As if that weren't enough, there are a number of services that have come out recently that have taken traditional consumer goods and "reinvented" them by turning the purchase cycle from "as needed" into a monthly subscription model.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the typical American household would have had relatively few subscription services. Perhaps their local newspaper, maybe a magazine like Time or Reader's Digest, and very likely a Cable TV service. Today there are innumberable services you could be subscribing to, all with the goal of "disrupting" an established big industry.
Now instead of cable, you can pay $9.99/month for Netflix, $7.99/month for Hulu, $12.99/month for Amazon Prime Video, $15/month for HBO Now, $20/month for Sling TV, $35/month for YouTube TV, or $39/month for a PlayStation Vue subscription. Any one of them offers substantial savings over the traditional $90-$150 cable bill from Comcast, Charter, Cox, Cable One, and other providers. But if you want to watch both Game of Thrones (HBO) and House of Cards (Netflix), you must subscribe to each service, which can quickly add up.
Now instead of buying shaving razors at the drugstore as needed, you can subscribe to Dollar Shave Club or Harry's for anywhere from $9 to $21 per month for mail-order shaving supplies. Somehow men have managed to stay clean shaven for generations without having supplies "delivered to your doorstep," so I question the value add of these services.
Home security is another market quickly transitioning to the monthly-subscription model. My local cable company offers home security cameras and monitoring for $30/month ($40/month if not bundled with any other services). Nest also offers cloud-based backups of your home security cameras for $5 to $30 per month. While a home security system can help identify a burglar, these services to little to secure the home in the first place and provide peace-of-mind rather than actual security.
Adding to the monthly cost for creative professionals is online data storage and photo backup, which will run you $6 a month for Carbonite or $0.99/month with Apple's iCloud service. Adobe's famous Creative Suite has also switched to a cloud-based, monthly subscription service at $49/month for the full suite.
Vanity services recently experienced a boom in popularity. Services like BirchBox, BarkBox, NatureBox, LootCrate, and many imitators provide a monthly box of samples and goodies for whatever you are into - makeup, pet accessories, gaming culture, or anything else you can imagine.
Finally, we come to meal delivery services. Between Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, Plated, Sun Basket, and others have created meal kits that can be assembled by people with limited to no cooking experience. These services have taken home meal preparation - historically one of the cheapest ways of eating - and turned it into a "premium" experience that costs anywhere from $9 to $12 per meal.
There is an old Chinese expression called "lingchi" which roughly translates to "death by a thousand cuts." I feel like it is very easy to sign up for a free trial for each of these services and before you know it, your bank account is being silently drained by a multitude of small subscriptions each month.
While I don't doubt that one or two of them might add real value to your everyday life, the sheer proliferation of these services during the last 5-8 years feels like an all-out war for my hard-earned dollars.
They're also not that innovative, doing the slightly modernized version of what the Sears Catalog did a century ago. Combining an existing consumer product with a monthly subscription does not make it an innovative new business model. It looks great to investors to have that Monthly Recurring Revenue, but all of these businesses are targeted towards price-conscious consumers who will jump ship to your competitor if they have a better price or offer.
I'm not the only one who feels this way:
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/05/09/182426256/consumers-facing-subscription-service-overload-will-only-get-more-choices
https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2016/11/03/has-the-subscription-box-boom-turned-into-a-bubble/
https://qz.com/index/1161993/americans-are-overwhelmed-by-too-many-available-tv-subscription-services/
Posts
