The article about the “subscription” HP ink made me realise something.
Subscriptions aren’t a new idea at all. You could subscribe to paper magazines. And you got to keep them.
I’m just clearing up my old house and it’s filled with tons of old tech magazines. Lots of useful knowledge here. Wanna know how Windows and Mac compared in 1993? It’s in here. All the forgotten technologies? Old games, old phones, whatever? You’ll find it.
Now, granted. You’d only get one magazine a month. Not a whole library of movies or games or comic books.
But still, the very definition of subscription has shifted. Now, the common meaning is “you only get to use these things as long as you’re paying”. Nobody even thinks it could mean anything else.
Besides, it doesn’t only apply to services that offer entire libraries. Online magazines still exist in a similar form as the paper ones. But you only get to access them while your “subscription” is active. Even the stuff you had while you were paying.
BTW I’m not throwing my old magazines away. I won’t have the space, but a friend is taking it all. If they wouldn’t, I’d give them to a library or let someone take them. The online and streaming stuff of today and tomorrow? In 30 years it’ll be gone, forgotten and inaccessible.
My wife watches a lot of YouTube and has several favorites. She’s subscribed to none of them. Apparently lots of people do this and completely ignore the subscription feature.
To some extent, I do as well.
If I want to see about 30% of the content of a particular channel, I’m absolutely not going to subscribe. Let’s say there’s a channel that made a few cool Minecraft videos, but they also do lots of other random stuff I don’t care about. If I subscribe, YT will send me some of that that 70% as well.
However, if I want to see at least 95% of the videos, subscription is in order. With this method, I’ve been able to curate my home view to be more meaningful and relevant to me.