The Quiet Grip of the Subscription Economy

ownership vs. access, weird brand relationships, & algorithmic affection

Atop my kitchen cupboard stands a bottled procession of pinot grigio that were the result of a short-lived wine box subscription. Why I felt this was a necessary acquisition I cannot really tell you—though in retrospect, the absurdly good introductory offer may have had something to do with it.

When I moved through the step-by-step screens to cancel the service a few months ago (terrified of being hit with the new, no-longer-reduced price of my next shipment) I was apologized to, negotiated with, sweet-talked, and bribed with yet another offer to continue my subscription—did I not want to become a connoisseur?

Feeling strangely guilty for having absconded with my cheap wine and witnessing the lengths to which I was going to weasel my way out—did I really want to leave? Yes. How about a second chance? No thanks, it’s okay. At last, I finally escaped unscathed from the clutches of another subscription ready to tip-toe onto my credit card statement.

It seems no one is immune to the almighty power of the subscription model these days. Although it’s been around for longer than you think, in the last decade it has reached a boiling point. It’s difficult to keep track of the proliferation of streaming services, food delivery options, beauty boxes, premium apps, and vehicle adds-on that have a cute “only $14.99 a month!” attached to them. But never fear! You can always purchase a subscription service to . . . help track your other subscriptions? How’s that for a dash of postmodern irony. . . .

Ownership

In its inception, the subscription economy was a natural evolution and one that capitalized on the constant flux of digital products and consumer appetite for convenience. Companies were happy to bundle their wares up into a subscription because it meant predictable, perpetual revenue for them and customers, on the other hand, were happy to part with small sums of their monthly income in exchange for the floodgates of freedom to open up before them. The all-you-can-eat buffet had arrived—well, for a recurring fee, that is.

Take something like streaming music services, for instance. Instead of forking over an obligatory 99 cents per track on iTunes, you could now go wild and have a listen to every song in existence on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. It certainly seemed like a no-brainer and a positive innovation to boot. Or take the obsolesce of painstakingly-curated DVD libraries after the sprawling entertainment behemoths Netflix and Hulu took the reins.

In order for the subscription economy to woo consumers, popular attitudes towards the idea of ownership itself had to shift. Turn back the clock to postwar America and the accumulation-of-stuff was something of a patriotic pastime. Midcentury homes brimmed with products that peacetime prosperity had ushered in. Given that an era of collective sacrifice and penny-pinching had just come to a celebratory close, people were eager to wave their dollars and get their hands on things they could touch and call their own. This enterprise became a central barometer of success, and even to some, a marker of self-actualization.

Product ownership persisted as a gold standard for a long time before access-based consumption started to rear its head as a competing alternative. In the modern subscription economy, the line between owning and merely accessing something has become blurred. What’s more, it’s a differentiation that no longer feels very salient.

In some ways, one can also glimpse how a popular nonchalance over ownership dovetails with social media strutting. Pose with a stupidly expensive car and whether you own it or not is besides the point. Influencers have perfected their posturing around ‘access’—advertising to others their easy-breezy admittance to limitless opportunities and their proximity to items and escapades that signal wealth and achievement, regardless of their methods of procurement.

Younger generations, long observed by researchers to favor accumulating experiences over material possessions, have embraced this shift. The rise of minimalism, propelled into the mainstream by the Marie Kondo craze, challenged the idea that owning more possessions necessarily equated to having a better life.

Meanwhile, the 21st century’s growing appetite for leasing models and buy-now-pay-later plans reflects a broader cultural detachment from ownership, treating it as a flexible choice rather than an inherent ideal.

Relationships

Subscription-fever changed how corporations communicate to us. The transactional simplicity of yesteryear has yielded to the “brand relationship” in which customers become locked-in to ongoing dealings. Some positives have ensued from this shift:

Companies have become more sensitive to feedback from consumers, making tweaks to ensure their retention on the subscription rolls. In addition, the requisite user profiles act as treasure troves of data to further personalize offerings, leading to a presumed uptick in value to customers.

But as anyone of us knows, there’s also a downside to these new functionalities. Some subscriptions are notoriously difficult to cancel, some come laced with hidden fees, and others prey on our forgetfulness that they are even there, silently siphoning from our bank accounts with clockwork regularity. What’s more, there’s the queasy consideration of all the data we’re being mined for as a part of this innocent, seemingly mutually-beneficial relationship, plus the realization that at the end of the day, we don’t really own anything.

Subscriptions are by no means new—recall that they’ve been old hat for the print business for ages. But what is new is how widespread they have become, and how dispersed throughout the ranks of commerce they are. It’s difficult to get through a day without fending off at least one of their relentless pitches. Our cultural desensitization to long-term costs only makes matters worse—making it easy to overlook how our subscription expenses tally up into perpetuity.

Companies have also perfected clever ways of gatekeeping features behind paywalls to provoke ok fine, I give in signups. These particular shenanigans bank on customers reaching a threshold of annoyance that then compels them to cave in and break out their credit card.

Subscription perks are also are apt to change on a dime, with big price hikes not uncommon—the carrot dangled a little further out of reach. Swamped with sunk cost bias, many consumers succumb to these higher price tags, but there’s something rather disempowering and defeating about the whole enterprise.

Consumer trust is a necessary fuel for the subscription model. But it's a finicky thing and cannot be abused too egregiously for commercial gain, otherwise brand loyalty crumbles and is difficult to win back. Just as there are those that begrudgingly accept surprise changes to the ‘terms and conditions,’ others bristle at the feeling of being hoodwinked.

One liability of the subscription model is its tendency to amplify consumer emotions. Wrapped in feel-good marketing, subscriptions create the illusion of a buddy-buddy relationship between brand and buyer. But when companies gamble a little too hard with profit over transparency, consumers who bought into the trust-based narrative can feel betrayed and blindsided, expecting a level of consideration that was never truly on offer.

Secretly, one feels a little emotionally bruised, but then hastens to remind themselves, do I have a right to be? Bombarded with the friendly, almost-too-intimate language of personalized push notifications that call us by name and quip about our habits, is it any surprise that the line between our relationships with brands and those with people becomes muddied?

Other subscription-peddlers tantalize with the promises of “a better you” if one upgrades. Framing these signups as “investments” seems to bode well for them—promising consumers that they will get customized recommendations and top-notch service if they can “commit” to a future version of themselves. It’s an ingenious sleight of hand.

What’s rather fascinating about these commercial promises is how much they prey on our desires to "feel known" and to be paid attention to. These are basic human needs that in an age of loneliness laments and social fragmentation, we are increasingly trying to sate via artificial means. The subscription-model with its reliance on the “relationship” thrives in part because it mimics being seen, and perhaps even being cared for, for which there is an enormous social hunger.

Algorithms

This being seen business is part of what gives algorithms their magic touch. They’re nothing but an über-calculated mashup of our digital clicks and taps, and cognitively, we’re able to grasp this unromantic reality. At the same time, our brains have a hard time not attaching an anthropomorphic quality to the almighty algos too. After all, they “curate” for us and sift out the irrelevant stuff. They select what they think we might want to see. They pay attention to our subtleties, to our likes and dislikes. They know us. Even if that causes as shiver of unease at times, in other moments it causes a warmth of familiarity.

And in a world where attention is scarce and feeling understood is a slippery achievement, this manufactured intimacy can be intoxicating. Subscription services, with their hyper-personalization and seamless integration into daily life feed our passivity and tap into our latent hunger to feel cared for and seen. They can anticipate our needs before we articulate them and are masters at whipping something up—just for us—on a moment’s notice. Are we wrong to feel not just algorithmic efficiency, but something eerily close to affection stirred in?

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Maybe subscription-hype is just business, a rational product of supply and demand. But maybe we’ve underestimated the psychological terrain these models encroach upon. The subscription economy isn’t just about steady revenue streams or curated offerings—it captures our ambivalence towards ownership, our emotional complexities with brands, and our deep-seated desires for both regularity and novelty.

After all, life is awash in uncertainty, but subscriptions promise stability. Your favorite shows will always be available, your curated beauty box will arrive like clockwork, your meal kit will take the guesswork out of dinnertime. And here's the really heady part: it’s all tailored to you.

Yet, for all its luxury, when everything is customized, suggested, and auto-renewed, when our desires are anticipated before we’ve even voiced them, we risk slipping into a kind of passive consumption where we no longer ask what we truly want and we learn to feast only on what’s been conveniently placed in front of us. In the end, maybe that’s a shift worth contemplating.