There’s an obvious problem with the subscription business model. While most people will listen to a song they like an untold number of times, people may listen to a podcast episode once; maybe twice? And then all it does is take up space. Not exactly a good use of valuable and expensive storage space and now the geniuses at these businesses are taking notice.

Apple has quietly tightened its reporting of how many people listen to podcasts, sending shock waves through an embattled audio industry still reeling from the end of the COVID-era production bubble. The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

But while few users noticed the shift, some of the biggest podcasts in the world saw their official listener numbers drop dramatically. Long-running shows that publish frequently were hit particularly hard. A user who listened to a show like The New York Times’ The Daily a few times, subscribed, but stopped listening would continue to count as a download indefinitely.
— Semafor, 1/14/24

I’ve commented on, what I consider, the failed subscription business model because while you pay for certain things you like, you’re also forced to pay for many more things you don’t. In this case, you may have a person you enjoy hearing from but you’re also paying for the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Meghan Markle, and almost every cable news personality and it’s doubtful anything you hear makes you want to hear it over and over again.

Even podcast executives believe the changes are part of a necessary shakeout in an industry whose bubbly inflation helped create the industry’s recent boom and bust.

But privately, reactions to the change have ranged from mild annoyance to legitimate alarm. Some advertising deals were inked under the assumption that shows had audiences they no longer have. The update also means that some shows could struggle to meet minimum download agreements. The fact that no major podcasts would talk about how much they lost is a sign that many big shows aren’t ready to admit how much their audiences have shrunk.

This could create some real problems in an industry that, in some cases, paid hefty up-front money to “personalities” and at some point will have to have awkward discussions with narcissists involving pay restructure because few are really rushing to hear what they say.

But even if it is not responsible for a sudden drop, podcast publishers are bracing themselves for a decline. “From our detailed analysis, these adjustments will largely impact download numbers on back catalog episodes, which are typically categorized as content older than 7 days,” Acast CEO Ross Adams wrote in a blog post on Thursday.‍ “However, it’s important to note that these adjustments do not reflect a change in the unique audience a podcast has, simply the number of downloads per user. On the whole, this will mean more accurate measurement and a more efficient depiction of a podcast’s total listens.”

You know who loves accuracy? Advertisers. And you know who doesn’t love paying for impressions that aren’t really impressions? Yeah, you get the drift. As this plays out, I will be interested to see how advertisers react to these changes.
— The Verge, 10/17/23

I can’t imagine how much a publisher pays on a monthly basis for storage, or if they own their own servers, how much it’s going to cost to expand, but if you’re having trouble getting advertisers or can’t tell them accurately what the reach to consumers is, that could be a problem.

It appears it now is.

Granted, a lot of the discussion centers around their reach to a smartphone, which nowadays also connects and sends content to automobiles (that strategically stopped putting CD players in them a few years ago). When phone manufacturers upgrade, it creates havoc downwind and that’s part of the problem.

Again, the subscription business model was ripe for those who wanted to take a website public, make a gob of money off screwed content creators, hire hundreds of employees, meanwhile forcing their consumers to pay for programming they like and programming they never consume. That is a model doomed for failure and it’s only a matter of time, especially when consumers revolt.

The geniuses as NBC decided to buck tradition, screw over the millions of football fans who already paid for cable subscriptions, and made the Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs playoff game available only to those who bought a subscription to Peacock, and went as far as openly bragging about it. Yet another act of public relations arrogance, thus stupidity.

And if it’s any consolation….

Peacock finished the June quarter with 24 million subscribers, up from 22 million at the end of March — but the streamer lost $651 million over the same three months.

Sadly, those losses have pretty much become par for the course. The NBCUniversal streaming platform lost $704 million in the prior quarter (and $467 million in Q2 2022). The company expects to post “peak” losses from streaming — to the tune of $3 billion — in 2023. Good thing Comcast is soon to come into about $9 billion in streaming bucks through the sale of its Hulu stake to Disney.
— Yahoo! Entertainment, 7/27/23

Chances are very good that once their tech-challenged, NFL playoff broadcasts are over, Peacock subscription will be cancelled en masse and they have it coming.

It’s no surprise the podcast industry is cratering. Most of those, who deem themselves important, aren’t creative enough to find new ways to talk about the same thing. They seem to believe an audience will be perpetually enamored simply because they said it. But they are still a part of what we used to refer to as the “entertainment business”. With few exceptions, people talking isn’t really all that entertaining.

Especially when it comes to people who have nothing else of value to give the world.

Nice, right?

Subscription business models are based on the idea of selling a product or service to receive monthly or yearly recurring subscription revenue. They focus on customer retention over customer acquisition. In essence, subscription business models focus on the way revenue is made so that a single customer pays multiple payments for prolonged access to a good or service instead of a large upfront one-time price. Now, the economy is trending toward more subscriptions instead of ownership for cars, software, entertainment, and shopping. This increases the lifetime value (LTV) of the customer.
— Investopedia

When you have to call “customer service” and have to endure a Filipino accent when being told what they can’t (or won’t) do, do you feel like a valued customer after they have your money?

Corporations make you pay for monthly subscriptions despite the fact that some of the services provided are those you really don’t want and would never pay for on their own.

You buy a cell phone so you can communicate instantly with others, but you also get a device that spies on you, “free” functionality apps that also sell your data, divulges your location to people you don’t know, and based on your activity online, sends you dozens of annoying ads per month for products you have no intention of buying.

Granted, there are some “free” products that people can obtain like Facebook, Twitter, and their Big Tech subsidiaries. They just sell your personal data to advertisers.

Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly claims Facebook does not sell data. The statement has become a shield in the tumultuous era for the company. But is it true?

“As a data scientist, I am shocked that anyone continues to believe this claim,” wrote Michael Kosinski, assistant professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, in a New York Times opinion piece. “Every time you click on a Facebook ad, Facebook sells data on you to that advertiser.”
— AZCentral, 2/15/19

Multiply that within the estimated 1.9 billion daily users, that’s a good chunk of income from what in essence are just social media websites and after they get user data, they can abuse their customers as they wish. That’s a business model probably not taught at the Wharton School… yet.

Music streaming subscriptions give you access to genres you appreciate, thus there may be two or three channels of music you’d religiously listen to. But as you (and millions of others) are paying for the service on a monthly basis, you’re also paying for genres you may genuinely dislike and artists you really abhor whose music you would never purchase.

Streaming services, like the music companies of old, screw the artists, but that’s another story altogether.

Cable companies charge monthly for hundreds of television channels while there may be less than a handful any given person may watch on a consistent basis. But since millions of viewers are paying (in some cases) close to a hundred bucks a month for bundle packages, consumers are paying for channels that would go belly up if they had to compete in an ‘à la carte’ environment.

Corporations like Amazon, thanks to their “Prime” subscriptions, are in the entertainment business, are actually making product. Some movie companies are in the streaming business. Simply by adding a “plus” on their brand gives you access to new productions of varying quality, old movies and shows you probably viewed years ago and will probably never voluntarily view again. Consistently good product is another thing, but at least Hollywood is getting paid….

But this is the current business model for corporations who want a steady stream of income despite how well their product performs and/or if all the “services” provided are what people really want or will use.

Apple Inc. is working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, a move that could make device ownership similar to paying a monthly app fee, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The service would be Apple’s biggest push yet into automatically recurring sales, allowing users to subscribe to hardware for the first time — rather than just digital services.
— Bloomberg, 3/24/22

So now it’s not enough for families to pay outrageous monthly fees to pay for the phone and service but now Apple wants to charge people for the device’s guts every 30 days.

People used to buy physical newspapers because the wanted to be informed of local and national news. But now that the talent pool has degraded the product to the point where people just find the news they want online for free, some companies are putting out introductory hooks that can be as low as a dollar a week.

 
Seriously, if someone is trying to get you to buy something for a dollar a week, just how good is that product? In some cases, all you’re paying for is the privilege of seeing and hearing people blab. On the course of one’s daily activities, paying people (some of whom you may not choose to hear) to talk doesn’t exactly sound like a wise use of the monthly budget.

For the most part, when you pay a subscription you are subsidizing mediocrity. Some companies are making you choose between paying for crap or losing functionality of an expensive device you either bought outright or are making more monthly payments on.

While there are some aspects of subscription services you need or enjoy, you’re also paying for services and/or talent you may truly despise. That’s how they all stay relevant, fed and you get to pay for it. This is the current business model so suck it up.

That is until the Internet goes down.