this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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What is the most useless app that you have seen being given as a subscription?

For me, I tried a 'minimalist' launcher app for Android that had a 7 day trial or something and they had a yearly subscription based model for it. I was aghast. I would literally expect the app to blow my mind and do everything one can assume to go that way. In a world, where Nova Launcher (Yes, I know it has been acquired by Branch folks but it still is a sturdy one) or Niagara exist plus many alternatives including minimalist ones on F Droid, the dev must be releasing revolutionary stuff to factor in a subscription service.

Second, is a controversial choice, since it's free tier is quite good and people like it so much. But, Pocketcasts. I checked it's yearly price the other day, and boy, in my country, I can subscribe to Google Play Pass, YouTube Premium and Spotify and still have money left before I hit the ceiling what Pocketcasts is asking for paid upgrade.

Also, what are your views on one time purchase vs subscriptions? Personally, I find it much easier to purchase, if it's good enough even if it was piratable, something if it is a one time purchase rather than repetitive.

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[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What. If that business model actually works for him, something is wrong with this world.

[–] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 15 points 11 months ago

It's the business model of build or buy trust and then exploit it until you're loaded and your former customers all hate you. But you're loaded.

And yeah, there's something wrong with this world.

[–] muelltonne@feddit.de 3 points 11 months ago

It does work. People are distracted and are not reading every message correctly. And payment processing in the appstores is also kind of easy - so you might be able to scam a few people into subscribing and they might not notice this directly. You know that you are not checking your credit card bills in details every month. So you can get a nice revenue stream of unsuspecting customers for a few month until you've burned down every little bit of trust and user base you had