TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

Online services have seduced us with their ease and convenience. But as the cost of living surges, are we headed for a Great Unsubscribe?

- GREG DIXON

Here’s a test for you. Without asking the other half, sneaking a peak at your bills or resorting to wild guessing, can you, hand on heart, say you know exactly how many online subscriptions you have?

There’s those meal-kit boxes; they keep turning up on your doorstep. You’ll probably have a TV streaming service, though it’s more likely to be two or three. Oh, and you’ll subscribe to Spotify so you can listen to the same playlist over and over in the car. Isn’t there some cloud storage thing? And what about those apps on your phone? Haven’t the kids got one for their gaming console?

If you’re struggling to remember exactly how many subscriptions you have, you probably don’t know how much it’s costing you each year, either.

In the old days, subscriptions were a great way for consumers to save money. This model still exists for some businesses, such as magazines, which offer regular consumers a significant discount in return for their loyalty (the Listener, for example, is astonishing good value - Ed). But ever since the gurus in Silicon Valley cottoned on to “software as a service” as a way to make even more money, set-and-forget subscriptions have, in a decade, fundamentally reshaped our thinking around consumption. Instead of outright ownership, we now have multiple cash-for-access arrangements just so we can watch TV and listen to music.

Because subscriptions promise steady, predictable cash flow, all kinds of businesses have since jumped on the bandwagon, from those selling undies to cosmetics and meal kits.