The End of the Subscription Era is Coming

This piece exists thanks to the munificence of my paying newsletter subscribers. If you value you my writing on Medium, j<a href="http://futureproofnews.substack.com/subscribe" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">oining them is a great way to support that</a>. Love it or hate it, we’re living in the subscription era. I’m not just talking about streaming platforms, which have been biting the wallet for years, or newspapers and magazines, which have simply migrated their long-term models to a new digital era. No, I’m talking about everything. Beer, insurance, cinema: just three of the crazy subscriptions that I’ve currently taken out. This move stems, obviously, from the collapse of digital advertising and the decline of the high-street. These are two related trends, which have had an enormous impact on the way that product purchasing works. Media enterprises — whether that’s Netflix or the New York Times — cannot rely on advertising revenue to underwrite their costs, and, similarly, the rise of online retail has made the expense of doing IRL business prohibitive. And so, rather than going to a local bottle shop for my craft beers, I have them sent to me once a month. And where product is not available on subscription, those businesses use subscriptions to incentivise loyalty: just look at ASOS Premier, which puts the fast in fast fashion. Anyway, we all already know this because we all experience human life in 2023. But the impact of the rise of the subscription model on the media has been staggering. It has changed the way that people do business — not just the businesses themselves, but the would-be employees and contractors. Just look at this quote from British journalist Emma Gannon, <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/newsletters/substack-six-figures-emma-gannon/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">given to Press Gazette</a>, who has 26,000 subscribers to her lucrative Substack: “One of my passions really is talking about writers being paid fairly — and not just that, but even thriving and making a really good living from writing and creativity — because I think in the past people have often viewed it as a hobby or just a nice to have”. <a href="https://nickfthilton.medium.com/the-end-of-the-subscription-era-is-coming-ed197f252c6a">Read More</a>