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Comment by beauHD | Hacker News Reader

How much do you need to commit to a subscription though?

If it's a few weeks just to watch Ozark, then fine. Just be careful to abandon your account and never renew if you wanna watch just one show.

I don't have insider data, but I guess many people only watch Netflix merely because they are paying for it. It's this psychological mechanism that has people watching just because they pay for a sub.

Once you research the best shows to watch, you can watch them all in succession, then destroy your account and carry on with other duties.

You have that choice.

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That is an incredibly myopic viewpoint as subscriptions go much further than a few shows on Netflix or AppleTV.

I subscribe to Shapr3D, Fusion360, Jetbrains, Netflix, Adobe, 1Password, Dropbox, and a half-dozen necessary services. I'd much rather just pay for the software at that point in time and never upgrade. But rent seekers don't like that business model.

I hear you, but: good software/services require continuous investment. It's kinda hard to set an up front one time price that covers that without it being ridiculously high. You're not buying one copy of a static piece of software: you're buying all the future bugfixes, security mitigations, server maintenance, future integration work (it has to work with the next upcoming version of your phone's OS, or the next version of your browser, etc), adhering to important future tech standards in the space. With a subscription model, those costs can be amortized over the lifetime that you're actually using the software/service, and can increase or decrease as necessary due to economic conditions as well.

> you're buying all the future bugfixes, security mitigations, server maintenance, future integration work...

There's also middle ground that used to be very common: pay a fixed fee and get a perpetual licence + free updates for a certain period (say for a year, or until the next major release). As a user, that's my preferred model as it gives me complete control over my expenditure and over when/whether I upgrade.

(This is mainly about standalone software that fully runs on my own hardware.)

True, but the reason that I don't do that (instead, I just don't do subscriptions at all) is that is a lot of recordkeeping and attention capacity to spend. Much more than I'm going to do (whether I intend to or not).

I'm guessing that a substantial number of people keep subscriptions they don't really use because of the same effect -- they aren't putting in the work to actually track them, so they get forgotten about.

"Choice" is a very funny word to describe that. If you watch a new show every couple months, you'll have a string of subscriptions anyway, not to mention the massive PITA that managing this would be.

> people only watch Netflix merely because they are paying for it

Pretty much like TV has always been. Wouldn't be much of an issue if they hadn't decided to become a producer and spawn the 10 different streaming services we have now.

define:choice

>The act of choosing; selection.

>The power, right, or liberty to choose; option.

>An alternative.

There exist many alternatives to watching new TV shows. For example, books, work, exercise, cooking, staring at the wall, playing music, gardening, etc. Hell, one could even CHOOSE to spend 2 minutes and change their media subscription every month so that they are only paying for 1 every month.

I'm pointing out that it's not that simple. This is like saying you 'have the alternative' to not take a shitty job when you're unemployed, the 'choice' of not buying food at the supermarket, or 'the choice' of not participating in capitalism, good luck with that.

You're a graphic designer and want industry standard software? Subscription.

Want a new sofa? Subscription.

Want that new game? Subscription.

Need printer ink? Subscription.

Want to store text notes in the cloud? Subscription.

When this becomes the norm, it ceases to be an option unless you trade in a huge amount of effort and/or convenience.

Reminds me of a scene from a Discworld novel, where the resident, mostly benelovent dictator reminded the hero that a man always has a choice - even if, as in that case, the choice was between accepting the task or being shoved into a spike pit, it was still technically a choice.

I do not see why choosing what video entertainment you want to pay for at any one time would remind you of choosing between slavery or death...

I watch Netflix because it allowed me to cancel my cable subscription. But now I also have disney, hbo, and a few others. In the end, unbundling allowed for better but more expensive content. It's primarily come from my movie theater budget since there's only 1-2 a year I can be bothered to care about for the last several years.

I'm toggling between Disney, Apple TV, HBO. This also allows me to build up a backlog of a handful of high-quality shows on each platform while paying only for one per month. The one i cannot cancel however is Netflix since multiple households now depends on my monthly payment.

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