My Subscriptions
30 Apr 2023It is the age of the unbundled subscription, and I am wondering how long it will last? And also, what do our subscriptions say about us?
Here are mine in approximate order of acquisition:
- New Yorker Magazine, I have been a New Yorker subscriber for a very long time, and for a period in my life it was almost the only thing I read. I would read one cover-to-cover and by the time I had finished, the next would be in the mail box, and the cycle would repeat.
- Amazon Prime, I was 50/50 on this one until the video was added, and then I was fully hooked. It’s pricey, and intermittently has things I want to watch, so I often flirt with cancelling, but not so far.
- Netflix, for a while this was too cheap to not get, the kids liked some of it, I liked some, there were movies I enjoyed. However, the quality of is going down and the price up so it might be my first streamer cancellation.
- Washington Post, I got lucky and snagged a huge deal for international subscribers which has since disappeared, but got me a $2 / month subscription I couldn’t say “no” to, because I do read a lot of WP content.
- Talking Points Memo, the best independent political journalism site, which was pivoting to subscription years before it became cool. My first political read of every day.
- The New York Times, a very pricey pleasure, but I found myself consuming a lot of NYT content, and finally felt I just had to buck up.
- Disney+, for my son who was dying to see all the Star Wars and Marvel content. Now that he’s watched it all, we are discovering some of their other offerings, they own a quality catalogue.
- Spotify, once the kids were old enough to have smart phones, the demand for Spotify was pretty immediate. I’ve enjoyed having access to this huge pile of music too (BNL forever!).
- Slow Boring / Matt Yglesias, my first sub-stack subscription. You can tell a lot about my political valence from this.
- Volts / David Roberts, highly highly recommended if you are a climate policy nerd, as he covers climate and energy transition from every angle. Never easy, never simplistic, always worth the time.
In the pre-internet days I was also a subscriber to Harper’s and The Atlantic, but dropped both subscriptions some time ago. The articles in Harper’s weren’t grabbing me.
The real tragedy was The Atlantic, which would publish something I really wanted to read less than once a month, so I would end up … reading it on the internet for free. The incentive structure for internet content is pretty relentless in terms of requiring new material very very frequently, and a monthly publication like The Atlantic fits that model quite poorly.
Except for Volts, this list of paid subscriptions is curiously devoid of a huge category of my media consumption: podcasts. I listen to Ezra Klein, Chris Hayes, Strict Scrutiny, Mike Duncan, and Odd Lots for hours a week, for free. This feels… off kilter.
Although I guess a some of these podcasts are brand embassadors for larger organizations (NYT, NBC, Bloomberg), it seems hard to believe advertising is really the best model, particularly for someone like Mike Duncan who has established a pretty big following.
(If Mike Duncan committed to another multi-year history project, I’d sign up!)
One thing I haven’t done yet is tot up all these pieces and see how they compare to my pre-internet subscription / media consumption bill. A weekend newspaper or two every week. Cable television. The three current affairs magazines. The weekly video rental. Even taken ala carte, I bet the old fashioned way of buying did add up over the course of a year.
I’m looking forward to a little more consolidation, particularly in the individual creator category. Someone will crack the “flexible bundle” problem to create the “virtual news magazine” eventually, and I’m looking forward to that.