The pervasive shift towards subscription models across industries, driven by companies seeking recurring revenue, is leading to consumers paying more over time, losing ownership, and facing difficulties in canceling services, sparking a consumer movement advocating for the right to own what they buy.
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This printer costs $160,
but HP would probably prefer it if you
paid $8 a month to rent it instead. That
might not sound like a lot until you
realize the [music] subscription locks
you in to a 2year commitment.
After 2 [music] years, you'll have spent $192,
$192,
20% [music] more than it would have cost
to buy the printer outright. The
subscription includes ink, but HP
artificially limits how many pages
[music] you can print each month. Exceed
that and it charges you more. But it
gets worse. After those 2 years, you
still won't own this. HP's terms of
service explicitly state you do not own
HP device and [music] subscription
cartridges provided, even if you
complete the entire subscription term.
Over the past 20 years, subscriptions
have taken over our economy.
>> You can't buy a car [music] today
without seems like a halfozen
subscriptions. I'm powerless. I just
turn up one day and suddenly I've got to
pay more money.
>> But the cost [music] isn't the only
problem. If everything is a
subscription, we won't actually own anything.
anything.
Consumers are fed up, and some are
fighting for the right to own what they
buy. It's a matter of liberty. Am I free
to own things or should I rent
indefinitely? [music]
>> But challenging subscriptions means
taking on some of the largest companies
in the world.
>> A whole bunch of industries [music] that
are not trying to make their products or
services better. They're trying to find
new ways to earn money from consumers
every month.
>> So, how did we [music] get to the point
where practically everything is a
subscription? And why is owning nothing
making [music]
Subscriptions feel modern, but they've
been around for centuries.
Americans used pay as you go for
newspapers, magazines, milk, and even fruit.
fruit.
But technology enabled companies to turn
anything into a subscription. Consumers
knew they were subscribing to a
newspaper because it landed on their
doorstep every morning. [music] The fact
that consumers are paying for services
that they're not actually using is a
trend the technology has enabled.
>> It started with cable. For decades, most
TV channels were free and there weren't
many options.
>> Don't miss this wonderful chance to get
a Captain video picture ring.
>> But that changed in the 1970s.
Satellites [music] enabled nationwide
broadcasting and the government allowed
more channels on the air. [music] The
first company to leverage this lucrative
technology was HBO. It realized that
consumers would pay monthly to access
[music] its curated channel.
Cable was an early example of paying for
a subscription without getting a [music]
physical product in return. And it was
wildly successful. There's a going to be
a huge demand for material very shortly
in a couple of years for cable.
>> HBO signed up over 14 million
subscribers [music] in a decade and by
the mid 1980s dozens of channels had
followed its lead.
>> I WANT MY MTV.
The percentage of households with a
cable subscription jumped from 7.5% in
1970 [music] to around 67% by 1999.
Starting in the 1990s, internet
providers like AOL connected millions of
Americans using [music] subscriptions.
>> You've got mail.
>> And consumers started shopping online.
companies [music] pretty quickly
understood that this new structure of
the relationship with consumers gave
them [music] opportunities not for like
a one-time payment but for an ongoing
monthly revenue stream. Companies took
something that consumers used to buy
once and instead asked them to pay
continuously for [music] access, like
software from Salesforce, music from
Rapsidity, and online games from Blizzard.
Blizzard.
>> World of Warcraft. Try it for free at warcraft.com.
warcraft.com.
>> This shift turned products into services.
services.
There's so many people and so many
internet users and [music] for us this
is a beginning
>> this sacrifice this tradeoff of control
for convenience [music] right
right
>> improved online payment systems reduced
friction and as e-commerce grew
subscriptions popped [music] up for
every aspect of daily life
but the rise of [music] smartphones is
what solidified this transformation in
the late 2000s
>> for the First time on a mobile device,
you can have the internet in your pocket.
pocket.
>> Using apps had become a daily routine,
and it didn't take long for some
developers to start charging small
monthly fees for them.
>> The subscription economy [music]
has grown from sort of a small set of
goods and [music] services to almost
everything you can think about.
>> Even sleeping has a subscription now.
The company Eight Sleep [music] sells a
smart mattress cover that costs over $3,000.
$3,000.
Most of its functionality is locked
behind a $17 monthly fee. That
subscription is mandatory for at least
your first year.
I probably have 10 to 20 monthly
subscriptions. Am I allowed to use the
word in shitification here? Netflix,
Hulu, Dropbox, Vogue,
>> HBO Max, Google Storage, [music]
>> Apple TV, New Yorker,
>> Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, my local YMCA.
>> I do actually pay for Peacock,
>> NBA League [music] Pass. You do not get
access to local games. If I want to
watch a Knicks game, I have to subscribe
to a totally different service. I'm
[music] convinced that there's just like
a few hiding that I don't know about.
Oh, Spotify. Oh my gosh, it's really
impossible to have one service that
gives you everything you actually want.
>> Technology proliferated subscriptions,
but the reason they're everywhere is
because they make companies a lot of money.
money.
Subscriptions give companies recurring
revenue, something investors love, and
subscriptions are sticky. They're good
at retaining users because most are
automatic. People are four times more
likely to cancel when they have to make
an active choice. That allows them to
make more money than they would with
more transparent pricing schemes. Neil
and his colleagues found that companies
earn as much as 200% more revenue thanks
to inattentive subscribers. [music]
>> Industry has figured out that this is a
profitable business model and they've
been moving towards it to maximize their profits.
profits.
One company doing exactly that is Adobe.
It's been selling software since the
1980s, typically releasing a new version
every year or two. But in 2012, the
company launched its Creative Cloud
subscription. [music]
Instead of allowing consumers to buy the
software once and upgrading when they
want, Adobe now sells all of its apps
bundled together for a monthly fee. So,
if you want permanent access, you need
to keep paying even after [music] you've
spent way more than the software used to cost.
cost.
Adobe faced heavy criticism for its
decision. But there's no doubt it
transformed the company.
3 years after launching Creative Cloud,
revenue was higher than ever. In 2024,
it soared to $21.5 billion,
over five times higher than before Adobe
launched the subscription service.
>> Adobe really was a pioneer in realizing
that they can squeeze a lot more revenue
out of consumers by signing them up for
subscriptions rather than selling
software and letting consumers keep
[music] it and use it however they want.
>> Another company that's made a fortune
off subscriptions is Apple. Since 2015,
it has launched at least eight subscriptions.
subscriptions.
Now, when you buy an Apple Watch, the
company [music] hopes you'll also
subscribe to Fitness Plus and Apple
Music. Of course, you'll [music] also
want to protect it with Apple Care.
Annually, these cost about the same as
the Apple Watch itself.
>> Apple's been remarkably [music]
successful at finding new ways to
squeeze money out of its customers.
Apple's services revenue, which includes
[music] subscriptions, rose from around
20 billion in 2015 to over 96 billion
[music] in 2024.
>> Subscriptions from a company's
perspective is the way to go. [music]
The real question for me is, is it the
way to go for consumers?
>> At [music] first, many subscriptions may
seem like a good deal for the
convenience they offer, but the lifetime
costs are more opaque.
Take a look at this [music] subscription
from computer hardware company NZXT.
It lets you rent a gaming PC with
[music] the option to cancel at any
time. The middle tier costs $129 per
month, which might appear like a steal,
but let's do some math.
It'll only take 15 months to spend more
than the value of the computer itself.
It's common for a PC to last more than 5
years. In that time span, you'll have
paid NZXT over $7,700
through its subscription. For that
amount, you can buy the PC four times over.
Other companies entice users with free
trials or signup promos, hoping they'll
stick around even after the subscription
outlives [music] its value. It's
becoming almost anti-C customer where it
feels personally as a customer that I'm
I'm prayed upon.
>> And the problem isn't just that the cost
adds up over [music] time. Many
companies purposefully make it difficult
to cancel.
>> Dark patterns are when a company designs
a user interface like a website to
deliberately trick or deceive customers.
Once [music] companies have consumers
payment information, charging people is
frictionless. Raising prices [music] is
easy, and cancelling subscriptions can
[music]
>> Sam Lavine was director of the FTC's
Bureau of Consumer Protection under Joe Biden.
Biden.
>> What I saw during my time of government
is some of the biggest [music] companies
in the world were some of the biggest
abusers of subscriptions.
The FTC sued Amazon in 2023 and Adobe
the year after, arguing the companies
tricked users into signing up for
subscriptions and made it deliberately
difficult to cancel.
Let's take a look at Adobe's Creative
Cloud. It defaults to a plan that looks
like it's monthto-month,
but it's actually a year-long commitment.
commitment.
The FTC said Adobe didn't clearly
[music] state that customers needed to
pay a fee to unsubscribe early.
>> These fees were so big and so important
to Adobe's bottom line that one
executive Adobe described [music] it as
being like heroine in how addicted the
company was to these fees.
>> Adobe declined Business Insider's
request for comment in 2024. It told The
Verge that the quote was taken out of
context and [music] said cancellation
fees made up only a small part of
Adobe's revenue.
>> Folks who rely on Adobe services and
Adobe products and end up [music]
getting ripped off by a company that is
charging them huge fees and making it
really difficult to cancel.
>> Adobe appears to be making its
subscription terms clearer. Screenshots
from 2017 show that users had to click
into the fine print to learn about the
cancellation fee. The FTC's [music] case
showed that in 2023, Adobe signup page
mentioned a fee, but didn't immediately
disclose the [music] amount. As of
December 2025, it states upfront that
users must pay half your remaining
annual commitment, which could cost
hundreds of dollars.
The FTC's case is still in litigation,
but others have already been successful.
>> It should be as easy to unsubscribe than
it is to subscribe, but it doesn't feel
like that's the mechanism that most
businesses are going for.
>> The FTC was working on a rule called
click to cancel that aimed to make
[music] cancelling as easy as signing
up. The rule was hugely popular, but
earlier this year, [music] the eighth
circuit, one of the federal courts,
struck down the rule on procedural
grounds, saying that industry should
[music] have had more chances to weigh
in on the rule. And there's no
indication that the Trump [music]
administration is planning to continue
work on the rule.
>> Removing subscriptions [music] from your
life isn't easy. As companies connect
more products to the internet, the
distinction between owning and paying
Printers, security cameras, exercise
[music] equipment, and even cars all
limit features behind subscriptions.
>> These are all things that are software
[music] dependent. And so when you don't
have control over the software code,
that means you don't have control over
the physical product [music]
itself. Sometimes that means features
get added, features get taken away
without the consumer's consent. [music]
It even gets to whether the device
continues to operate at all.
>> Aaron co-wrote a book in 2016 called The
End of Ownership. Since then, he's only
become more pessimistic.
I think things are worse than we
imagined they would be. Our daily
behavior is really built around the idea
that the things that we use every day
are within [music] our exclusive
control. And I think when we move away
from that, what's the model for what a nonownership
nonownership
economy looks like? [music]
There's some very smart people out there
who, you know, describe this as a kind
of return to feudalism. A world in which
we don't own anything. We [music] don't
control anything. And the benefits of
these resources are sort of, you know,
hoarded by the handful of technology and
media companies that control our [music]
access to them.
mergers further concentrated [music]
this control and with less competition
prices could rise.
>> They're in a much better position to
[music] sort of eliminate consumer
surplus and push consumers to paying the
maximum price that they can bear. That
might look good for [music] a handful of
companies, but I think ultimately it's
it's pretty harmful for society as a whole.
>> [music]
>> The erosion of ownership has already
happened to media.
In 2024, 84% of US recorded music
revenue came from streaming. Physical
sales accounted for 11%.
It's even lower for movies and TV shows.
Spending on physical media made up less
than 2% of revenue.
Consumers don't own the majority of
media they consume, which means they
give up the right to resell it, loan it
to a friend, or pass their collection
down through generations.
When Netflix blocked password sharing,
it made this imbalance clear. When you
move to digital, those secondary markets
are essentially eliminated. [music]
And that's something that a lot of
publishers, studios, video game
developers that [music] they've been
hoping for for a very long time.
>> But a growing number of consumers don't
want ownership to die. [music] Take a
look at this graph. Since 2005, the
number of vinyl records shipped grew by
It's an old idea to physically hold
something and look at it, but at the end
of the day, it just feels good.
It's wonderful to be a part of this
reemergence of a physical life that I
think people are really [music] missing
in an age of complete digitization and dehumanization.
>> This neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York,
sees itself as fighting against that
dehumanization. [music]
Shop owners refer to it as Analog Alley
because within a few blocks you'll find
board games, books, records, and VHS tapes.
tapes.
>> After one night of complaining one too
many times, Jess yelled [music] at me to
start the store. So, we started the
store, [laughter]
>> pretty much. That's what happened. Yeah.
>> Night Owl Videos merchandise proudly
declares death to [music] streamers. I
think the pitch from these streamers
when they started was affordability and
accessibility of great movies and now
[music] it's the complete opposite
because they've started making their own
movies and they want to push those onto
people removing the titles that clearly
people actually want to watch.
>> While prices started out low, every
major streamer has increased the cost of
its subscriptions. You're being fed
[music] from an algorithm and fooled
into thinking that this algorithm is
super super tailored for your [music]
particular taste.
>> You're probably just going to end up
scrolling for an hour and not finding
anything you want to watch anyway.
>> Jess and [music] Aaron hope Night Owl's
human curation reminds patrons they
don't have to let an algorithm pick
for your consideration. Spirited Away.
This is like pretty rare.
>> Night Owl offers an estimated 8 to
10,000 movies on DVD, Blu-ray, and VHS.
>> When I tried to order copies through the
distributor, too, and I couldn't get
them. They're backordered. Young
Frankenstein [music]
is backorded.
It's really cool to see a younger
generation who [music] didn't
necessarily grow up buying DVDs like we
did, embracing that idea, really
enjoying it and enjoying like searching
through the [music] stacks to find great stuff.
stuff.
>> DVDs and Blu-rays haven't experienced
the same comeback vinyl has, but for
Night Owl, selling dead media has been a
success. A physical collection comes
with tangible benefits. Streaming
cataloges change all the time as
licenses swap hands or companies like
Disney remove titles to write them off
as financial losses. Blu-rays can also
look and sound better than streaming
because they're less compressed, and the
quality doesn't change depending on your
internet speed.
But more importantly, curating a
collection [music] is the way Jess and
Aaron show their love for their favorite media.
media.
streaming has [music] devalued art in
almost every way.
>> I think that it's really important to
preserve the films that you love and to
really [music] experience them.
>> The expressions on a lot of people's
faces when they come in, it's like,
"Wow, this still [music] exists." Um,
>> Fighting the subscription trend became a
personal [music] mission for James Cuda,
too. I deeply hate subscriptions unless
they make sense.
>> His company Procreate has become wildly
successful by asking its users to buy
its [music] apps once.
>> Yes, we would technically make more
money if we were going down a
subscription [music] route. We're all in
business to to generate revenue, but I
think the other part of that story is
we're here to generate revenue and
provide value to the customer. And I
think that part is just not being
evaluated. We're sort of prioritizing
revenue [music] generation at the
expense of the customer. I think that
creates quite a lot of brand [music]
damage because you you're not eliciting
a feeling of joy or fun when you're
interacting with that bread. You're
creating a sense of aggravation and a
feeling of entrapment [music] which
customers don't forget.
>> Gamers are feeling the aggravation too.
Microtransactions, battle [music]
passes, and online only functionality
are all too familiar in modern gaming.
>> The customer should should have more
basically freedom to own [music] their
media because the more of the control
lies with the [music] company that
either distributes or creates the
ecosystem, the more opportunities
[music] for this unfair practices. They
are becoming the standard and [music] no
one knows that they are unfair anymore
because they haven't seen anything else.
>> The platform GOG is committed to
preserving retro games. But even with
new titles, it offers users an offline
installer without digital restrictions.
That means you can install a game even
if the publisher no longer sells or
supports it.
The aim was to solve that for consumers
and to build a digital distribution
platform that would keep the good things
about physical distribution but move
them into the more convenient digital
[music] eras. You have the files but
they're yours. Uh you can can keep them.
It's a matter of liberty. It's a matter
of like whether I can actually own
something and whether a company takes
something away from me. Am I free to own
things? [music] Is that is that okay for
We're not [music] delusional. I don't
think streamers are necessarily going
anywhere, but I do think that people
[music] are going to become more aware
of how they're spending their money on entertainment.
entertainment.
>> Consumers should make whatever choices
work for them. I'm not here to tell
everybody that they're wrong for having
a Spotify subscription and everybody
just needs to buy vinyl records. But one
of the things that troubles me is that
for [music] people who want to buy
tangible copies, that's becoming
increasingly difficult to do. There are
products [music] that many of us no
longer want and we're still subscribed
to and that's generating revenue for
those companies and it means that a new
company which is offering a product that
we do want they may not have an
opportunity because our money is tied up
somewhere else. But the FTC [music]
is going to keep playing whack-a-ole
unless it actually issues a rule [music]
that applies to every company in the
economy, saying you can't trap people in
subscriptions and you can't lie to
people when they're signing up.
What worries me [music] is I think the
status quo is more >> [music]
>> [music]
>> uh desirable to the companies that
control these markets. And I don't think
they're [music] likely to yield that
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