Disconnect: cloud subscription services and the end of private ownership

Disconnect is a weekly column in which Tech in Asia’s Charlie Custer pokes at holes, plays devil’s advocate, or otherwise attempts to rain on the tech industry’s parade.

Last week, you probably saw this story or some reaction to it floating around on the web. In it, author James Pinkstone details how Apple “stole” his music, its software having auto-deleted 122 GB worth of files from his hard drive after he signed up for Apple Music.

Since then, others have come forward to suggest that the real problem was Apple’s confusing policies combined with user error, and that Apple isn’t trying to delete anyone’s music. Unfortunately, the focus on whether or not Apple or Pinkstone is responsible for the missing songs totally ignores what I consider to be the most important part of Pinkstone’s piece:

For about ten years, I’ve been warning people, “hang onto your media. One day, you won’t buy a movie. You’ll buy the right to watch a movie, and that movie will be served to you. If the companies serving the movie don’t want you to see it, or they want to change something, they will have the power to do so. They can alter history, and they can make you keep paying for things that you formerly could have bought. Information will be a utility rather than a possession. Even information that you yourself have created will require unending, recurring payments just to access.”

Pinkstone may not be right about exactly what happened to his iTunes library, but he’s totally right about that.

The future is cloudy

Anyone with a pulse who’s been watching the tech industry over the past half-decade has probably realized that subscription-based SaaS-style cloud services are the direction many industries are heading. Movies, TV shows, and music have already headed in that direction via services like Netflix and Spotify. Workplace and creative software products like Microsoft’s Office programs and Adobe’s Creative Suite have done the same thing. And there are startups in the industry working on applying the subscription-based model to everything from cars to furniture. The future, it seems, will cost you a monthly fee.

To be clear, there are a lot of good things about this. Having your stuff on the cloud reduces clutter and increases convenience. It’s much easier for me to watch my favorite shows on Netflix than it is to lug a cumbersome set of DVDs everywhere I go. It also reduces up-front costs. Adobe’s Creative Suite, for example, used to be priced so high that indie creators could hardly afford it without taking out a small loan. Now, because the service charges a much smaller monthly fee, the barrier of entry is much lower.

There are, however, some significant downsides to the subscription-based model.

That paper

The first is pretty simple: if you’re going to use something for a long time, renting/subscribing to it generally costs more. There’s a reason you don’t rent your furniture. There’s a reason virtually every financial expert says you should never lease a car. Over the long term, paying subscription fees virtually always costs more than it would have cost you to just buy whatever it is you’re subscribing to.

That isn’t always true, of course. Low-cost subscription based services like Netflix and Spotify may actually save money for most people, and that’s part of why they’re so popular. I don’t remember how much I used to spend on DVDs every year, but I can bet it was more than the US$96 a year Netflix has been costing me.

Control of history

Demand choice