You can zap the authors any time and any amount you want. What need is there for a subscription? To force you to pay when you can already do it willingly?
Discussion
I'm with you - I don't think there is a need per se. People are used to the subscription business model, and way that people receive content is legacy and easy to mimic I guess. I would love to see new approaches and models develop from the free and open nostr.
Yes new models for monetization need to be explored, and need to be much easier and more seamless in platforms like Habla. The subscription model attempts to restrict access to content with paywalls, and requires user contact and payment info be stored to pull payment to renew the subscription monthly/annually/etc. Suppose an author did setup a paywall on Nostr, or a paid private relay, to allow access to their long form Nostr content. The first person to rebroadcast that note to other relays defeats that setup 😂 And the solution isn’t to attempt to further restrict access so they can’t broadcast notes, etc. It’s a waste of time. People hate paywalls, and paywalls limit the potential reach of content. But people may love a particular author and want to support them regularly. Building monetization models that capitalize on and encourage that author-reader relationship makes more sense to me. Tools like ZapPlanner from Alby that allow you the reader to setup an automated recurring payment TO someone, like an author, would make it feel more like a subscription while leaving the reader in control of their payments and info. It would be cool to see a site like Habla make it easier to setup something like that. I’ve also seen the idea of a “crowd wall” where a threshold is set to unlock content once, and then is available to everyone. No need to circumvent paywalls, and the people who care enough to send additional support can do so via single or recurring zaps.