[archagon]

I don't know — I think many people have an allergic reaction to subscriptions of any kind. (I know I do.) Also, no one service could possibly encompass every blog, project, or publication that one might want to "tip", and people aren't going to subscribe to more than a handful of services at once. (Especially when things like Medium posts are already provided for free.)

Ultimately, I think people are very charitable when it comes to trivial transactions, but not when they're inconvenienced, and so I think it would be best for everyone to make that usability gap as tiny as possible. Even better if you could actually get something for your quarter: stats showing your tip% compared to peers or friends? Different site styles for high tippers? Personal stats tracking your interests over time? Monetized, unskeezy, free-as-in-freedom "likes": lots of possibilities here.

[criddell]

> I think many people have an allergic reaction to subscriptions of any kind.

Many people? I don't think it's a lot. Look at the subscriber numbers for Netflix. Or consider how many are willing to sign a contract for their cell phone. People will pay if the value is high.

I think the truth is most people don't care very much about the news. Time is scarce and people have a lot of choices about how to spend their time.

[archagon]

Yes, because Netflix and Spotify are amazing, amazing deals. The news? You can read that anywhere. Why would anyone subscribe to a service that offers them what they already have?

And yet, people are more than happy to tip a busker or leave a few bucks for the waiter or bartender. (Even outside the US, where tipping isn't expected.)

[criddell]

There's more than one thing at play here though.

Netflix and Spotify are giving people something they want without a lot of friction. I can get everything on those services for free other places but the experience is worse.

People are tipping buskers because they are sharing a physical location with that person. Put the video of the street performance on YouTube with a tip button and the dollars per view number is going to drop drastically.

Bartenders and waiters are tipped well because they are providing personal service.

[XorNot]

The news fails because to be useful these days you need to consume news from a variety of sources. And you explicitly don't want to only get news from one media empire because then you're just getting whatever bias the CEO wants distributed.

I haven't heard a subscription news model which doesn't feel like its also trying to sunk-cost me into being less critical of the reporting.

[criddell]

I subscribe to Netflix, cable TV, MLBtv, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube Red. The only newsy thing I subscribe to is New Yorker magazine.

Subscribing to multiple services isn't that unusual. There just has to be some value to it.