Certainly there are MANY benefits to a subscription model. In some ways, a subscription model is more honest. For example with Spotify, you aren’t gonna get bombarded with ads. With Netflix you ain’t gonna drown in ads either.
But — to subscribe to something and to be enslaved to a subscription; isn’t this to chain yourself?
Does anyone really like to pay for a subscription to … anything?
Certainly I can only speak to my own personal experiences. But for myself, I hate paying subscription for … anything.
For myself (ERIC KIM) personally — I don’t have any subscription nada. No Amazon prime. No Netflix. No car payments (I don’t own a car). No Adobe Cloud subscription (I get it free via Cindy via the university). No Spotify. The only thing I pay for is Dropbox Pro, Google Cloud Storage Payments, iCloud storage payments, and my website hosting (1and1.com).
Why I don’t like subscriptions
It becomes a prison. I have found it is far more effective to buy once, own forever.
Music
The funny thing with music:
Better to buy one musical album and play it a billion times, than to randomly peruse tons of random albums.
For example, I have listened to ‘A written testimony’ a quadrillion times now, and every time I listen to it … I love it more! (Jay Electronica as one of the rap music GOAT’s).
Feeling of guilt and debt?
Another weird thing about membership and subscriptions (like let us say, a gym membership):
You feel guilty for NOT being in the gym.
I never think guilt should be a motivating force for anything.
The price of … life!
Let us consider, a monthly subscription doesn’t seem like much money. But compound that for … your whole life-time.
For example let us say Amazon Prime costs us 99$ USD a year. This doesn’t sound too bad. But … let us consider how having Amazon prime motivates us to buy more shit. This means we actually spend MORE money having an Amazon prime subscription. And let us think:
How many more years do I got?
I am currently 32 years old. Let us say I live to be 133 years old. This means I got 101 years of life left. 101 years * 100$. This means for the rest of my life, I will spend $10,000 on my Amazon prime subscription.
Let us take it further. Spotify ($10 a month) and Netflix ($10 a month). Spotify is then $120 a year, and Netflix another $120 a year.
For the rest of my life, I will drop $12,000 into Netflix (!!!) Also for Spotify another $12,000 to have the privilege to listen to a bunch of random music. Seems like a sucker’s trade to me.