Speaker A
This printer costs $160.
Explores why subscription models make owning products more expensive and how the subscription economy has transformed consumer habits.
Key Takeaways
- Subscriptions often cost more than buying products outright over time.
- Consumers may never truly own subscription-based products, impacting consumer rights and freedom.
- The subscription economy has grown due to technological advances and business incentives for recurring revenue.
- Major companies have shifted to subscriptions to maximize profits, sometimes at the expense of consumer value.
- Consumers should carefully evaluate the long-term costs and benefits of subscription services.
Summary
- Subscription models often cost more over time than outright purchases, as shown with HP printers and gaming PCs.
- Consumers frequently do not own products even after completing subscription terms, raising concerns about ownership and liberty.
- Subscriptions have evolved from traditional pay-as-you-go services to nearly every product category, enabled by technology and the internet.
- Cable TV pioneered the modern subscription model, followed by internet services and software transitioning to subscription-based access.
- Smartphones and apps solidified subscriptions as a dominant business model, expanding into diverse areas including smart mattresses.
- Subscriptions provide companies with recurring, predictable revenue and increase profits by making cancellations less frequent.
- Adobe and Apple are highlighted as major companies successfully leveraging subscriptions to boost revenue significantly.
- Consumers face opaque lifetime costs and often pay much more than the value of the product through subscriptions.
- The subscription economy challenges traditional notions of ownership and raises questions about consumer freedom and control.
- Despite convenience, many consumers feel burdened by multiple subscriptions and the complexity of managing them.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
But HP would probably prefer it if you paid $8 a month to rent it instead.
Speaker A
That might not sound like a lot until you realize the subscription locks you into a two-year commitment.
Speaker A
After two years, you'll have spent $192.
Speaker A
20% more than it would have cost to buy the printer outright.
Speaker A
The subscription includes ink, but HP artificially limits how many pages you can print each month.
Speaker A
Exceed that and it charges you more.
Speaker A
But it gets worse.
Speaker A
After those two years, you still won't own this.
Speaker A
HP's terms of service explicitly state you do not own HP device and subscription cartridges provided, even if you complete the entire subscription term.
Speaker A
Over the past 20 years, subscriptions have taken over our economy.
Speaker B
You can't buy a car today without, it seems like, a half dozen subscriptions.
Speaker C
I'm powerless.
Speaker C
I just turn up one day and suddenly I've got to pay more money.
Speaker A
But the cost isn't the only problem.
Speaker A
If everything is a subscription, we won't actually own anything.
Speaker A
Consumers are fed up.
Speaker A
And some are fighting for the right to own what they buy.
Speaker D
It's a matter of liberty.
Speaker D
Am I free to own things, or should I rent indefinitely?
Speaker A
But challenging subscriptions means taking on some of the largest companies in the world.
Speaker E
A whole bunch of industries that are not trying to make their products or services better, they're trying to find new ways to earn money from consumers every month.
Speaker A
So how did we get to the point where practically everything is a subscription?
Speaker A
And why is owning nothing making everything so expensive?
Speaker A
Subscriptions feel modern, but they've been around for centuries.
Speaker A
Americans used pay-as-you-go for newspapers, magazines, milk, and even fruit.
Speaker A
But technology enabled companies to turn anything into a subscription.
Speaker E
Consumers knew they were subscribing to a newspaper because it landed on their doorstep every morning.
Speaker E
The fact that consumers are paying for services that they're not actually using is a trend that technology has enabled.
Speaker A
It started with cable.
Speaker A
For decades, most TV channels were free.
Speaker A
And there weren't many options.
Speaker F
Don't miss this wonderful chance to get a Captain Video picture rate.
Speaker A
But that changed in the 1970s.
Speaker A
Satellites enabled nationwide broadcasting and the government allowed more channels on the air.
Speaker A
The first company to leverage this lucrative technology was HBO.
Speaker A
It realized that consumers would pay monthly to access its curated channel.
Speaker A
Cable was an early example of paying for a subscription without getting a physical product in return, and it was wildly successful.
Speaker G
There's going to be a huge demand for material.
Speaker G
Very shortly, in a couple of years, for cable.
Speaker A
HBO signed up over 14 million subscribers in a decade.
Speaker A
And by the mid-1980s, dozens of channels had followed its lead.
Speaker H
I want my MTV.
Speaker A
The percentage of households with a cable subscription jumped from 7.5% in 1970 to around 67% by 1999.
Speaker A
But that was just the beginning.
Speaker A
Starting in the 1990s, internet providers like AOL connected millions of Americans using subscriptions.
Speaker I
You've got mail.
Speaker A
And consumers started shopping online.
Speaker J
Companies pretty quickly understood that this new structure of the relationship with consumers gave them opportunities not for like a one-time payment, but for an ongoing monthly revenue stream.
Speaker A
Companies took something that consumers used to buy once and instead asked them to pay continuously for access.
Speaker A
Like software from Salesforce, music from Rhapsody, and online games from Blizzard.
Speaker K
World of Warcraft.
Speaker A
This shift turned products into services.
Speaker L
There's so many people in so many internet users.
Speaker L
And for us, this is a beginning.
Speaker J
This sacrifice, this trade-off of control for convenience, right?
Speaker A
Improved online payment systems reduced friction, and as e-commerce grew, subscriptions popped up for every aspect of daily life.
Speaker A
But the rise of smartphones is what solidified this transformation in the late 2000s.
Speaker M
For the first time on a mobile device, you can have the internet in your pocket.
Speaker A
Using apps had become a daily routine.
Speaker A
And it didn't take long for some developers to start charging small monthly fees for them.
Speaker B
The subscription economy has grown from a small set of goods and services to almost everything you can think about.
Speaker A
Even sleeping has a subscription now.
Speaker A
The company Eight Sleep sells a smart mattress cover that costs over $3,000.
Speaker A
Most of its functionality is locked behind a $17 monthly fee.
Speaker A
That subscription is mandatory for at least your first year.
Speaker A
I probably have 10 to 20 monthly subscriptions.
Speaker A
Am I allowed to use the word in shittification here?
Speaker N
Netflix, Hulu.
Speaker O
Dropbox.
Speaker A
Vogue.
Speaker N
HBO Max.
Speaker O
Google storage.
Speaker P
Apple TV.
Speaker O
New Yorker.
Speaker N
Amazon Prime.
Speaker O
YouTube TV.
Speaker O
My local YMCA.
Speaker P
I do actually pay for Peacock.
Speaker O
NBA League Pass.
Speaker O
You do not get access to local games.
Speaker O
If I want to watch a Knicks game, I have to subscribe to a totally different service.
Speaker O
I'm convinced that there's just like a few hiding that I don't know about.
Speaker N
Oh, Spotify.
Speaker O
Oh my gosh.
Speaker O
It's really impossible to have one service that gives you everything you actually want.
Speaker A
Technology proliferated subscriptions, but the reason they're everywhere is because they make companies a lot of money.
Speaker A
Subscriptions give companies recurring revenue, something investors love.
Speaker A
And subscriptions are sticky.
Speaker A
They're good at retaining users because most are automatic.
Speaker B
People are four times more likely to cancel when they have to make an active choice.
Speaker B
That allows them to make more money than they would with more transparent pricing schemes.
Speaker A
Neale and his colleagues found that companies earn as much as 200% more revenue thanks to inattentive subscribers.
Speaker B
Industry has figured out that this is a profitable business model.
Speaker B
And they've been moving towards it to maximize their profits.
Speaker A
One company doing exactly that is Adobe.
Speaker A
It's been selling software since the 1980s, typically releasing a new version every year or two.
Speaker A
But in 2012, the company launched its Creative Cloud subscription.
Speaker A
Instead of allowing consumers to buy the software once and upgrading when they want, Adobe now sells all of its apps bundled together for a monthly fee.
Speaker A
So if you want permanent access, you need to keep paying.
Speaker A
Even after you've spent way more than the software used to cost.
Speaker A
Adobe faced heavy criticism for its decision.
Speaker A
But there's no doubt it transformed the company.
Speaker A
Three years after launching Creative Cloud, revenue was higher than ever.
Speaker A
In 2024, it soared to $21.5 billion.
Speaker A
Over five times higher than before Adobe launched the subscription service.
Speaker E
Adobe really was a pioneer in realizing that they can squeeze a lot more revenue out of consumers by signing them up for subscriptions.
Speaker E
Rather than selling software.
Speaker A
Another company that's made a fortune off subscriptions is Apple.
Speaker A
Since 2015, it has launched at least eight subscriptions.
Speaker A
Now when you buy an Apple Watch, the company hopes you'll also subscribe to Fitness+ and Apple Music.
Speaker A
Of course, you'll also want to protect it with AppleCare.
Speaker A
Annually, these cost about the same as the Apple Watch itself.
Speaker E
Apple's been remarkably successful at finding new ways to squeeze money out of its customers.
Speaker A
Apple's services revenue, which includes subscriptions, rose from around $20 billion in 2015 to over $96 billion in 2024.
Speaker E
Subscriptions from a company's perspective is the way to go.
Speaker E
The real question for me is, is it the way to go for consumers?
Speaker A
At first, many subscriptions may seem like a good deal for the convenience they offer.
Speaker A
But the lifetime costs are more opaque.
Speaker A
Take a look at this subscription from computer hardware company NZXT.
Speaker A
It lets you rent a gaming PC with the option to cancel at any time.
Speaker A
The middle tier costs $129 per month.
Speaker A
Which might appear like a steal.
Speaker A
But let's do some math.
Speaker A
It'll only take 15 months to spend more than the value of the computer itself.
Speaker A
It's common for a PC to last more than five years.
Speaker A
In that time span, you'll have paid NZXT over $7,740 through its subscription.
Speaker A
For that amount, you can buy the PC four times over.
Speaker A
Other companies entice users with free trials or sign-up promos, hoping they'll stick around even after the subscription outlives its value.
Speaker C
It's becoming almost anti-customer.
Speaker C
Where it feels personally as a customer that I'm preyed upon.
Speaker A
And the problem isn't just that the cost adds up over time.
Speaker A
Many companies purposefully make it difficult to cancel.
Speaker B
Dark patterns are when a company designs a user interface, like a website, to deliberately trick or deceive customers.
Speaker E
Once companies have consumers' payment information.
Speaker E
Charging people is frictionless, raising prices is easy, and canceling subscriptions can be really hard.
Speaker A
Sam Levine was director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection under Joe Biden.
Speaker E
What I saw during my time in government is some of the biggest companies in the world were some of the biggest abusers of subscriptions.
Speaker A
The FTC sued Amazon in 2023 and Adobe the year after.
Speaker A
Arguing the companies tricked users into signing up for subscriptions and made it deliberately difficult to cancel.
Speaker A
Let's take a look at Adobe's Creative Cloud.
Speaker A
It defaults to a plan that looks like it's month-to-month.
Speaker A
But it's actually a year-long commitment.
Speaker A
The FTC said Adobe didn't clearly state that customers needed to pay a fee to unsubscribe early.
Speaker E
These fees were so big and so important to Adobe's bottom line that one executive Adobe described it as being like heroin.
Speaker E
In how addicted the company was to these fees.
Speaker A
In 2024, it told The Verge the quote was taken out of context.
Speaker A
And said cancellation fees made up only a small part of Adobe's revenue.
Speaker E
Folks who rely on Adobe services and Adobe products and end up getting ripped off by a company that's charging them huge fees and making it really difficult to cancel.
Speaker A
Adobe appears to be making its subscription terms clearer.
Speaker A
Screenshots from 2017 show that users had to click into the fine print to learn about the cancellation fee.
Speaker A
The FTC's case showed that in 2023, Adobe's sign-up page mentioned a fee, but didn't immediately disclose the amount.
Speaker A
As of December 2025, it states upfront that users must pay half your remaining annual commitment, which could cost hundreds of dollars.
Speaker A
The FTC's case is still in litigation, but others have already been successful.
Speaker C
It should be as easy to unsubscribe than it is to subscribe.
Speaker C
But it doesn't feel like that's the mechanism that most businesses are going for.
Speaker A
The FTC was working on a rule called Click-to-Cancel that aimed to make canceling as easy as signing up.
Speaker E
The rule was hugely popular.
Speaker E
But earlier this year, the Eighth Circuit, one of the federal courts, struck down the rule on procedural grounds.
Speaker E
Saying that industry should have had more chances to weigh in on the rule.
Speaker E
And there's no indication that the Trump administration is planning to continue work on the rule.
Speaker A
Removing subscriptions from your life isn't easy.
Speaker A
As companies connect more products to the internet, the distinction between owning and paying for access gets blurrier.
Speaker J
These are all things that are software dependent.
Speaker J
And so when you don't have control over the software code, that means you don't have control over the physical product itself.
Speaker J
Sometimes that means features get added, features get taken away without the consumer's consent.
Speaker J
It even gets to whether the device continues to operate at all.
Speaker A
Aaron co-wrote a book in 2016 called The End of Ownership.
Speaker A
Since then, he's only become more pessimistic.
Speaker J
I think things are worse than we imagined they would be.
Speaker J
Our daily behavior is really built around the idea that the things that we use every day are within our exclusive control.
Speaker J
And I think when we move away from that, what's the model for what a non-ownership economy looks like?
Speaker J
There are some very smart people out there who, you know, describe this as a kind of return to feudalism.
Speaker J
A world in which we don't own anything, we don't control anything, and the benefits of these resources are sort of, you know, hoarded by the handful of technology and media companies that control our access to them.
Speaker J
They're in a much better position to sort of eliminate consumer surplus.
Speaker J
And push consumers to paying the maximum price that they can bear.
Speaker J
That might look good for a handful of companies.
Speaker J
But I think ultimately it's pretty harmful for society as a whole.
Speaker A
The erosion of ownership has already happened to media.
Speaker A
In 2024, 84% of US recorded music revenue came from streaming.
Speaker A
Physical sales accounted for 11%.
Speaker A
It's even lower for movies and TV shows.
Speaker A
Spending on physical media made up less than 2% of revenue.
Speaker A
Consumers don't own the majority of media they consume.
Speaker A
Which means they give up the right to resell it, loan it to a friend, or pass their collection down through generations.
Speaker A
When Netflix blocked password sharing, it made this imbalance clear.
Speaker J
When you move to digital.
Speaker J
Those secondary markets are essentially eliminated.
Speaker J
And that's something that a lot of publishers, studios, video game developers.
Speaker J
That they've been hoping for for a very long time.
Speaker A
But a growing number of consumers don't want ownership to die.
Speaker A
Take a look at this graph.
Speaker A
Since 2005, the number of vinyl records shipped grew by over 1,200%.
Speaker A
It's an old idea.
Speaker A
To physically hold something and look at it.
Speaker A
But at the end of the day, it just feels good.
Speaker A
It's a wonderful to be a part of this re-emergence of a physical life.
Speaker A
That I think people are really missing in an age of complete digitization and dehumanization.
Speaker A
This neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York sees itself as fighting against that dehumanization.
Speaker A
Shop owners refer to it as Analog Alley.
Speaker A
Because within a few blocks, you'll find board games, books, records, and VHS tapes.
Speaker A
After one night of complaining one too many times.
Speaker A
Jess yelled at me to start the store.
Speaker A
So we started the store.
Speaker A
Pretty much.
Speaker A
That's what happened.
Speaker A
Night Owl Video's merchandise proudly declares death to streamers.
Speaker A
I think the pitch from these streamers when they started was affordability and accessibility of great movies.
Speaker A
And now it's the complete opposite.
Speaker A
Because they've started making their own movies and they want to push those onto people.
Speaker A
Removing the titles that clearly people actually want to watch.
Speaker A
While prices started out low.
Speaker A
Every major streamer has increased the cost of its subscriptions.
Speaker A
You're being fed from an algorithm.
Speaker A
And fooled into thinking that this algorithm is super, super tailored for your particular taste.
Speaker A
You're probably just going to end up scrolling for an hour and not finding anything you want to watch anyway.
Speaker A
Jess and Aaron hope Night Owl's human curation reminds patrons they don't have to let an algorithm pick their next movie.
Speaker A
For your consideration, Spirited Away.
Speaker A
This is like.
Speaker A
Pretty rare.
Speaker A
Night Owl offers an estimated 8 to 10,000 movies on DVD, Blu-ray, and VHS.
Speaker A
When I tried to order copies through the distributor.
Speaker A
Too.
Speaker A
And I couldn't get them.
Speaker A
They're backordered.
Speaker A
Young Frankenstein is backordered.
Speaker A
It's really cool to see a younger generation who didn't necessarily grow up buying DVDs like we did.
Speaker A
Embracing that idea, really enjoying it and enjoying like searching through the stacks to find great stuff.
Speaker A
DVDs and Blu-rays haven't experienced the same comeback vinyl has.
Speaker A
But for Night Owl, selling dead media has been a success.
Speaker A
A physical collection comes with tangible benefits.
Speaker A
Streaming catalogs change all the time as licenses swap hands or companies like Disney remove titles to write them off as financial losses.
Speaker A
Blu-rays can also look and sound better than streaming because they're less compressed.
Speaker A
And the quality doesn't change.
Speaker A
Depending on your internet speed.
Speaker A
But more importantly, curating a collection is the way Jess and Aaron show their love for their favorite media.
Speaker A
Streaming has devalued art.
Speaker A
In almost every way.
Speaker A
I think that it's really important to preserve the films that you love and to really experience them.
Speaker A
The expressions on a lot of people's faces when they come in.
Speaker A
It's like.
Speaker A
Wow.
Speaker A
This still exists.
Speaker A
Um.
Speaker A
It's really a nice thing.
Speaker A
Fighting the subscription trend became a personal mission for James Cuda too.
Speaker A
I deeply hate subscriptions.
Speaker A
Unless they make sense.
Speaker A
His company, Procreate, has become wildly successful by asking its users to buy its apps once.
Speaker A
Yes, we would technically make more money if we were going down a subscription route.
Speaker A
We're all in business to generate revenue.
Speaker A
But I think the other part of that story is we need to generate revenue and provide value to the customer.
Speaker A
And I think that part is just not being evaluated, we're sort of prioritizing revenue generation at the expense of the customer.
Speaker A
I think that creates quite a lot of brand damage.
Speaker A
Because you're not eliciting a feeling of joy or fun.
Speaker A
When you're interacting with that brand, you're creating a sense of aggravation and a feeling of entrapment.
Speaker A
Which customers don't forget.
Speaker A
Gamers are feeling the aggravation too.
Speaker A
Microtransactions, battle passes, and online-only functionality are all too familiar in modern gaming.
Speaker A
The customer should have more basically freedom to own their media.
Speaker A
Because the more of the control lies with the company that either distributes or creates the ecosystem.
Speaker A
The more opportunities for just unfair practices.
Speaker A
They are becoming the standard, and no one knows that they're unfair anymore because they haven't seen anything else.
Speaker A
The platform GOG is committed to preserving retro games.
Speaker A
But even with new titles, it offers users an offline installer without digital restrictions.
Speaker A
The aim was to solve that for consumers.
Speaker A
And to build a digital distribution platform that would keep the good things about physical distribution.
Speaker A
But move them into the more convenient digital era.
Speaker A
You have the files.
Speaker A
They're yours.
Speaker A
You can keep them.
Speaker A
It's a matter of liberty.
Speaker A
It's a matter of whether I can actually own something.
Speaker A
And whether a company takes something away from me.
Speaker A
Am I free to own things?
Speaker A
Is that, is that okay for me to own?
Speaker A
Or should I rent indefinitely?
Topics:subscription economyconsumer ownershiprecurring revenuesubscription costsAdobe Creative CloudApple subscriptionstechnology and subscriptionssubscription business modelconsumer rightssubscription services
