Evans: Flat-rate subscriptions cap high-spending whales, failing in books
Benedict Evans · Breaking and remaking media · Feb 16, 2024 · at 33:45
Technology analyst Benedict Evans analyzes the unit economics of 'all-you-can-eat' media subscriptions across music, books, and television.
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“With all of these subscription models, you're capping your whales. So with music, you had a small number of people who were paying a hundred dollars a month or more, whatever it was, and now they can only, for CDs, now they can get everything for 10 dollars a month for Spotify, but there's way huge number of other people who weren't paying anything like as much. So net, net, you come out ahead. With books, presuming that e-books had worked, which they didn't really, but if e-books had worked, I could have gone from spending a hundred dollars a month on books or 200 dollars a month on books to spending 10 dollars a month on books. And that would have demolished the industry revenue and there would have not have been enough other people who weren't buying books who bought this subscription service to make up the difference.”
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