And again, I’ll point out that Substack is the worst subscription “deal” of all. $6 to $10 per month PER single subscription. They refuse to offer aggregate subscriptions at a reasonable price so I’m forced to pay for just one or two (not this would, which I would include if it were in an aggregate of like 5 subscriptions for $10 monthly.)
100% agree. While I think Substack has very high quality reporting and writing, a lower priced annual Substack subscription is $60. The NYT is $52, it's daily, and there's a lot more content. Plus, many Substack writers have gotten more aggressive about increasing their rates.
I like the aggregate idea. Right now I pay for 6 subscriptions and rotate them. Wish I could support more.
Where do you pay $52 for the NYT? A month? A year? I am paying $28/month (a big and unannounced recent increase) without The Athletic, the family plan, Wordle, Wirecutter etc. which they are constantly in your face to "upgrade" to. They have become a "platform," and are acting like all the others. They are like also Apple in that it's been a LONG time since they were struggling just to survive.
The Substack collection of writers is competing with The Atlantic and The New Yorker and others for high quality content. Give Ted credit: I know of nobody else on Substack who comes up with high quality stuff like he does every couple days.
The fact is we are flooded with writing, video, music etc like never before. There is no way we can keep up with this tsunami of information.
I used to be in the newspaper industry, and this was their downfall: they could not compete with free and ubiquitous.
The internet and and all the rest of digital technology have changed our world, and not always for the better, so we will have to relearn how to be citizens, and start to look out for our own interests, which are not at all identical to the billionaires and the digital lords who would rule over us.
My own cable provider, Frontier, just got acquired by Verizon. Within days there was a ten dollar a month rate increase. The Frontier CEO exited with a golden parachute worth around $50,000,000, and immediately walked into another cable job with a $20 million signing bonus. This is how business is done in America today.
Luckily, at least the Nation's Management in DC has really got a handle on that whole world situation. Yeah, I am referring to That Guy, and his Associates. And yeah I am being sarcastic.
People: the time to revolt has come.
It's been done before, too. Just ask the people of Boston about that.
FWIW I have never subscribed to Amazon Prime, Spotify, Netflix, etc. and have never wasted my time on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media. They are not needed at all. You can do without them; it is so easy. In fact, it is so much better. We cut the old "cable" cord, but got caught in a whole spider's web of new entanglements. This is not OK!
Maybe they are showing you a different price because you are not a subscriber?
I went to those links and they said $6.25 per week, billed every four weeks, not including the family plan. Now I wonder what the heck is going on. I am paying that much for the basic package.
They are going to hear from me about this.
Welcome to the era of "we know who you are, and this what it will cost YOU."
Seems to be a deal for a new subscriber, like a cable deal.
Be aware they can raise the rates without even a notice to you. I never even saw an email about this last rate increase, which was about 20 percent all at once. And you will never be free from the constant upsell pitches.
It is now double the cost of the Washington Post.
But The Wall Street Journal costs more.
Thing is, they are still the premiere news gathering organization in the country, maybe the world. And we need such a place. So how can you not get it?
You can always critique what they cover or how, but their people know how to get their facts right, which is harder than it seems. Even consistently getting names spelled right is harder than you might think.
I have worked with a few of the people at the Times and I know what it takes to get there. There are so few good newspaper jobs left today the Times gets the pick of the litter. They are even picking up people from the Washington Post, which is being downgraded lately by Bezos.
And I get the Post also, mainly to support them, since it offers less than it used to. Also shows that Bezos is not a universal business genius. He made Amazon and its famous "flywheel" work, but without the advantages of Amazon to work with he doesn't seem any smarter than a lot of other people. And he no longer seems to want to keep democracy from dying in the darkness if it doesn't benefit him.
It's a little ambiguous, I see. I interpreted it as $30 for the next 6 months. Since ur price is more advantageous to the NYT, your interpretation is probably right!
I was just using this as a comparison to Substack rates
There is no way you can do the work the New York Times does on just a dollar week from the readers. So you must have been on an introductory rate.
I don't think the NYT (a newsplatform?) is simply some sort of drug dealer that is out for your money. Although the "money side" people seem to be following the same playbook as everyone else is, a disappointment, and we should push back on that. The newspapers have a job to do in society, and money making for its own sake is not it. If the Times simply turns into another machine to make money, it will decline into irrelevance. Just following money doesn't work.
I know a few people who work at the NYT. One I used to work with at my daily paper, prior to the union-busting campaign which resulted in both of us and a lot of others leaving one way or another. He is an investigative reporter who has worked on big stories at the Times that got Pulitzers. That seems like the glamour job in journalism, but you would not believe how slow and unglamorous that sort of thing actually is...like a lot of glamour jobs. And you really don't want to screw it up, or it could end your career.
Another ex co-worker has an important editing job, which is good way to stay anonymous if you are not in the business. Editing is one of those things that you didn't know you needed, until you no longer had it anymore.
Another is the kid I used to sit behind in sixth grade, smartest kid in the class, who I thought would go into science but went into music instead. He was one of the four arts reviewers that lost their spots due to management wanting a new generation doing things in the "new" New York Times way. He's still there, but easier to miss.
I mention all this just to indicate what kind of people actually work there, and to give an idea where the money goes. Not one of these people went into the business for the money, not did I. Anybody who goes into journalism for the money isn't smart enough to do it.
And nowadays, unless your family already has money, and you can get into a top college, the pipeline is pretty much closed to people like you anyway. And it used to be a low, working class, kind of job...that produced people like Ernest Hemingway.
This is one of the reasons people rightly complain about "the media" being out of touch with regular lives...they don't live them anymore.
They are highly educated now, and live in big city bubbles, mainly New York.
And it’s the same for Netflix, Apple, , etc.: yes, they charge a lot and I hate having so many subscriptions, but relatively speaking, there is a lot of content on those platforms.
Amen! I cannot afford $80 a year multiplied by an endless amount, and there are writers I would like to support but my budget is not endless. I have longed for an aggregate subscription provided I am able to designate the writers who get equal portions of the amount I pay. Your five subs for $10 per month is terrific, provided I pick the writers.
Henry, I’ve brought it up in some of Ted’s posts and elsewhere, and sent something to Substack (no response.) Maybe we need more people pressuring them to do this.
I mean, isn't that what we used to get? newspapers - aggregated news/columns. Cable TV- aggregated channels. I know people who said "a la carte" would be better, but is it?
Substack, in and of itself is ridiculous when it comes to subscriptions, not to mention all the other services out there. Let's give it some numbers, shall we?
I am a FREE member of over 25 Substacks. That means that right now, I get the free content that is available from 25+ different Substacks, including this one.
If I were to pay each one $5 per month, and many are more costly than that, we are talking $125+ per month! Per month! Did I mention that it would cost $125+ per month? That's $1500+ PER YEAR!!
Plus the other subscriptions that are out there? Netflix, Apps of all kinds, the incessant just five dollars here, three dollars there to save the world political emails, it adds up to thousands per year. It's completely insane and completely ridiculous.
For me, subscription prices hit the wall a long time ago. I just say no to subscriptions, period.
You are forgetting that Substack takes a 10% cut of all subscriptions, so they are not especially motivated to enable lower cost subscriptions with no guarantee that would actually produce them more volume subscriptions.
This comes up all the time (also known as "bundling"). It's great for readers, but a horrible proposition for writers. And a strategic business risk for Substack under their current model.
look at Spotify - sure, some artists do great. But many get just a few cents when one of their songs is played a certain number of times. If Substack bundled - so I paid $200 a year for all Substack stuff - would all writers be paid the same? I really don't want to give Andrew Tate anything. Or would they be paid a percentage based on how many people read their stuff? some smaller writers would get close to nothing compared to the top writers whose views are in the hundreds of thousands.
I should clarify my thinking here. I HATE Spotify (and since I’m one of those musicians making those few damn cents, I hate it more than most.) And I agree, not a penny of my subscription bundle fee should go to Andrew Tate or whoever I don’t want to support. What I’m proposing is something like this: for $10 or $15 a month I pick 5 writers I want to follow.
There is a lot of great content on Substack, so yes, I’d also like to be able to rotate writers. The bottom line is that the $5-10 a month for a single writer is too much and it actually limits my ability to read others. Really, I wish the streamers like Netflix, HBO would offer something similar. I know they won’t.
You’ve already answered your question a bit further down thread. But the simple answer is this: your “bundle” idea is predicated on individual writers all making less.
You say you’re a musician. Just for fun, let’s say you sell your CDs for $10. I want to buy one, but man, I also want to buy one from the opening act and another from the headliner. How’s it gonna go When I come up to the merch table and announce that you should drop your price to $3.33 so I can pick up all 3?
We both know the answer will be to tell me to pound sand (and rightfully so), yet when it comes to digital work, people have no issue making this demand, and quickly forget that it’s still real people using their time/talent to put out something that by your own admission you enjoy.
Look I get it; if I was rich. I’d support a ton of artists and writers too. And maybe someday we’ll both make Ted-level money. But until then we all have to make choices. It shouldn’t be on the artist to subsidize them.
P.S. I don’t know why people keep mentioning $10/mo. as a price point. I’ve literally only seen that for 1-2 tech based pubs. Most everyone else is in the $5 neighborhood, with an annual one being even cheaper. Many people will also comp you a subscription no Qs asked.
Your reasoning is why so many of the writers here fight the idea of a bundled subscription. It really would cut down on the margin for us, between what Stripe and Substack takes.
Good points, Kevin. A CD, which I don’t understand why anyone bothers making anymore, cost something to manufacture. Substack doesn’t cost anything. People like Ted, in my proposal, are free to opt out and stay solo. But furthermore, in my system, you may make less per user but get more users overall. Again, Ted can opt out, or choose his pricing tier. Personally, I might consider being a paid subscriber to Ted if he were bundled with others and got about $2 from me. He will never get $5 or $6.
The problem is this, Many of us are already "subscription poor". Yes, $6 a month is not huge by itself, but when everyone establishes a paywall, fewer and fewer people can afford to participate. I do appreciate your method of allowing comments by non-subscribers, this is more than most people allow on SubStack. I'm already paying $1500 or more every year for various subscriptions, I cannot justify or afford any more, no matter how good the content is. It really sucks, particularly when I must say "no" to a good creator.
Adam Kinzinger - I can read him for free, but can't watch his video of the column (which I'm fine with ) and can't comment (sometimes annoying). I can accept that balance; I like reading what he has to say but, like you, I have so many subscriptions already.
I may be only ONE in a hundred or a thousand who can just PULL THE PLUG, but that is what I have done. No more TV subscription, no more movie subscriptions, no social media subscriptions at all. Can I still live or survive without them? How is it that humanity survived and thrived for thousands of years without them too? I buy books. I drink good coffee. I rest a lot.
Hell yeah! I canceled my internet and bought a HDMI to lighting cable adapter for my TV and watch YouTube or whatever for 25 dollars a month. I don’t watch much TV though…
This is good advice. However, I have simply learned how to "live without" most of these services altogether. I no longer watch TV. I prefer to have more money to donate to vital causes...
It's really depressing to me how platforms like Amazon Prime Etc include advertising now and I have to pay to remove the advertising! I remember way back when I thought it was so refreshing not to have to deal with the commercials from regular tv, but now it's on streaming! Amazing. How much is too much??
First of all, I want to thank you for keeping your subscription price civil. It means I can afford to read your work (I don’t like the word “content”).
I am also one of those people who doesn’t have endless funds for thousands of subscriptions and regularly goes through and prunes.
But I also have several other inexpensive or free Substack subscriptions by authors who are very generous with their offerings - at least one of whom I found through you.
I have over 2000 CD's. I don't need or have any music streaming subscriptions.
I think music streaming should be forbidden. Picking individual songs is what a radio station should do.
Musicians focusing on creating single songs for streaming no longer produce concept or theme albums. Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon', The Who's 'Tommy', The Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', Jethro Tull's 'Thick as a Brick', etc.
Each year, two weeks before our annual "all-access" digital NYT sub is about to end — no auto-renewal! — I go online and cancel the sub...within minutes an email response arrives offering us to maintain the "discounted rate" of $4/mo if we re-up, which of course we do. This has worked for the past three renewal cycles, and saves us $21/mo. over the rack rate.
Not sure when the Times Subscription Dept. will catch on, but maybe they don't care. We'll take the W.
Just noting that the NYT is an org that has a lot of on the ground humans that work to generate news (not “content“) on a daily basis. . For me that is a world apart from the Amazon et al streaming svcs that then tack on advertising AFTER you’ve paid for the basic service ($120/ yr now?).
This subscription nonsense also applies to magazines. I tried to renew my subscription to Consumer Reports, only to find out one has to agree to an endless subscription via auto-renewal. Want just one year? Two years? Not allowed. Yes, you can cancel the auto-renewal right after signing up, but who wants to deal with this hassle. You might expect this from an organization that doesn't respect their consumers, but I was very surprised to see Consumer Reports, of all people, engaging in this practice. I chose not to renew. Guess I'll just have to read it at my local library.
Thanks for the reminder. I just canceled the Netflix membership I’ve had since 2013 and specified “too expensive” as the reason. I am going to keep YouTube Premium because I consume more YouTube content than any other platform and it’s worth it to avoid the ads even now.
What I’ve done for years is bounce around from one free or reduced-rate trial to another. By the time the trial is up, you’re usually bored with their selection anyway. And by the time you’re eligible for another trial, there’s new stuff to watch. The only drawback is the services are starting to make the free trials the ad-supported version.
Firefox browser with uBlock Origin and Ghostery extensions. set firefox up to delete all history when you close the browser = no ads. I haven't had ads on you tube for years with this setup. You occassionally get a day when youtube has worked around this but those extensions then get updated and you are back watching.
Just don't subscribe to anything. Sorry Ted. However, if writers, artists, and digital creators gave me a teaser, then the option to consume the rest of the video/audio/article for a $1-$5, I'd spend a lot more on these things. I want to support people, but I dont want recurring charges to forget about. Especially when Im paying people for something Im not using/consuming because I prioritize and prefer the real world.
Subscriptions to periodicals are not new, and simply mean that you get them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. That seems reasonable. They have large fixed costs to cover. The public never sees the amount of work and people it takes to produce these things. You have to be in the business to know.
What doesn't seem reasonable is everybody and his brother automatically setting up subscriptions with auto-renew. Or pulling an Adobe and making it very difficult to get out of renewing.
The whole environment where everything has been un-bundled but auto-auto renews, is not working. Too complex to manage. Was designed by the companies, for the companies. Because no on holds them to account.
My car wash wants me to join their membership"club!" I keep saying NO, and quit one chain (and they are mostly chains now) because I was tired of the constant sales pitches. As consumers we have fewer and fewer options, so it is high time to start holding the companies and politicians responsible.
Trump, what have you done for us lately?
Even the ski industry got bought up by a few big corporations, who seemed to be offering the skiers a good deal if they signed up for whole seasons in advance, but that didn't work out too well in this year of no snow out west. The industry shifted the weather risk onto the customer. A friend took a ski trip to Park City, Utah, a few weeks ago, and was greeted by temps of 75-80 degrees, and nothing but slush and mud to ski on. She says she had plenty of time for facials and massages.
BTW If you haven't read Cory Doctorow, here he is, for free:
To Ted's problem with the printer inks, B&W laser printers like the Brothers are better if you don't need color. And most of us don't. I said goodbye to ink jets years ago and never looked back. Keep an eye on Brother to make sure they don't do the same thing as the others. They also have to make enough money to do the business, but fair is fair.
When my Internet contract ended, I did not renew it because it went up to $80 a month -who needs Internet when your phone bill covers that! I just use my phone for checking email texting and watching a few videos. I just saved $960 a year!!
Want to save real money? Get rid of the phone contract and get a prepaid phone (aka burner phone) like a Tracfone. It screams "low rent" but if you don't use it much it costs very little to operate, like $10/month. The phones themselves can be bought cheap on QVC or HSN. These are low end Samsungs and the like with big screens.
Or can you use your current phone as a mobile hot spot to connect to something with a better screen or keyboard? If you want to watch anything serious the iPhone screen size is a travesty. You could watch the greatest film ever made and if you see it on the small screen you will go "So what?" You haven't seen it!
So these guys showed up in our lives and said “Ive got something really good for you and by the way it’s free.” And we grew accustomed to the idea that we deserved it. We chalked it up to “ well I guess I’m the product…” or maybe we didn’t think about it, but I’ll tell you what, you can only sell so much data and talk about economies of scale before it becomes clear that no matter how much you scale sooner or later if you’re going to pay billions to build libraries of content, the people who consume the content will have to pay for it.
I am not an apologist for the streaming services. I made my living in the movie business for many years as a hired hand. But if you want to watch fantasies every night, you gotta pay to watch fantasies every night.
We can argue about the price, but we can’t argue about that reality. As long as the people who make and deliver your content want to keep on paying their rent consumers will have to pay for it. Me, I turn them on and off like the lights. If I’m not in the room why would I leave them on?
Ted, I just re-up’ed with the Honest Broker. Worth every penny. I subscribe to nothing else except iTunes. I endure the ads on YouTube because I will pay a small streaming fee, but not an exorbitant one to avaricious vampires posing as content providers. Thank you for what you do, Ted.
I haven't had ads on youtube for years. I use firefox as a browser and have uBlock Origin and Ghostery extensions installed and I also get firefox to delete its history every time I close the browser. This seems to work - no ads. There is an on-going arms race between youtube and this set of 'helpers' where the service is a bit slower sometimes. Currently the first time in I get a url saying '...youtube consent...' and an empty page. I hit refresh and then get 'normal service'. Youtube is a bit slower sometimes but quite watchable and, as I said, no ads.
Even if you like other browsers it might be worth setting up firefox for your youtube watchnig with this setup?
And again, I’ll point out that Substack is the worst subscription “deal” of all. $6 to $10 per month PER single subscription. They refuse to offer aggregate subscriptions at a reasonable price so I’m forced to pay for just one or two (not this would, which I would include if it were in an aggregate of like 5 subscriptions for $10 monthly.)
100% agree. While I think Substack has very high quality reporting and writing, a lower priced annual Substack subscription is $60. The NYT is $52, it's daily, and there's a lot more content. Plus, many Substack writers have gotten more aggressive about increasing their rates.
I like the aggregate idea. Right now I pay for 6 subscriptions and rotate them. Wish I could support more.
Where do you pay $52 for the NYT? A month? A year? I am paying $28/month (a big and unannounced recent increase) without The Athletic, the family plan, Wordle, Wirecutter etc. which they are constantly in your face to "upgrade" to. They have become a "platform," and are acting like all the others. They are like also Apple in that it's been a LONG time since they were struggling just to survive.
The Substack collection of writers is competing with The Atlantic and The New Yorker and others for high quality content. Give Ted credit: I know of nobody else on Substack who comes up with high quality stuff like he does every couple days.
The fact is we are flooded with writing, video, music etc like never before. There is no way we can keep up with this tsunami of information.
I used to be in the newspaper industry, and this was their downfall: they could not compete with free and ubiquitous.
The internet and and all the rest of digital technology have changed our world, and not always for the better, so we will have to relearn how to be citizens, and start to look out for our own interests, which are not at all identical to the billionaires and the digital lords who would rule over us.
My own cable provider, Frontier, just got acquired by Verizon. Within days there was a ten dollar a month rate increase. The Frontier CEO exited with a golden parachute worth around $50,000,000, and immediately walked into another cable job with a $20 million signing bonus. This is how business is done in America today.
Luckily, at least the Nation's Management in DC has really got a handle on that whole world situation. Yeah, I am referring to That Guy, and his Associates. And yeah I am being sarcastic.
People: the time to revolt has come.
It's been done before, too. Just ask the people of Boston about that.
FWIW I have never subscribed to Amazon Prime, Spotify, Netflix, etc. and have never wasted my time on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media. They are not needed at all. You can do without them; it is so easy. In fact, it is so much better. We cut the old "cable" cord, but got caught in a whole spider's web of new entanglements. This is not OK!
I checked the NYT website. It said $52/year. https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/all-access?campaignId=8HHWL&ds_c=17994424264&site=google&network=g&campaign_id=17994424264&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17994424264&gclid=CjwKCAjw14zPBhAuEiwAP3-Eb4rbcqlR8EDgNwLey2DvnwJSgEPBvdEMRbT-yXIe1Cryc5jx4Y1gjhoC4nQQAvD_BwE
Maybe they are showing you a different price because you are not a subscriber?
I went to those links and they said $6.25 per week, billed every four weeks, not including the family plan. Now I wonder what the heck is going on. I am paying that much for the basic package.
They are going to hear from me about this.
Welcome to the era of "we know who you are, and this what it will cost YOU."
It gives me $1/week billed as $1/week first 24 weeks, and then $30/mo, so about $204/yr.
Seems to be a deal for a new subscriber, like a cable deal.
Be aware they can raise the rates without even a notice to you. I never even saw an email about this last rate increase, which was about 20 percent all at once. And you will never be free from the constant upsell pitches.
It is now double the cost of the Washington Post.
But The Wall Street Journal costs more.
Thing is, they are still the premiere news gathering organization in the country, maybe the world. And we need such a place. So how can you not get it?
You can always critique what they cover or how, but their people know how to get their facts right, which is harder than it seems. Even consistently getting names spelled right is harder than you might think.
I have worked with a few of the people at the Times and I know what it takes to get there. There are so few good newspaper jobs left today the Times gets the pick of the litter. They are even picking up people from the Washington Post, which is being downgraded lately by Bezos.
And I get the Post also, mainly to support them, since it offers less than it used to. Also shows that Bezos is not a universal business genius. He made Amazon and its famous "flywheel" work, but without the advantages of Amazon to work with he doesn't seem any smarter than a lot of other people. And he no longer seems to want to keep democracy from dying in the darkness if it doesn't benefit him.
It's a little ambiguous, I see. I interpreted it as $30 for the next 6 months. Since ur price is more advantageous to the NYT, your interpretation is probably right!
I was just using this as a comparison to Substack rates
There is no way you can do the work the New York Times does on just a dollar week from the readers. So you must have been on an introductory rate.
I don't think the NYT (a newsplatform?) is simply some sort of drug dealer that is out for your money. Although the "money side" people seem to be following the same playbook as everyone else is, a disappointment, and we should push back on that. The newspapers have a job to do in society, and money making for its own sake is not it. If the Times simply turns into another machine to make money, it will decline into irrelevance. Just following money doesn't work.
I know a few people who work at the NYT. One I used to work with at my daily paper, prior to the union-busting campaign which resulted in both of us and a lot of others leaving one way or another. He is an investigative reporter who has worked on big stories at the Times that got Pulitzers. That seems like the glamour job in journalism, but you would not believe how slow and unglamorous that sort of thing actually is...like a lot of glamour jobs. And you really don't want to screw it up, or it could end your career.
Another ex co-worker has an important editing job, which is good way to stay anonymous if you are not in the business. Editing is one of those things that you didn't know you needed, until you no longer had it anymore.
Another is the kid I used to sit behind in sixth grade, smartest kid in the class, who I thought would go into science but went into music instead. He was one of the four arts reviewers that lost their spots due to management wanting a new generation doing things in the "new" New York Times way. He's still there, but easier to miss.
I mention all this just to indicate what kind of people actually work there, and to give an idea where the money goes. Not one of these people went into the business for the money, not did I. Anybody who goes into journalism for the money isn't smart enough to do it.
And nowadays, unless your family already has money, and you can get into a top college, the pipeline is pretty much closed to people like you anyway. And it used to be a low, working class, kind of job...that produced people like Ernest Hemingway.
This is one of the reasons people rightly complain about "the media" being out of touch with regular lives...they don't live them anymore.
They are highly educated now, and live in big city bubbles, mainly New York.
Rotate mine as well
And it’s the same for Netflix, Apple, , etc.: yes, they charge a lot and I hate having so many subscriptions, but relatively speaking, there is a lot of content on those platforms.
Amen! I cannot afford $80 a year multiplied by an endless amount, and there are writers I would like to support but my budget is not endless. I have longed for an aggregate subscription provided I am able to designate the writers who get equal portions of the amount I pay. Your five subs for $10 per month is terrific, provided I pick the writers.
I’ve never heard of the idea of aggregate subscription, that’s a hell of an idea.
You’d think some people might join forces and just do that themselves.
Henry, I’ve brought it up in some of Ted’s posts and elsewhere, and sent something to Substack (no response.) Maybe we need more people pressuring them to do this.
Netflix, Apple TV, etc are aggregate subscriptions, they just don't call them that.
How is Netflix and aggregator? (Just asking, maybe I don’t understand)
In the sense that they aggregate lots of content from various production companies, along with their own.
Got it
That’s exactly right.
I mean, isn't that what we used to get? newspapers - aggregated news/columns. Cable TV- aggregated channels. I know people who said "a la carte" would be better, but is it?
The Bulwark is a bundler... I like that.
I’ve noticed that about the Bulwark now that you say that.
I believe that in the old days, we called those "magazines".
Substack, in and of itself is ridiculous when it comes to subscriptions, not to mention all the other services out there. Let's give it some numbers, shall we?
I am a FREE member of over 25 Substacks. That means that right now, I get the free content that is available from 25+ different Substacks, including this one.
If I were to pay each one $5 per month, and many are more costly than that, we are talking $125+ per month! Per month! Did I mention that it would cost $125+ per month? That's $1500+ PER YEAR!!
Plus the other subscriptions that are out there? Netflix, Apps of all kinds, the incessant just five dollars here, three dollars there to save the world political emails, it adds up to thousands per year. It's completely insane and completely ridiculous.
For me, subscription prices hit the wall a long time ago. I just say no to subscriptions, period.
Exactly my point. The whole proposition is ridiculous.
You are forgetting that Substack takes a 10% cut of all subscriptions, so they are not especially motivated to enable lower cost subscriptions with no guarantee that would actually produce them more volume subscriptions.
And many writers here are greedy.
Yes, Substack wasn't designed for such a banquet. More like a snack or two. We should agitate for aggregation for more than 2 subscriptions.
This comes up all the time (also known as "bundling"). It's great for readers, but a horrible proposition for writers. And a strategic business risk for Substack under their current model.
Why is it a horrible proposition for writers? Why a business risk to Substack? Please explain.
look at Spotify - sure, some artists do great. But many get just a few cents when one of their songs is played a certain number of times. If Substack bundled - so I paid $200 a year for all Substack stuff - would all writers be paid the same? I really don't want to give Andrew Tate anything. Or would they be paid a percentage based on how many people read their stuff? some smaller writers would get close to nothing compared to the top writers whose views are in the hundreds of thousands.
I should clarify my thinking here. I HATE Spotify (and since I’m one of those musicians making those few damn cents, I hate it more than most.) And I agree, not a penny of my subscription bundle fee should go to Andrew Tate or whoever I don’t want to support. What I’m proposing is something like this: for $10 or $15 a month I pick 5 writers I want to follow.
There is a lot of great content on Substack, so yes, I’d also like to be able to rotate writers. The bottom line is that the $5-10 a month for a single writer is too much and it actually limits my ability to read others. Really, I wish the streamers like Netflix, HBO would offer something similar. I know they won’t.
yeah, that would be nice to be able to choose a bundle of writers on SubStack.... good point
You’ve already answered your question a bit further down thread. But the simple answer is this: your “bundle” idea is predicated on individual writers all making less.
You say you’re a musician. Just for fun, let’s say you sell your CDs for $10. I want to buy one, but man, I also want to buy one from the opening act and another from the headliner. How’s it gonna go When I come up to the merch table and announce that you should drop your price to $3.33 so I can pick up all 3?
We both know the answer will be to tell me to pound sand (and rightfully so), yet when it comes to digital work, people have no issue making this demand, and quickly forget that it’s still real people using their time/talent to put out something that by your own admission you enjoy.
Look I get it; if I was rich. I’d support a ton of artists and writers too. And maybe someday we’ll both make Ted-level money. But until then we all have to make choices. It shouldn’t be on the artist to subsidize them.
P.S. I don’t know why people keep mentioning $10/mo. as a price point. I’ve literally only seen that for 1-2 tech based pubs. Most everyone else is in the $5 neighborhood, with an annual one being even cheaper. Many people will also comp you a subscription no Qs asked.
Your reasoning is why so many of the writers here fight the idea of a bundled subscription. It really would cut down on the margin for us, between what Stripe and Substack takes.
Good points, Kevin. A CD, which I don’t understand why anyone bothers making anymore, cost something to manufacture. Substack doesn’t cost anything. People like Ted, in my proposal, are free to opt out and stay solo. But furthermore, in my system, you may make less per user but get more users overall. Again, Ted can opt out, or choose his pricing tier. Personally, I might consider being a paid subscriber to Ted if he were bundled with others and got about $2 from me. He will never get $5 or $6.
I agree, it's easy to drop several hundred a year on just a few SubStack subscriptions. But they are ad-free.
For now
Yes
The problem is this, Many of us are already "subscription poor". Yes, $6 a month is not huge by itself, but when everyone establishes a paywall, fewer and fewer people can afford to participate. I do appreciate your method of allowing comments by non-subscribers, this is more than most people allow on SubStack. I'm already paying $1500 or more every year for various subscriptions, I cannot justify or afford any more, no matter how good the content is. It really sucks, particularly when I must say "no" to a good creator.
Adam Kinzinger - I can read him for free, but can't watch his video of the column (which I'm fine with ) and can't comment (sometimes annoying). I can accept that balance; I like reading what he has to say but, like you, I have so many subscriptions already.
I may be only ONE in a hundred or a thousand who can just PULL THE PLUG, but that is what I have done. No more TV subscription, no more movie subscriptions, no social media subscriptions at all. Can I still live or survive without them? How is it that humanity survived and thrived for thousands of years without them too? I buy books. I drink good coffee. I rest a lot.
Hell yeah! I canceled my internet and bought a HDMI to lighting cable adapter for my TV and watch YouTube or whatever for 25 dollars a month. I don’t watch much TV though…
your post triggered a memory thinking about when cord cutting was a thing now many are choosing to go the other way and unplug
This is good advice. However, I have simply learned how to "live without" most of these services altogether. I no longer watch TV. I prefer to have more money to donate to vital causes...
Yeah, the older I get the less of this stuff I seem to “need.”
I use a TV antenna.
That's great, I suppose.
But some of us live in countries where terrestrial TV broadcasting doesn't exist anymore.
It's really depressing to me how platforms like Amazon Prime Etc include advertising now and I have to pay to remove the advertising! I remember way back when I thought it was so refreshing not to have to deal with the commercials from regular tv, but now it's on streaming! Amazing. How much is too much??
First of all, I want to thank you for keeping your subscription price civil. It means I can afford to read your work (I don’t like the word “content”).
I am also one of those people who doesn’t have endless funds for thousands of subscriptions and regularly goes through and prunes.
But I also have several other inexpensive or free Substack subscriptions by authors who are very generous with their offerings - at least one of whom I found through you.
It goes to show there is goodness in the world.
I don’t pay a penny to Spotify. They can kiss my butt.
I have over 2000 CD's. I don't need or have any music streaming subscriptions.
I think music streaming should be forbidden. Picking individual songs is what a radio station should do.
Musicians focusing on creating single songs for streaming no longer produce concept or theme albums. Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon', The Who's 'Tommy', The Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', Jethro Tull's 'Thick as a Brick', etc.
Maybe we are simply over-entertained.
That is an excellent point.
Each year, two weeks before our annual "all-access" digital NYT sub is about to end — no auto-renewal! — I go online and cancel the sub...within minutes an email response arrives offering us to maintain the "discounted rate" of $4/mo if we re-up, which of course we do. This has worked for the past three renewal cycles, and saves us $21/mo. over the rack rate.
Not sure when the Times Subscription Dept. will catch on, but maybe they don't care. We'll take the W.
Just noting that the NYT is an org that has a lot of on the ground humans that work to generate news (not “content“) on a daily basis. . For me that is a world apart from the Amazon et al streaming svcs that then tack on advertising AFTER you’ve paid for the basic service ($120/ yr now?).
Agreed, but for us pensioners, a deal is a deal, full stop.
This subscription nonsense also applies to magazines. I tried to renew my subscription to Consumer Reports, only to find out one has to agree to an endless subscription via auto-renewal. Want just one year? Two years? Not allowed. Yes, you can cancel the auto-renewal right after signing up, but who wants to deal with this hassle. You might expect this from an organization that doesn't respect their consumers, but I was very surprised to see Consumer Reports, of all people, engaging in this practice. I chose not to renew. Guess I'll just have to read it at my local library.
I believe PayPal will let you sign-up for subscriptions that don't auto-renew.
Also you check out https://app.privacy.com/login, which allows you to create virtual credit cards that expire after one use.
Thanks for the reminder. I just canceled the Netflix membership I’ve had since 2013 and specified “too expensive” as the reason. I am going to keep YouTube Premium because I consume more YouTube content than any other platform and it’s worth it to avoid the ads even now.
What I’ve done for years is bounce around from one free or reduced-rate trial to another. By the time the trial is up, you’re usually bored with their selection anyway. And by the time you’re eligible for another trial, there’s new stuff to watch. The only drawback is the services are starting to make the free trials the ad-supported version.
Firefox browser with uBlock Origin and Ghostery extensions. set firefox up to delete all history when you close the browser = no ads. I haven't had ads on you tube for years with this setup. You occassionally get a day when youtube has worked around this but those extensions then get updated and you are back watching.
Loathe the subscription model's mass adoption. Nickel and diming everyone to death, and everyone forgets the subscriptions they pay for and dont use.
Once a year, turn off auto billing on your credit card for a month. You’ll quickly weed out those forgotten subscriptions.
Pro tip!
Just don't subscribe to anything. Sorry Ted. However, if writers, artists, and digital creators gave me a teaser, then the option to consume the rest of the video/audio/article for a $1-$5, I'd spend a lot more on these things. I want to support people, but I dont want recurring charges to forget about. Especially when Im paying people for something Im not using/consuming because I prioritize and prefer the real world.
Subscriptions to periodicals are not new, and simply mean that you get them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. That seems reasonable. They have large fixed costs to cover. The public never sees the amount of work and people it takes to produce these things. You have to be in the business to know.
What doesn't seem reasonable is everybody and his brother automatically setting up subscriptions with auto-renew. Or pulling an Adobe and making it very difficult to get out of renewing.
The whole environment where everything has been un-bundled but auto-auto renews, is not working. Too complex to manage. Was designed by the companies, for the companies. Because no on holds them to account.
My car wash wants me to join their membership"club!" I keep saying NO, and quit one chain (and they are mostly chains now) because I was tired of the constant sales pitches. As consumers we have fewer and fewer options, so it is high time to start holding the companies and politicians responsible.
Trump, what have you done for us lately?
Even the ski industry got bought up by a few big corporations, who seemed to be offering the skiers a good deal if they signed up for whole seasons in advance, but that didn't work out too well in this year of no snow out west. The industry shifted the weather risk onto the customer. A friend took a ski trip to Park City, Utah, a few weeks ago, and was greeted by temps of 75-80 degrees, and nothing but slush and mud to ski on. She says she had plenty of time for facials and massages.
BTW If you haven't read Cory Doctorow, here he is, for free:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed
To Ted's problem with the printer inks, B&W laser printers like the Brothers are better if you don't need color. And most of us don't. I said goodbye to ink jets years ago and never looked back. Keep an eye on Brother to make sure they don't do the same thing as the others. They also have to make enough money to do the business, but fair is fair.
I bypass most teasers.
It’s still better than cable which still promotes Faux nooz.
When my Internet contract ended, I did not renew it because it went up to $80 a month -who needs Internet when your phone bill covers that! I just use my phone for checking email texting and watching a few videos. I just saved $960 a year!!
And cast to TV from phone. Roku has the Roku Channel which has decent “free”’stuff.
Want to save real money? Get rid of the phone contract and get a prepaid phone (aka burner phone) like a Tracfone. It screams "low rent" but if you don't use it much it costs very little to operate, like $10/month. The phones themselves can be bought cheap on QVC or HSN. These are low end Samsungs and the like with big screens.
Or can you use your current phone as a mobile hot spot to connect to something with a better screen or keyboard? If you want to watch anything serious the iPhone screen size is a travesty. You could watch the greatest film ever made and if you see it on the small screen you will go "So what?" You haven't seen it!
One thing that wasn't brought up is the recent rise of multiple subscriptions inside a subscription. YouTube and Amazon Prime are full of them now.
So these guys showed up in our lives and said “Ive got something really good for you and by the way it’s free.” And we grew accustomed to the idea that we deserved it. We chalked it up to “ well I guess I’m the product…” or maybe we didn’t think about it, but I’ll tell you what, you can only sell so much data and talk about economies of scale before it becomes clear that no matter how much you scale sooner or later if you’re going to pay billions to build libraries of content, the people who consume the content will have to pay for it.
I am not an apologist for the streaming services. I made my living in the movie business for many years as a hired hand. But if you want to watch fantasies every night, you gotta pay to watch fantasies every night.
We can argue about the price, but we can’t argue about that reality. As long as the people who make and deliver your content want to keep on paying their rent consumers will have to pay for it. Me, I turn them on and off like the lights. If I’m not in the room why would I leave them on?
Technically you can go to the library and not pay a dime.
Great points Andy. Cheers.
Ted, I just re-up’ed with the Honest Broker. Worth every penny. I subscribe to nothing else except iTunes. I endure the ads on YouTube because I will pay a small streaming fee, but not an exorbitant one to avaricious vampires posing as content providers. Thank you for what you do, Ted.
I haven't had ads on youtube for years. I use firefox as a browser and have uBlock Origin and Ghostery extensions installed and I also get firefox to delete its history every time I close the browser. This seems to work - no ads. There is an on-going arms race between youtube and this set of 'helpers' where the service is a bit slower sometimes. Currently the first time in I get a url saying '...youtube consent...' and an empty page. I hit refresh and then get 'normal service'. Youtube is a bit slower sometimes but quite watchable and, as I said, no ads.
Even if you like other browsers it might be worth setting up firefox for your youtube watchnig with this setup?
Nice workaround but a bit high tech for my skill set. :)