From Real Life Magazine:
The concept of subscriptions isn’t new, but thanks to the internet, any mundane purchase can seemingly be reinvented as a subscription service, from socks to baby food. Historically, subscriptions have tended to be about novelty: You needed to subscribe to newspapers because each day’s issue was different and its window of relevance was short. Newer subscription services, however, no longer emphasize novelty but ease of access, or escaping nuisances like ads. For less than the price of a single compact disc, Spotify subscribers can purchase a month’s worth of an effectively infinite library of music. (Of course, if we don’t pay the next month, then we have nothing.) The same principle applies to many “smart” internet-connected physical devices: Companies can manage consumers’ access to products they’ve already purchased by administering functionality via subscriptions. One can now subscribe to running shoes and cars, which allow (or require) customers to renew at regular intervals. The wide variety of subscription-based direct-to-consumer products (like Dollar Shave Club and countless others) replace discrete retail purchases with a recurring merchandise stream.
It is easy to see why companies prefer such arrangements. They resemble conventional “loyalty” programs, in which customers collect points and earn discounts, only now the purchases occur automatically and the loyalty occurs by default. Of course, calling those old points programs “loyalty” rather than bribery was always a kind of propaganda — a euphemism to obfuscate the transactionality of the exchange, as if finer feelings were involved in amassing frequent flyer miles. But the goal of such programs was ultimately to engender the sort of habitual buying that subscription services entail from the onset. Rather than buying à la carte in discrete transactions, consumers establish a regular rhythm of payments in exchange for better access, or the comfortable freedom from choice that a loyalty arrangement promises. Brands like Stitch Fix, Birchbox, and Blue Apron exemplify this, sending their subscribers regular shipments of clothing, cosmetic products, and meal kits. Streaming media platforms like Netflix and Spotify, meanwhile, offer unlimited access to vast libraries of content for a small monthly fee. Peloton’s subscribers get a wide variety of workout classes that supplement the stationary bike. But no subscription service is more ambitious than Amazon Prime, which provides members with lower prices and faster shipping across a seemingly universal selection of products, along with access to other Amazon services. With Prime, Amazon promises a subscription that uncomplicates shopping as a whole....
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