to be saturation point with everyone and everything wanting me to pay them a subscription fee?

[Brystar]

There is a well known chef and cookbook writer whose newsletter I subscribe to, I have all their books and even paid £100 to buy an online course that they made to teach various cooking methods. I love their work, am a big fan of their books and recipes and feel like their work has really helped me to become a better cook.

Today in that newsletter they said how they were moving their online blog and content to a paid platform where I could pay a monthly fee to read their musings about food and get access to recipes which are already in their book which I bought so it would be paying to read a blog.

I get that if you have an online audience and you look around and see everyone moving their content behind a paywall that it is quite likely you feel like a bit of an idiot if you don't do it yourself. I also understand if people are actually providing a service of some kind or producing courses but for lots of these paid sites it is just milking your fans for cash at this point.

Lots of musicians and youtube people are doing it and for not very much and sure it is only a few pounds a month but everyone wants you to pay and I feel like I have total monthly subscription fatigue and anyone asking me to pay to get a link to their spotify playlist of the month, their monthly mood board and exclusive behind the scenes musings is just off putting to me now.

Add to that there are the various apps and bits of software which want you to pay £8.99 a month or more when it used to be a one time payment. Hairdressers locally now are saying that you need to be on their subscription plan to ensure you can get an appointment, ditto for any beauty service.

I do get it makes good business sense but as a consumer, a customer it is wearing me down and is putting me off the people who keep insisting on this model.

I hate the subscription model too, I see so many IG people offering subscriptions and genuinely don’t understand who would subscribe to them?

It kind of feels a bit grabby and surely once they close the doors to subscribers only there must be a certain amount of attrition which isn’t supplemented by new subscribers who presumably can’t see what kind of content they are signing up for?

Patreon is another I roll my eyes out.

For me there is an insane amount of content out there and I will never consume even a tiny fraction of the free stuff so I’m not interested in subscribing to anything more. I would rather buy something tangible like a book then sub to a blog or substack.

tbh I’m so anti subs we only have Amazon prime and the license fee at the moment! Oh and a fitness platform but that genuinely is worth every penny.

@GoodlifeGlow I feel totally the same, like what exactly am I paying for half the time? I think the idea is that I am paying them money for no real reason to support them just because I quite like them, eh no if anything I am doing them a favour watching their content so they can get ad money and sponsorship deals and I do sometimes buy via affiliate links.

What next will my friend start asking me to pay a monthly fee to access their facebook and whatsapp or will I have to subscribe to ensure my chance to see them live and in person?

I too would rather spend my money on books or something tangible as opposed to giving people money just to exist, it does seem so grabby and entitled.

I know!!! It’s so arrogant. I just unfollow. What gets me are people on instagram who are just people with an Instagram account. 😳So having got a following they then decide to fleece them, Goodbye!!!!

@BedH3ad That is exactly what I should do, unfollow! It is just so entitled to think people should pay for basically nothing! I spotted a woman who has popped up on youtube just in the past few months and as soon as she hit a certain number of subscribers she was ready with her patreon in order to monetise her audience further, its like back in the day people wrote blogs, made youtube videos or other content for fun and if they made a bit of extra money great. Now they come on with the sole purpose of making it a their fulltime job.

I pay for two things - Caroline Girvan’s app because she creates a massive amount of amazing content that has transformed my body. She also has enough free on YouTube that you could just use that but the difference her stuff has made to my life is worth £79 a year (I think it is).

Also I pay £3 to the Patreon of a writer/podcaster who does some really interesting genuine research into a bit of a niche thing and whose content is not replicated anywhere else.

When the car features barely work without an upgrade, we’ve reached peak subscription.
YANBU

@NOTANUM You win, that is obscene but no doubt it is where this is headed and soon we'll need ongoing subscriptions for essential goods.

A trouble with the subscription model is if you stop paying you lose access to the stuff that was available when you were paying. This matters when it's for example a scientific journal which you will want to refer back to time after time. Much prefer the paper journal where, once you've bought it, it's yours to keep.

Equally Microsoft Office - I am quite happy muddling along on an old version of Excel, but in future the only way I will be able to use Excel is by an annual subscription giving me updates I can manage without.

The subscription model doesn't work if you want to dip into a lot of things. At the moment anyone can dip into the Guardian and the Daily Mail for two radically different views of the world - but you can no longer just dip into the Telegraph or the Times. One subscription doesn't sound much, but once you've added a few together it mounts up. So people are ecnouraged to stick with one or two favourites and not dip into other areas with possibly different views. The barriers between different parts of society are going to get even worse, giving rise to more extreme political views.

Yanbu, this model drives me mad. As PP said above, it's all about "monetising customers" rather than actually having people pay for a product or service. They want you to pay for the rest of your life .

The only subscription I actually value is Spotify, because I'm always discovering new music and it's wonderful. But it still pisses me off because the artists get such a raw deal from the company. Grrr.

@AtomicBlondeRose - it’s not Blind Boy by any chance?

I agree on the subscriptions. I’d also like to add Apps into the mix. I don’t want to download an app once I’ve booked airport car parking. I’ve got the confirmation email thank you.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8XPy78pZIx

This sums up my annoyance

@AtomicBlondeRose I LOVE CG. I'm finishing the Iron series on YouTube.

Iron 2 is on the app. What's put me off is I've read it's glitchy. Can you let me know how you've found the app please?

What annoys me is that films and programmes you love sometimes disappear from your streaming service and you have to rent/buy it or set up a new subscription somewhere else or worse, get into a series (Outlander) then be told that you have to pay for a subscription within my existing subscription. That would be a NO you greedy gits.

This is a good watch

Subscription models are merely invitations for me to reassess the differences between the things I want/need in my life and those I'm not daft enough to throw good money away on.

Streaming services, my nieces and I subscibe to a different one each (bar nerflix) and share log ins so for example one has Prime, one has Paramount and one has Apple TV. They all let you stream on multiple devices.

I also have set up my Sky Go on my mums tablet so she can access sky shows she likes without having to pay for a whole sky package.

YANBU! Some services work as a subscription model, but increasingly I'm seeing the most ridiculous "services" as monthly or yearly payments. These include using a printer and even a robot lawnmower. Absolutely disgraceful.

£12.99 a month to watch kitten videos on YouTube Premium. I mean, it is tempting, but no.

YANBU. Modern life is like a game of Minesweeper, trying to avoid recurring payments, scams and people generally trying to get a route into your bank account.

I hate this subscription thing. If I pay for something then I expect it to be mine to keep.

I dip in and out of my TV streaming services depending on what big show is on that service - for literally one month. Like I will subscribe to sky stream once all of the House of dragons have dropped. I then binge all of the sky's content for that month and then cancel and return back to the free ones.

I do this with all of them - I remember to cancel as soon as I have subscribed, so I have a deadline to watch as many shows as I can for that month.

I will never give a content creator my money, even if my life depended on it .

A content creator I follow set up a subscription to see her view houses! Good luck to her but FFS I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. FWIW she didn’t even move house.

Not quite the same thing, but I ordered a free online sample of hydration sweets aimed at dementia sufferers. They were expensive so a sample seemed a good idea. The sweets were not suitable but I then received an email saying that my subscription would be sent out next week and I'd be charged £46. I'd never entered payment details. I really didn't know that I'd subscribed in the first place. I did manage to cancel.

@Tel12 thats awful. Presumably someone trying a product like that is already swamped with caring duties so at risk of forgetting to cancel the subscription in time.

I'm the same. Just let me buy an item. I'll pay for an upgrade or new version if I feel I want it.

Businesses are all about ARR - annual recurring revenue. It's nice and predictable for them and looks good on their books. Most customers hate it. Spotify is the only one I am happy to pay for. I had Headspace for a while but let that go and use a free app instead.

Totally get you. If I joined everything suggested to me it would be £100s per month.

I've not heard of hairdressers doing it though. That's a scary thought!