Subscription hell – TechCrunch:
Incentive alignment is one thing, and my wallet is another. All of these subscriptions are starting to add up. These days, my media subscriptions are hovering around $80 a month, and I don’t even have TV. Storage costs for Google, Apple, and Dropbox are another $13 a month. Cable and cell service are another $200 a month combined. Software subscriptions are probably about $20 a month (although so many are annualized its hard to keep track of them). Amazon Prime and a few others total in around $25 a month.
Worse, subscriptions aren’t getting any cheaper. Amazon Prime just increased its price to $120 a year, Netflix increased its popular middle-tier plan to $11 a month late last year, and YouTube increased its TV pricing to $40 a month last month. Add in new paywalls, and the burden of subscriptions is rising far faster than consumer incomes.
I’m frustrated with this hell. I’m frustrated that the web’s promise of instant and free access to the world’s information appears to be dying.
I’ve said this many times. Eventually, on-demand television that’s commercial free (with product placements) from your favorite networks will cost more than Cable TV did at its peak. I think the author was wrong to include Internet in his argument. Internet & Cable TV are two separate utilities. Yes you need Internet for Hulu but if Hulu didn’t exist, most households would still have Internet for all of the other things it offers.
People used to complain about paying $250 a month for cable. We are paying that now and getting less.