Subscription models only make sense for an app/service that have recurring costs. In the case of Lemmy apps, the instances are the ones with recurring hosting costs, not the apps.
If an app doesn’t have recurring hosting costs, it only makes sense to have one up front payment and then maybe in app purchases to pay for new features going forward
Then don’t. Free version barely has any ads and has 99% of the functionality. Y’all a bunch of babies.
I’m not talking about this one specific application. I’m talking about the trend that everything is taking.
One thing in isolation isn’t bad. “ItS oNlY $xx.99/yr” after all.
But when stepping back and looking at the trend you see a different story.
It’s only $10
It’s only $15
It’s only $30
It’s only $5
It’s only $50
It’s only $100
It’s only $60
It’s only $3
It’s only $1599
It’s only $130
It’s only $45
It’s only $99
It’s only $200
It’s only…
You can use interest rates to convert between stocks and flows of money. If the prevailing interest rate is 5%, a thing will produce 5%, or 1/20th, of its actual value every year. So you can take the annual cost of something and multiply by 20 (and vigorously wave your hands at compounding) to get its actual value.
A $10/month subscription costs $120/year, or $2,400 over 20 years. So it’s equivalent to a $2,400 purchase.
You can also think of it as, you need to set aside $2,400 in investments to pay for your subscription, e.g. in retirement. Or, if you ditched your subscription you could afford to borrow $2,400 more to e.g. buy a house. Or, you as a customer are the same value to the business as $2,400 in capital, minus whatever they have to spend to make the thing.
You should think a lot about a $2,400 purchase.
Exactly, and that’s why I dropped Amazon Prime and most other subscriptions.
Yeah, packages taking a few days longer is annoying, but I also don’t feel obligated to keep shopping at Amazon to “get my value.” I miss some shows, but I can buy them for less than the yearly cost of the subscription, and most can be replaced with content at other services.
I still have two streaming subscriptions: Netflix (kids love it, I watch it while folding laundry) and Disney+ (wife and one kid loves it). I spend $20/month total for both (have discount for D+ through credit card for the legacy plan, so it’s like $7-8 net), and neither have ads.
And that’s pretty much it for subscriptions. Sure, I have my city utilities and whatnot, but those aren’t really optional unless I’m willing to go off-grid, and from my math it would take many years to pay off (not sure it will depending on how markets go), and I’d likely have a worse experience.
Other services:
We just got two cats, so maybe I’ll end up getting a Chewy membership or something, but we’ll try to avoid that.
Microtransactions started with horse armor in oblivion. The fact that people can’t see the clear trend with things like this is directly one of the causes of constant enshitification
Then budget your money better?
Again you’re missing the point.
This is the future of everything.
That’s one possible future. Or you could go out of your way to not get subscriptions.
I have two digital subscriptions, Netflix and Disney+, and I’m considering cancelling them.
For music, I just buy what I want to listen to. I watch far less TV shows now because I find them very repetitive and low quality. I don’t watch many TV shows because I find video games and books more satisfying. And so on.
If a car requires a subscription, I’m not going to buy that car. If a TV comes with ads or a subscription, I’m not buying that TV. And so on. Unfortunately, the subscription model is very popular, but if enough people push back, alternatives will continue to exist.
I’m trying, but I see this going the same way as MTX in video games.