The subscription economy is usually discussed from the consumer’s perspective. The convenience. The flexibility. The ability to access vast catalogues of content, software, and services for a manageable monthly fee.
It is worth occasionally looking at it from the other direction.
The Shift in Risk
When you bought a CD in 1995, the risk in the transaction was shared. The label took a risk on manufacturing and distributing a physical product. The retailer took a risk on stocking it. You took a risk that it would be worth the price on the sticker. If it was not, that was your problem. If it was, it was yours permanently.
The subscription model redistributes that risk almost entirely onto the consumer.
The provider risks very little on any individual subscriber. The cost of adding one more person to a streaming platform is negligible. The infrastructure is already built. The content is already licensed. What the provider has done is convert a series of uncertain individual purchases into a predictable recurring revenue stream, which is, from a business perspective, a considerably more comfortable position.
The consumer, meanwhile, has traded ownership for access. They have no asset at the end of the arrangement. They cannot resell what they have paid for. They cannot lend it, inherit it, or transfer it. If the service changes its pricing, alters its catalogue, or ceases to exist, they have no recourse.
The Resale Economy That Disappeared
One of the less-discussed costs of the shift to subscriptions is what happened to the secondary market.
Physical media had a resale economy. You could sell your CDs, your DVDs, your games. You could buy other people’s. Second-hand record shops, charity shops, car boot sales, these were real markets, with real prices, that allowed the value embedded in physical media to circulate. The original purchase was not the end of the object’s economic life.
Digital content has no equivalent. You cannot sell your streaming history. You cannot transfer your downloaded films to another account. The licence you hold is personal, non-transferable, and expires when the service decides it does. The resale economy simply does not exist, which means that every pound you spend on subscriptions leaves your hands permanently, with no prospect of any portion of it returning.
This is not a small thing. The second-hand market in physical media represented a meaningful transfer of value between consumers. Its disappearance represents a meaningful transfer of value from consumers to providers.
Whose Convenience, Exactly?
Subscriptions are routinely described as convenient. They are, in certain respects. Access to an enormous catalogue of music or film for a fixed monthly price is genuinely useful.
But the convenience operates asymmetrically. It is convenient for you to access the content. It is also convenient for the provider to change the content, alter the price, modify the terms, and retain the revenue from subscribers who have forgotten they are still paying.
The word "convenience" implies a benefit to the person using the service. It is worth noticing how much of the convenience in the subscription model flows in the other direction.
What a Fairer Subscription Economy Might Look Like
None of this is an argument that subscriptions should not exist. They suit certain types of consumption very well, and there are genuine cases where access is preferable to ownership.
The argument is for clarity about what the arrangement actually is. Consumer rights guidance from Citizens Advice is clear on the legal position: a subscription is not a purchase. It confers no ownership, no resale rights, and no permanence. The convenience it offers comes at a cost that is not always visible on the pricing page.
Understanding that cost does not require cancelling anything. It simply requires seeing the bargain clearly, which, perhaps not coincidentally, is something the subscription economy has never been particularly interested in helping you do.
Read alongside How We Stopped Owning Things Without Noticing, Why Subscription Fatigue Was Designed That Way, and Nothing to Show for It for the broader economics of access over ownership.
Nothing to Show for It by Ian Wilkinson expands this argument into a full account of how ownership gave way to access, and what was quietly lost in the exchange. Paperback £9.99. Kindle £2.99. Free on Kindle Unlimited. Read more about the book, see edition details, and buy your copy here.