Subscription-based services work for somethings and not for others. I think white goods (washing machines, fridges, dishwashers) should be subscription based, and include some kind of upgrade plan. It could actually end up being less harmful to the environment. Mobile phone data works well as a monthly subscription. Music also works quite well, but it‘s bridging the gap. It‘s what was once a tangible product (LP, tape, CD) and something now essentially only digital, but people are still used to the mindset of music being “theirs”. This is where the line starts to blur.
I subscribe to Spotify, but I still listen to a lot of the same stuff, which I owned on CD and now “own” as MP3s. I do occasionally make use of their algorithms and listen to some pretty good new music (rock is pretty much dead, I don’t like hip hop per se, so that leaves me with electro and pop tbh). So, it works, kind of, for music.
Subscription also works well for movies and TV series. TV was never a physical media we ever really “owned” in volume, but films were. I had so many DVDs that are awful quality and worth nothing now. Subscription is much better for this, as quality changes I don’t get hit. I just get the benefit.
Personal cloud space also works well, kind of a rental. But now we are getting to where I have problems with subscriptions and “the cloud”. Who “owns” the data? What is original, anymore? What happens when the services are hacked…?
This brings me onto my real issue with Adobe and their “Creative Cloud” subscription model. If you’re a company and want to go down this route, fine. But for personal computing, I think this is a disaster. Firstly, I take issue with paying monthly for software like this. I prefer to “buy” a product and use it as intended. I do not like changes being forced, and we are not talking about security patches to an OS here. We are talking changes in UI and workflow that can really screw you over,. when Adobe is no doubt hacked, and all of your RAW files which are stored in the cloud and not locally backed up are corrupted, Adobe will send out an apologetic email. Do we forget so quickly that accounts are compromised daily. Your data is not safe in the cloud. At all. Keep it locally, and keep a backup. By all means, export to the cloud as I do, but do not rely on it. I treat it as a redundancy.
Finally, on the same note, I subscribe to Squarespace for this website. It started off as a reasonable cost per year, and has slowly crept up over the years. Further, I am now charged tax based on where my credit card is issued, not where I live. Shit like this puts me off paying for the website at all. It’s just a hobby for me, after all. I think this year will be crunch year for the site, at least, in its current form. If I make enough money selling photos to cover the costs, fine. Otherwise I will axe the site and go to something free. I can’t even refer people to Flickr any more as that was bought out. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and constantly wants more of my money. In the end… no.
That’s pretty much all I have to say on the matter.
This article was written in 2018 and I only now just found it in the drafts folder.