Do you have too many subscriptions? Join the club.
I can’t remember when we started switching from buying something outright to paying for that good/service on a monthly subscription basis, but it’s now out of control. I did a preliminary look at what I’m paying for. Damn, they piled up.
- Spotify
- Apple Music
- Apple TV+
- Netflix
- Paramount+
- Disney+
- Discovery+ (For my wife’s cooking and real estate shows)
- AMC+ (a holdover from COVID. I thought I canceled that…)
- Amazon
- Pro Tools
- Source Connect (a recording studio program)
- Zoom (the business version)
- Microsoft 365
I’m sure there’s more, too. Like I said, I just glanced at the credit card statement.
Bango is a firm that looks at how we pay for tech. Its new report, Subscriptions Assemble, says that the average US citizen pays for 5.4 subscriptions. Video on demand is first (75%), followed by retail (62%), and music streaming (43%). If you break things down by demo, 18-24-year-olds are all about music with 59% of them paying for a subscription while 56% pay for a video service.
There are apps in the US that help you cancel subs, but I’ve yet to find one that works in Canada. (If you do know of one, let me know through [email protected].)
What does the future hold? Something called “super bundling,” which is a space for resellers to create a central hub for managing subscriptions. Those hubs might be controlled by banks, credit card companies, or telcos.
