Subscription Renewals In A Time Of War
Posted on Fri, Aug 13, 2010
By Brian Whalley
I have always had a love-hate relationship with subscription services. College was the first time I really subscribed to any kind of content service. When you're in college, getting value from a subscription is a tricky balance - You often have a lot of time, especially late at night, but you have limited money to use to subscribe to them. There are all kinds of flashing lights and blinking things you can buy, and it's a question of what's most important to you to have.
If you're blessed enough to have a job after graduation (like I was), you end up with a lot of disposable income but no time to use it in. I made a lot of good and bad choices about subscriptions in those days. For example:
The Economist - This is one of those great underappreciated magazines. The editorials and writing is top-notch, they have a voice, and they do their job very well. Reading this cover to cover each week will keep you better informed on the world than any of you peers. Reading a 70 page magazine about dense political and economics issues each week isn't easy though - This isn't like breezing through TIME or Us Weekly. I'm a faster than average reader and it would take me five or six hours total to plow through the magazine.
The high price tag for a full subscription doesn't make it easier really - I think I was spending about $250 or so for a six month subscription. Especially in college, that was a serious dent in the beer and pizza fund. In the end, I'd buy a six month subscription, read maybe half of them, cancel my subscription, and then resubscribe a few months later. I found a few good economics blogs online instead and wound up getting most of the coverage I wanted for free, and I wouldn't feel guilty for not reading every post. So yes, zero hedge and naked capitalism replaced a lot of the economist for me.
Pandora - Pandora is without a doubt one of the greatest freemium services on the Internet. This is probably one of the best $50 investments I've ever made. Being able to stream the high-quality music, no ads, and the desktop app for a year was well worth it. Unfortunately, Pandora's subscription system has two problems:
- Their renewals system sucks. There's no way to know if your renewal actually went through or not, and so you are left anxious and worried that you're about to get cut off from your supply of good work music. (This, by the way, was the inspiration for this post.)
- There is no increasing value to being a subscriber for a long period of time. I've had a Pandora One account for over a year, and I'm getting exactly what I bought a year ago. That can be a nice thing in some situations, but there's also been no new features or improvements to their service. Magazines get new writers, software gets new features, Pandora is streaming the same 192 Kb music with the same limitations as last year.
Overall, Pandora is definitely one of the best subscriptions I've ever had.
PASTE - This is that magazine that I wanted to love but that slipped away by accident. The writing was good, the music was very solid, and I agreed with their criticisms at least half the time. Magazines in general are having a hard time in the new media world though, and when I went to renew my subscription, I sent them a check for another $11 (so cheap!) and my renewal card. Even though I'd tried to continue, my issues stopped coming, and my was check never cashed. At the time, they had no way to renew your subscription or change information online, and no telephone subscription support. Basically, physical mail was the only way to do anything, and they weren't responding to my letters. I think PASTE lost me as a subscriber just due to sloppy bookkeeping on their part.
What were some subscription services that you liked or that you still love today? (Or, if you work at PASTE, can you please get my subscription turned back on?)
