The cumulative cost of my digital subscriptions has been on my mind for a while. And fair play to this author on Techcrunch for picking up the theme.
So. How much do you spend a month on subscriptions. Storage is pretty cheap. Google storage per month is cheaper for me than cost of exchanging pounds sterling for dollars.
Media is more expensive. Netflix and Amazon prime are now about £10 a month each. Then there's my LinkedIn premium account. Another tenner at least.
Oh, and Spotify (£10), those Google Business apps that you use so frequently (£10), Photoshop and Lightroom (£11). You can see where this is going can't you?
Social media tools: Buffer and Hootsuite. And of course my smartphone data. All in all I'm well north of £100 and probably warm around £150.
Ok, I'm lucky enough to be able to afford that, but when I'm looking at my spending and wondering whether I'm really getting use and value from an app, what about everyone else.
And what about when Facebook starts offering ad-free accounts (again for £10 a month it's predicted).
What about the beloved Guardian? Will it go the same way as the Washington Post and the New York Times with their 'soft' walls (a cap on free articles per month)?
The digital elephant in the room is advertising of course. Compromised by new legislation and recent privacy scandals, we could be witnessing the death of advertising, on the web at least.
But Facebook will flourish and as Gary V predicts, this is the golden age of advertising. As more and more eyeballs and advertising dollars head to Zuckerberg's wallet, expect the cost of your ad-sets to shoot upwards.
For pretty much everyone else it's paywalls, soft or otherwise. And if I do end up paying more for my favourite media, then everything else on the back statement will come under greater scrutiny. Hold on tight to your wallets. It's going to be a bumpy and a potentially expensive ride.
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’m frustrated that subscription usually means just putting formerly free content behind a paywall. I’m frustrated that the price for subscriptions seems wildly high compared to the ad dollars that the fees substitute for. And I’m frustrated that subscription pricing rarely seems to account for other subscriptions I have, even when content libraries are similar. Subscriptions can be a great tool, but everyone seems to be doing them wrong. We need to transform our thinking here if we are to move on from the manacles of the ad networks.
