Subscriptions for streaming, for news or data feeds and for software are three different things. Streaming is basically giving me access to whatever music I want from their catalog whenever I want. I know what I will be getting and I'll get it when I want it.

For news of for software it's more like paying a subscription and I have no idea if they will keep on giving me reliable useful news and improving their software or not. It used to be that I payed for the software if I liked it, and when they make a new release they have to get me to pay for it again if I want the bug fixes or new features. With news it used to be that I could just stop buying or reading whenever I wanted and I didn't have to navigate anti-patterns to save my money.

As a consumer I'm happy paying for streaming services but I feel I'm being held captive by software that makes me pay for a subscription. I'm constantly looking for an alternative to the latter and when I find it I cancel immediately.

It seems pretty clear at this point that subscription pricing just works better for software. If you go through the old model, sales/customer acquisition never ends. You constantly have to convince previous customers to repurchase. While if you go down the subscription path, you acquire the customer once and then simply have to continue to provide value to keep them.

I think in the end the user probably gets a better deal as well since the software ends up being much better and they always have the latest features.

When you are a power user the value is undeniable. Things like Github/Gitlab, Office, Photoshop, etc provide way more value than their subscription cost. Where I think its at its worst is for things you hardly use. I don't want to pay a subscription fee for an app I use once a month.

> You constantly have to convince previous customers to repurchase.

This is a good thing. It forces businesses to earn their revenue, not just rent seek.

> I think in the end the user probably gets a better deal as well since the software ends up being much better and they always have the latest features.

Completely disagree. Rent-seekers have no reason to improve their products because their users have to pay even if they do nothing.

You can't just sit around doing nothing and expect to keep customers. Competitors will catch up and beat your offering.

What subscriptions mean is more money spent on development and customer support, less money spent on advertising and sales teams. Because the real money is in continually making the customer feel they are getting good value.

I can't say this is true of any subscription I have ever had.

I'm fine with software subscriptions if I'm a regular/heavy user. The problem is if it's an occasional thing that I need to access data/do a very sometimes task.