Here’s why we are being bombarded with subscriptions, the secret they don’t want you to know is that there is a finite amount of attention available to monetize. I’m the US, there are 210m people over 18, who all have to deal with the same 24 hrs in 1 day (less sleeping, working, and eating). There’s only so much media you can consume. Attention has a hard cap.

These guys know that the marketplace for your attention is becoming more and more fragmented. As it gets fragmented, their ability to monetize you decreases, so how do they combat it, by locking you into a subscription so that even if you do not use the platform you are paying for it. They need a money printer too.

This is why I nostr, to figure out how the hell to do this value for value thing before everything on this planet becomes some kind of subscription service.

I hate subscriptions, if I don’t use it, I don’t want to pay for it, if I find value, I’d gladly pay for its true worth. LFG you beautiful nostrich bastards.

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That’s the marketing reason which I know is your area of expertise.

The bigger driver tho is Wall St behind them who penalise capex heavy businesses and incentivise ARR. That’s why every company has a subscription, even if it doesn’t make sense (ie it’s not attention based). They want the predictability of recurring payments to smooth out business cycles where capex drops in down periods.

Money drives all this stuff. It’s why the DEI crap got a foothold in the corporate world, the financiers made requirements of this crap as part of governance, HR being filled with ideologues with nothing better to do are the perfect commissars for it so it ends up sticking.

Bad incentives creating bad behaviour driving worse incentives driving worse behaviour - that’s the story of the fiat world.

Truth brother, it’s like a rotten onion with many layers… we need to get to the core - take away people’s ability to print money 👌

Subscriptions spread out the cash collection ups and downs. I have worked for several data/software companies where the main purpose to sell monthly based services was to get a better multiple when they exit and help cash flow. This B2B model definitely made its was to B2C. I now have a damn spreadsheet to track all my inconsequential monthly services to make sure I don't die by a thousand paper cuts.

Funny because last night I got a bus for 3 stops and I had to pay the same fare of who takes the bus for an hour journey

The subscription model is all around us. Part of it is also the inefficiency of micro payments in fiat 🤙

My suggested solution is for all the video subscription services to come together under one umbrella service for one price, and call it Cabal 🤣

😂 what was once old is now new said a wise man once.

It will happen, but it will probably just be called Disney++++

I’d pay a set sats per minute “subscription”. I only pay for what I watch/use while I’m watching/using it.

Interesting perspective because I was thinking I'd be happy paying a subscription for a good nostr client. How else can the clients and relays be funded long term?

This is just my perspective, but it could be:

-offering disk space to host files for a fee

-offering disk space to hold note data

-offering faster connection speeds to relays

-crowd sourcing to fund innovation on new client features.

-offering a client bundled with a spam free relay and data storage

Because nostr is decentralized we will likely see all sorts of models and the market will decide with they like.

Relays are different to clients. They’re more infrastructure heavy (most are on monthly cloud hosting) and require less ongoing maintenance, I expect they will be subscription based and low margin in future as they’ll be volume plays.

Clients are a different story, less infra and far more dev and maintenance required. Each will have different models to meet their different needs.

streaming on lightning in 5 years.

This is so true! Maybe we should stop subscribing to streaming services and make the world a better place!