A Sarah McBride AP article on whether or not satellite radio is here to stay has sparked a lively dialog in the comments under its digg link. Lots of anecdotes: "I hate my service 'cause they they don't play enough classics," versus "I love my service, they play lots of stuff new to me" and on and on but one comment in particular caught my attention: Topher06 can't stand the trend of everything moving to subscription. Hardly news anymore, but how many services can one consumer sign up for? And which service will be first to go once a little fiscal reassessment is undertaken? Need is certainly not a limiting factor -- but the ease at which a new service manages to integrate into the consumer's life and feel like a need might be.Satellite radio has some way to go on a hypothetical "gotta have it, can't live without it" scale. News
junkies, for example, might regard living without CNN or Fox News (or choose your own poison) the same thing as not having television at all, but sat radio has a long way to go before it can be seen as a competitor on that level of essentials.I need a Blckberry, because if I only have access to email while I'm at my desk, I'd get little else done there. On the other hand, I signed up to a subscription audiobook service under some fantastical delusion that I would have time to listen to that content I gained. Call it signing up on dream. The time never materialized, and I'll probably break even, after factoring in the free iPod nano I got for accepting the contract. Certainly, at the end of the year, if I'm still looking at a stack on unused audiobook credits about to expire, I'll cancel.
Canceling services is a chore in itself. Companies try many tactics to retain subscribers, but consumers are well aware of this now, and concern over the difficulty of canceling an unwanted service -- along with difficulty trying to get, say, an autopayment off a credit card, are themselves limiting factors to consumers considering signing up for a new service. Why buy trouble?
Michael Canfield is a private investor, a business and media writer, living in Seattle. He doesn't own stock in companies discussed in the post.
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