Scotts point was that these brands have already declined, and that the only thing left is a very strongly loyal subscription base. That perked my ears up for sure.

The classic PE monetization strategy is to take an intangible asset and mine it: The one we all see is buying a quality brandname and mining it into oblivion. Plus various accountancy tricks to move the gold into the PE coffers.

In your example "very strongly loyal subscription base" is the asset.

Fabulous article (I think evergreen through regular edits/updates): https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/the-mechanisms-of-enshittif...

Long on business keywords; a more soulless perspective than the above article: https://ahapartners.co/thinking/goodwill-isnt-a-rounding-err...

Thanks for that, loved the worseonpurpose article