed from the catalogue. Want a game on any store that isn't Steam or Epic? Store died. Subscription to a local app? Why is this a thing? What if the cost goes up or the whole thing just goes poof? Entire workflows taken hostage or destroyed.
I have no qualms about paying for something I can actually keep.
I'm sorry to reply to this off topic, but I've had my tildes account now for 3 days and I can't figure out how to reply to posts? I see a reply button for comments, but I've looked everywhere and I can't find a way to make a top level reply. Any help would be appreciated.
It's a text box at the very bottom of the page. The intent is so you have to scroll by/read all of the other comments on your way to reply, so it helps eliminate duplicate top-level comments.
Ahhh, thanks so much!
I think a big part for the general population is that they can understand and estimate the value of physical objects.
How does the average joe estimate the value of a search engine? Or a digital movie library? It costs money to make and ship a physical DVD that is understandable to the average person, but they don't understand the costs involved with watching a single movie on Netflix for example.
I think most of this happens subconsciously, but it definitely does matter to some degree.
I think there's also a factor that the costs of digital services aren't scaled to the actual cost to produce at all. They are all priced at "what the market can bear". l don't have a great idea of how much it actually costs to stream a 2 hr movie, but I doubt it's more than a dollar or so; I definitely am not watching $15 of videos on any streaming service every month (some people do - so I am subsidizing those people in order to have access to the small number I do watch).
The arbitrary price point of digital services is definitely a big factor for me. Looking at physical goods/services, if it is a good year for peach orchards, peach prices go down. As tech manufacturing improves, the price of a certain spec of laptop goes down. If there are a lot of tailors in an area, the cost of tailoring service will go down. The price may not be entirely fair, but you can plainly see many of the factors that affect the price.
What did Netflix's original $7.99/month price reflect? The bandwidth? The content? The customer service? Would the price adjust as those factors changed? No. Did that price go down once competing streaming services entered the market? No, it went up.
I'm being kind of facetious, and maybe economists reading this are mad at me, but the point is that the price is clearly arbitrary. And I think that's clear to the average person, even if they don't consciously think about it that way.
I think most people can see the value for paying for a streaming service. It is not so different than paying for the big tv cable package which many have done for decades. The absence of commercial breaks is also much easier to see, unlike the ads and tracking in social media or various apps.
There is value, but how much? With many subscription services, it feels to me like they are asking for prices that are multiple times higher than the revenue generated by a free user, because a few bucks doesn't seem like a significant amount. This is true to some extent, but all these services quickly add up. For instance, I doubt Google's search engine earns them $5/user/month, so Kagi's price feels like a "max pain" calculation and I'm therefore much more reluctant to pay that.
For me, the number one reason is that I hate subscriptions. If I subscribe to something, I immediately unsubscribe to make sure I don't forget about it. If there's a useful app with a sensible price tag, I will buy it. For example, I just bought HabitNow for Android because I think it's very useful and I would like to support its future development. But maybe I'm more willing to pay for apps because I'm a software developer and know how much work a polished app is.
I'm not a tech person at all, and I also hate subscription fees for apps (and for a lot of things, honestly). I would rather pay a large amount upfront to get access to something forever than to pay a subscription fee each month. It feels like I'm being nickel and dimed.
That's because you are.
I've got no problem paying for services, apps, products, etc that are of use to me and provide value. But where does it end?
Just look at streaming. I used to pay for netflix and have access to a huge catalogue, then one by one the stuff I wanted to watch got pulled to put on stand alone services. If I want to access all the content I used to have from netflix, I now need to have Disney Plus, Peacock, Prime, AppleTV, HBO (which in canada only comes via Crave, at $20/month)... hell there's cases where the same damn show is split over multiple services, with seasons 1-3 here and 4-6 there (pulling that out of my ass, but you get my point).
Add in basic inflation, being prompted for tips everywhere you go (I got asked for a tip at the DIY garage for fucks sake), and I'm just tired of everyone trying to squeeze an extra dollar out of me.
It really does feel unending. It's why I was such a big fan of r/piracy, even if I rarely priate anything myself.
I have no problem paying for services, but at the same time some things shouldn't need to be a service.
There are some exceptions. I used to spend a ton of time on reddit, but only spend money on gold/premium a handful of times. My reasoning there is simple, although a bit unique. I spend countless hours developing moderator toolbox which is used by thousands of mods on reddit. So here I feel that I have contributed to such a degree back to the platform/service that I don't need to support them additionally through money.
One last note about this remark
I have the same thing, however I also know I have a tendency to loose track of small recurring payments and if I don't use services that is money wasted. So for me it is not so much a question of being worth in general, but is this something I am actually going to remember to use.
That reminds me of how Amazon bought IVONA, a TTS engine with a selection of very high quality voices for the time (that still kind of hold up) that could run locally on PC and Android using Microsoft Speech API, in every app supporting that. One time purchase. They then killed the whole thing, and started offering the voices as part of Amazon Polly service. I think one proprietary Windows app can use them also, and that's it.
I do the same. In fact this just reminded me to go cancel yet another streaming service i'd signed up for that i haven't used in months. Yes it's only $10/month, but $10/month for each service you use adds up to a lot of extra money every month.
With everything going to subscription/cloud these days, I really don’t like giving any company or person money. It’s hard to want to support someone or something with the service preventing me from using it for any reason, or it being changed significantly to where it is not even the same usable product any more. I will never understand how we got here. As someone else put it,
“You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
While it is possible to run and own your own server for email, personal music and video streaming, website and so forth, but that can only get you so far. Buying and owning your own instance of a search engine as good as Google isn't likely feasible. Also understandable that most non-tech people would just pay to use someone elses servers for their needs.
As a pretty tech savvy person, I rarely pay for digital services because I know I can get them for free elsewhere, through torrenting, illegal streaming sites, opendirectories and the like. And I don't feel bad about it 99% of the time because I know that A) they wouldn't have gotten my money anyways, if there wasn't a free way to get it, I just wouldn't have got it. B) unlike a physical good, pretty much no work goes into making a digital copy of something. It's infinitely shareable. C) And this is unpopular, but I think making art should not be a profit motivated thing. Bands should make money off merch and tours, sure, but not the actual music. Books should profit off physical copies, as there's a cost to making that, but not digital copies. Money in art is how we end up with lowest common denominator shit that's produced just so Netflix or Hulu can say "look more content for people to consume" without a worry in whether it's actually good or in any way interesting.
It's not just subscriptions, there's also a reluctance towards even low cost one-time purchases. A lot of people who wouldn't hesitate to spend $5 at Starbucks will balk at a $1.99 app purchase, despite the latter having much better long-term value.
This can make it difficult to sustain things as a developer building software targeted at a general audience, which is why freemium (pay to remove ads/add features) and subscriptions have become so common.
Because in almost every case it’s rent-seeking
I could just say “Adobe” and you’d probably get the idea. But let’s get into the weeds.
First the most obvious: there are many cases when digital goods are sold at prices that are higher than they make any sense. Ebooks are sold at the same price as the physical ones movies are sold without any of the special features for about the cost of the blu-ray release, and in the case of movies streaming “rentals” somehow cost more than Redbox even though they have significantly lower expenses. Oh, and don’t forget that most digital movies can simply disappear on you at any time for any reason.
On the other hand there are subscriptions, and I think those are probably more insidious because you aren’t paying for the product or service, you are paying for access to them. There is a chance that you might actually be getting more than you are paying for. But as the companies with that model know, there are far more people paying for those subscriptions who are paying for more than they actually use, and even if someone does use more than the value of their subscriptions, it’s usually temporary; they will eventually slow down and remain paying their subscription fee nonetheless.
Complicating the matter is ad-supported services which hide the actual value extracted from people, so people think it’s free, which has the side-effect of devaluing all simelar services.
I agree what others have posted. I think also:
I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying "free as in beer" software if I'm only using it very occasionally but I personally try to be mindful of what software I use on a daily basis and try to put a reasonable yearly donation in.
I think that it's very easy to abstract away the developers and people behind software that do need a living wage to be able to function and continue to provide said software. In a world where the cost of software tends to be reduced (or people balk at the cost of what would be a sustainable one-time purchase), it can be hard to make any kind of "real", somewhat stable money without a subscription service.
In products that are solely products run locally, I do like the idea of a one-time purchase that gets you access to minor updates and you have to pay an upgrade price if you want to switch to the next major version. This, however, requires good faith on the part of the publisher in that they don't artificially keep bumping up the major version number when the features really should be on par with a minor update.
To me, subscriptions make a lot more sense when there is some sort of continued cost required on behalf of the provider. If there is a web service, or notifications, those things cost money at a recurring rate for the provider. If they can't pay the bills, this thing I rely on will fail and I won't be able to use it anymore. So it does make sense to help pay for that cost via subscriptions, as long as the rate is fairly reasonable. History is filled with apps that had "lifetime subscription" one-time-payment options that ultimately didn't cover the costs in the end and the product had to close shop, and folks were sad.
I do think it's important to talk about these things more, outside of "very tech" circles as described in the OP. My wife was very reticent to pay for apps and subscriptions when we first started dating many years ago. I was able to explain the benefits and that generally (not always), paying a nominal fee will get you better apps and better support. Over time, she realized this was correct and now doesn't mind paying for apps or subscriptions as long as the cost actually reflects the value it provides.
For me, it's less about the dollar amount and more about another subscription to keep an eye on. I'm a lot happier when I can consider a fixed-sum cost analysis of something than I am with something that asks for my card information and that might go up at any time.
My favorites are ones that combine subscriptions with one-time payments in a clever non-annoying way. Intellij does this with perpetual fallback licenses iirc; 365 days of a subscription would get you a permanent license of a fixed version.
A game I played did as well (it had microtransactions, but if your microtransactions ever added up to around the cost of a typical game at the time, you'd subsequently be unable to pay further and would instead be able to generate more of the in-game currency for free.) Bought it on the spot as I was happy to pay the cost of a full game (even though it was a pretty simple game!) to essentially "disable" the microtransaction aspect.
I'm not totally against subscriptions (as dfx points out, they're occasionally entirely justified), though I do know that for me they have a higher psychological threshold to meet/justify, such as paying a share for upstream resources or support. But insofar as there's a "fair" price point for any given thing, I'm more happy to trust (or at least consider) apps or services that provide transparency and choices there.
What it boils down to for me is: It's cheaper and easier to justify paying $20 or something once than $5 a month for the next year.
I don't mind subscriptions, but I have a finite amount of money to pay bills, and subscriptions are bills.
I think if we existed in an economic system where the goal of most business wasn’t to make infinitely more money, subscriptions might have worked.
The general path of subscriptions are unsustainable in my eyes, and Netflix is a very solid example of this. Many people derided them (I’m not saying I agree with their decision) for locking down on the password sharing, but what is the next logical step to keep making more money? Once you’ve saturated the market, once you’ve increased the price to the edge? What comes next? When the goal is to just make more money quarter over quarter someone is gonna have to pay more and it’s going to be the consumer.
If we lived in a world where companies were reasonable, and not seeking endless profit, it might be an easier sell.
Because they want a subscription and most things are not worth paying endless money for
It already has. Gacha games are multi - billion dollar industries. Each. People are paying for digital nothings all the time now.
There's a generation that balks at paying for digital services, but there's also a generation that won't bat an eye at digital entertainment.
The biggest hurdle for me is that there is no way to pay for anything online while remaining truly anonymous.
I want to pay for something like Tildes, but doing so would connect what I write here to my legal identity.
I vehemently dislike ads, the attention economy, surveillance capitalism, etc. Paying for what I use would be the best antidote. But if I do pay for stuff, I fall right into their trap, because then they could tie my online identity to my offline identity. It's a Catch 22, and I hate it.
That doesn't mean I never pay for things online. It just means that I try to compartmentalize several personas, so to speak. I do pay for streaming services, do my grocery shopping online, etc. But I do that on different connections and devices.
While this is true for a lot of things, your Tildes donations can be easily segregated from your posting account. There's nothing actually linking your donation to your actual Tildes account unless you allow it to be (ie including your username somewhere when donating). I know that's not your main point, but I wouldn't want that premise to keep you from donating.
(I am completely unaffiliated with Tildes, I just happen to be looking at donation options right before I read this)
Thank you, I appreciate you telling me. I will look into it!
Is it really like that though?
Or could it be that internet companies just think that it is the case(or that they make more money this way), and therefore it has become the norm, which people are now just accustomed to?
How would the internet be, if we make it illegal to show ADs? Would all sites close, would only big cooperations have websites, or would the internet shrink more back into a place of nerds and tech people? - Or would people just pay 3 bucks for a monthly Facebook account that does not track you?
Would deeper ingrained paying wallets in a browser increase the willingness to pay? A 1-click button instead of getting redirected to Paypal first, for example.
I have hosted websites in the past, and the server costs are very manageable. A 35-50€ tier VPS could serve 50k users with no problems if you do it right.
This of course does not power Facebook. But what of the operation at Facebook actually serves the prime features (writing posts, comments, messages, handling friends, ..) and what does the whole AI/tracking/advertising infrastructure (+all employees doing the work) cost to pay for it?
I know no one who enjoys ADs and I think it's a weird Perpetuum mobile at how much money goes into this and how much it pays things. I think almost anyone I know uses AD blockers, and they don't buy Youtube Premium rather out of principle against Google than the 9€ it would cost them.
I think AD infested websites are currently the only option we have in most cases, and therefore people are used to it. Newspapers in my country want to have 10€ each, my favorite one 29€ even, just to get access to their online articles.
This is fine for one, but if you not only want to read common news, but also deeper tech related news you suddenly would need to pay 50-70€. Why is there no Netflix for News?
I would argue that it would work, but it seems like every company rather does their own thing instead of cooperating with each other.
btw, I have closed my Netflix account this month because of the additional account fees. (Was a customer for 10 years). But I have subscriptions for a proper non-tracking mail account. I pay for Spotify and my parents online TV service. I often donate money to library developers and would love to buy digital copies of movies, but they are completely paranoid with their DRM solutions - therefore it's just not possible to do. I don't want to buy physical blurays, just to rip them anyway.
If I choose Tildes to be one of my main sites, I would gladly pay a monthly fee for it, no problem.
I think kagi is an interesting one because fundamentally it’s a great product that add a lot of functionality and configurations to get search how you want it. The trouble is that 98% of people just don’t care enough, or don’t use a search engine the way tech people do. They use it to find a link to a website without trying the whole thing out or find a restaurant menu. They’re not using it to find obscure fixes to compiler errors. This is one the annoyances of kagi’s pricing that 300 searches is for most (98%) users, but those 98% don’t need or would ever sign up. They also have another issue, in that weirdly they add friction to search, in the way that i would have to think about whether it’s worth searching and using up my allowance, or if I rephrase my search and add a filter - does that eat into my allowance.
I’ve recently gotten YouTube premium and that has been worth it, simply because they’ve made the free version so crammed with annoying ads that I couldn’t use it.
I tried out dualingo the other day and it was a lot of fun. But then I quickly realised I was going to have to pay, and if I didn’t the app would be mostly unusable. I don’t mind paying, but i really dislike it feeling like I’m being tricked into paying for something. Just be up front with a cost and service and I can decide if it’s worth it.
I think the crux of it is people hate spending money on something they can seemingly get for free (at least a good enough version). If we use your round of drinks idea, I think if there was a really nice 5% beer that was £3 a pint or a 2% beer that tasted passable and the glass was covered in adverts - what do you think would be drunk more in that bar?
I can definitely feel that with Kagi and thinking whether this search is worth my monthly limit. It does have the benefit of forcing me to be a bit more mindful of my internet usage and searching for stuff I actually need and not just as a mindless time waste. As of now I am mostly seeing it as a supplement and I want to follow what interesting improvement features they come up with in the future.
I haven't paid for anything digital in my life really apart from a few xbox games. I suppose it comes down to the fragility of digital files and accounts, for example, there have been multiple times where my computer or phone just never came back from sleep, and I had to do a clean install. Imagine if there was things that I actually paid for on there, then what? I have donated to a few sites and Youtube channels, but that's not really a download, just keeping them running.
Pretty simple, A physical object is something I can do whatever I want with, if it's a game, its a set-version, I can always revert to that version if it's used for speedruns or whatever, plus I can resell that game, and it will likely appreciate in value, along with most physical goods.
Digital goods rarely appreciate in value, and typically when a digital good appreciates in value, it normally only appreciates the physical thing it is installed to (Like ps4s with the PT demo installed)
I am okay paying recurring costs for services that are inherently services and I am so extremely anti-advertising that it is worth it to me. So, Fastmail, streaming, supporting a few Twitch streamers, etc.
But when it's something like software, it's a different story. I only use it at a hobby level, but I refuse to pay subscriptions for things like Photoshop. I use Affinity Photo/Designer and those are plenty for me and are one-time purchases (with only additional cost being when they release a big update every few years, but your old copy still works). I can't see myself paying monthly for software unless I get significant benefit from a services angle alongside the software. Adobe Creative Cloud's services are useless to me.
I also agree with other comments here that there is a very common perception problem when it comes to pricing. The fact that we'll buy a $5 coffee but hesitate to buy a $1.99 app seems very backwards. They are both one-time purchases but only one of these even has the opportunity to give us ongoing value, whereas a coffee is a one-time enjoyed item for that cost.
Honestly I generally would be if only I could try it out. The stupid iOS App Store put us in this position where free trials are hard to implement. The shareware model of old, where you could just have a full featured version of an app and pay for it after a couple of weeks or N number of uses, was a great distribution model. I don’t understand why Apple makes it a hassle to do for developers.