Evaluating Subscription Models in the New Age of Internet

In 2019, about two years after the show came out, Netflix cut the suicide scene from "13 Reasons Why". There was no new version sitting next to the old one. The old one was simply gone, for everyone who had ever watched it or ever would.

I am not here to argue whether the edit was right, especially since there were genuine reasons to make it. What stuck with me was how easy it was. With one decision, the "original" stopped existing for every subscriber at once, without anyone asking us whether we were okay with that being possible.

We used to buy things

Music, movies, games and software used to work the same way: you paid once, and it was yours. Now we subscribe to the possibility of accessing them, assuming the platform still has the license, has not decided to edit them, and has not shut down.

"But you never really owned it! Even DVDs were just a license to watch!"

Technically, that is true. But there is a big difference between a license on paper and actual control. My DVD can't be edited remotely, my paperback can't quietly lose a chapter, and my CD can't decide it doesn't like track 7 anymore. Physical media was a license you could actually hold on to, while a subscription is closer to a suggestion with a monthly fee.

The disc used to sit on your shelf. Now that it sits on someone else's server, they can change what is on it whenever they like.

Who's the customer here?

There are three players in this. The creator makes the thing, and often sells the rights because distribution is where the power is. The platform (Netflix, Spotify, Amazon) buys or licenses it and rents it out to us. And then there is us, paying every month.

As far as I can tell, we are not really the customer in that chain. When Netflix negotiates with a studio, Netflix is the customer, and when we "negotiate" with Netflix, we are complaining on Twitter. The platform answers to its shareholders, the creator answers to the platform, and we are a recurring revenue line with a recommendation profile attached.

You can see it in how changes happen. Songs disappear from Spotify when a licensing deal ends, old Disney films come back with content warnings, and Netflix cracks down on password sharing. Some of these decisions are perfectly reasonable, but none of them came with a vote from the people paying.

Renting forever

We have also normalized paying forever for things we used to buy once. An album was a one-time purchase, whereas a music subscription never ends. Software that used to be a single license is now a monthly line on the card statement, and the total over a few years is often a lot more than the box ever cost. (I have written about the subscription-ification of everything before, even sleep, and I can't seem to leave this topic alone.)

"But you get access to everything!" I am not so sure. You get access to whatever is available this month, in your region, in whatever form they have decided is appropriate. Prices go up, the catalogue shrinks, and sometimes you need a VPN to watch something you are already paying for.

Creators are stuck in the middle of this. If they sell to a platform, they lose control but gain reach, and if they go direct, they keep control but struggle to be found. Most pick the platform because rent is due, and the platforms know that.

To be fair, I am not writing this from outside the system. Besides paying for streaming like everyone else, I have a long history of complaining about platforms changing while continuing to use them. Convenience is a hell of a drug.

So what do we do?

I do not think the answer is piracy. Far from being pirates, most of us just want reasonable access to the things we pay for. A few things do feel worth doing, though:

• Buy directly from creators when you can, especially the ones you love.
• Prefer services that let you download and keep what you paid for.
• Don't let one platform hold everything you care about.
• Accept that owning something might cost more than renting it. Maybe it should.

None of that fixes the system, but it does mean you are not entirely at its mercy.

We traded ownership for convenience and somehow got neither. We have the monthly bills, the regional restrictions and the disappearing catalogue, while the platforms got the convenience of changing the terms whenever they want.

To me, the "13 Reasons Why" edit was about more than one scene. It showed that once culture lives on someone else's server, the people paying for it are not the ones who control it.

But hey, at least we don't have to dust our DVD shelves anymore. That's worth it, right?

Right?

P.S. This post lives on my own site, in a markdown file I control. Nobody gets to edit it but me.