You Own Nothing, Jon Snow
In an subscription based economy we’re consuming more content than ever before, but we’re also owning less of it.
Growing up, there was a man in my hometown who’d turned his house into a museum of miscellanea, filled with old machinery, and small gemstones, stacks of comic books and preserved snakes in jars. He’d let all the local kids in the neighbourhood wander through, picking up odd pieces of flotsam and jetsam, to give demonstrations of how they worked. Our child minds would run wild those afternoons as we held countless rusted artifacts up to our own noses to get a better look. But the crowning jewel of his eclectic, self-established gallery was his vinyl collection. Shelves upon shelves of records, from which he would make a careful selection of anything his heart desired. Sometimes it was Chopin, sometimes Count Basie, once even Bruce Springsteen- but often it was musicians I haven’t heard since and perhaps never will again. But I like to think he still enjoys sounds of crackling country music as he enjoys his afternoon coffee and slice of Boston bun, or lets another 8 year old girl turn over that strange cracked fox skull.
In comparison, my owned, tangible music collection could be, generously, described as lacking. Come to think of it, so could my assortment of books, or movies, or magazines. Collectively, the physical media I own and could hold in my hands probably wouldn’t even weigh enough to warrant Tiger Air’s infamous extra baggage charges. But as our media economy has shifted over time, becoming increasingly digital, subscription based, and centred around streaming; many people, myself included, are consuming more than ever before- we’re just owning less of it.
In this market, media is no longer consumed as a good, but as a service- and perhaps even in some ways as an experience.For half the price of a CD, I could have a month’s unlimited access to millions of songs through Spotify. For a few dollars more I would have thousands of movies at my fingertips through streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO or Stan. And I’m not alone in thinking this is a good deal. Around 69% of U.S household are subscribed to at least one video service, and 40% are subscribed to two or more. Furthermore, as of this year Spotify, with a 40% stake in the music streaming industry, has over 230 Million active users, and roughly half of these users pay monthly to use the app’s extended features (and escape the incessant advertisements). And these companies are on the rise, with Spotify’s annual revenue for 2018 being 8.3 Billion dollars (AUD), having by 800M from the year prior.
The “subscription economy”, a term coined by Zuora founder, Tien Tzuo, has been on the rise for years, in accordance with the progression, digitalisation, and the convergence of modern media and it’s carrying channels. In this economy, it’s clear to see why Tzuo has confidence in the notion that “access trumps ownership” every time.
In this model, media is no longer consumed as a good, but as a service. At a glance, it’s easy to get swept away in the extravagance, and the immensity of all media a subscription-based service can offer a consumer. But it may be valuable to think beyond the hand we’ve been dealt and consider which cards the corporations are now holding.
Heaven forbid, but if the internet went down tomorrow- what would we have to show for ourselves? What would we really “own”?
As an even more unsettling thought, in this same landscape where we no longer own copies of other people’s content, we are also fully owning less and less of our own. Firstly, we can consider content we generate, but in which we need the assistance of software, or applications to do so. We can no longer make a one-off payment to download and use the Microsoft Suite, or the Adobe range- we instead have to pay for the rights to use these services monthly. And if we stop making these payments, we not only lose the ability to continue writing, designing, or editing with this software- but we also lose the ability to access any of our previous work made using these applications that we previously paid for. This could also be said for the choice we make to have our content stored externally by facilities such as Icloud, DropBox, or Google Drive- fully aware that our own data will be inaccessible if we stop making these payments. This is an incredibly deliberate, strategic business decision. If payment ceases, so does ownership- and with a subscription policy, consumers will pay more over time than they would ever dream of doing in a single up-front payment.
Even beyond products that we pay for, we are giving away the rights to our content for free. 79% of Australians actively use social media, 94% of whom can be found on Facebook, and 46% on Instagram. And all of these users have agreed to the terms and conditions, effectively handing these platforms a “worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” any content that has been uploaded. Therefore, although these platforms don’t technically own your content, they are granted almost unlimited licensing to use it in any way they please.
For most of us, the convenience of these services and platforms are worth the sacrifice. But it’s worth considering what exactly we’re sacrificing, and at the end of the day, who benefits most from this shifting system. Also, maybe don’t throw out that So Fresh Hits of 2008 CD just yet.
