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Evidently, some of this is quantified.
American Multi-Cinema Theatres (owned by a Chinese conglomerate) to test subscription service with MoviePass.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article4512995.html
“Under the MoviePass business model, theaters are paid full price for every admission. To make money, the service depends on traditional subscription-service economics: More people pay than go.
Spikes said that, based on his company’s experience so far with members, ‘Some overuse; a lot underuse.’”
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40 Replies
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We’ve had this in the UK for over a decade with one of our biggest chains Cineworld, it’s called the Unlimited card. It’s £16.95 a month and it’s not limited to just one per day you’re free to watch as many films as you want. It’s definitely true that some people sign up and never use it whilst others just live at the cinema. If you watch more than at least 2 films a month it’s worth it.
Best
Paddy
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Interesting. I can’t remember the last time I was in a movie theater.
sw
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Like CC Subscriptions or a gym membership it’s a business model based on entropy.
You sign up, all excited to have full and free access to the product, but at some point, you find yourself distracted doing something else other than using those services – and you more or less stop consuming at the same level – but the vendor still gets paid at the same level regardless of what you consume.
For every gym membership where the person uses it every week for the entire year – there are thousands who pay the money, go for three months – and then stop.
Never underestimate the massive power of a business model that generates revenue in exchange for doing nothing.
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[Scott Witthaus] “Interesting. I can’t remember the last time I was in a movie theater.”
What seems weird to me, is that in plain text, we have what a subscription model is designed to do?
It is a calculation relying on most customers won’t use what they pay for. Am I holding this right?
I don’t like to sound preachy, and I promise I’m not a grumpy old man quite yet, but what in the actual f8ck?
When is someone going to offer the life subscription? For $xxxx.xx per month, you get the house, the spouse, the kids, the car, the computer, the software, the insurance, the music, the movies, the technology, everything but the decent education and a well paying job.
For $x*10,xxx.xx per moth, you can have all of this in a penthouse in Shanghai.
For $x*100,xxx.xx per month, you get the beach house in Malibu AND the 5 bedroom Chelsea flat.
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[Bill Davis] “Never underestimate the massive power of a business model that generates revenue in exchange for doing nothing.”
Innovation at it’s finest!
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[Bill Davis] “Like CC Subscriptions or a gym membership it’s a business model based on entropy… Never underestimate the massive power of a business model that generates revenue in exchange for doing nothing.”
Looking at the continuous improvement in Creative Cloud apps so far, I don’t think it’s fair to associate CC subscriptions with “doing nothing.”
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Jeremy Garchow] “When is someone going to offer the life subscription? For $xxxx.xx per month, you get the house, the spouse, the kids, the car, the computer, the software, the insurance, the music, the movies, the technology, everything but the decent education and a well paying job.”
They have something close to that. Instead of the spouse you get an ex-wife and it’s called alimony and the ex gets it all.
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[Walter Soyka] “Looking at the continuous improvement in Creative Cloud apps so far, I don’t think it’s fair to associate CC subscriptions with “doing nothing.””
I don’t think anyone could accuse Adobe engineers of doing nothing. That would be, even by my standards, cray cray.
I just thought it was interesting to get an honest assessment of what subscription does for a company:
“Under the MoviePass business model, theaters are paid full price for every admission. To make money, the service depends on traditional subscription-service economics: More people pay than go.”
and this was decided after looking around at what other subscription based companies are doing and seeing that it “wouldn’t be smart to ignore” what’s happening. Adobe CC seems to have a bit of a different model in that Adobe doesn’t have to pay “movie theaters” every time a subscriber fires up an Adobe app in the way that MoviePass has to pay a theatre when a person goes to see a movie.
It’s fine if you’re getting the value out of a subscription, but if you need to subscribe to a service just to interact with others, and don’t necessarily get the value out of it, it does feel a little like throwing out money. And then if you add up all the subscriptions, there is simply not enough time in the day to get the most out of everything. What this article seems to be suggesting, is that companies aren’t competing for consumer’s attention, they are competing for the highest amount of monthly subscribers, and on some level, the lowest amount of usage (attention), they actually don’t want you to come back. It’s a new day. Or am I not seeing the forest for the trees?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “What this article seems to be suggesting, is that companies aren’t competing for consumer’s attention, they are competing for the highest amount of monthly subscribers, and on some level, the lowest amount of usage (attention), they actually don’t want you to come back. It’s a new day. Or am I not seeing the forest for the trees?”
No, I think you’re right. But there is an important economic distinction we can draw.
Subscription access to limited resources (gym memberships, movie theater seats) is consumption arbitrage.
Subscription to effectively unlimited resources (software licensing, SaaS, online services, etc.) is fundamentally different.
The potential for overuse in the former case creates risk for the seller. There is no such thing as overuse in the latter case.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Subscription to effectively unlimited resources (software licensing, SaaS, online services, etc.) is fundamentally different.
The potential for overuse in the former case creates risk for the seller. There is no such thing as overuse in the latter case.”
Absolutely, but while these are two different styles of subscription revenue, it’s not about the overuse, it’s about the underuse.
Moviepass makes money when a lot of people pay to go to the movies, but don’t use it.
If we want to use Adobe as an example, they will make money when people who weren’t updating their software as often as they hoped, now have to join in on subscription to be able to receive and use documents from other happy Adobe customers. Of course, Adobe would love to have more customers just like you. If Adobe’s customer base were full of Soyka’s the world would be a much happier environment, but unfortunately it’s not the reality.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is ultimately Adobe’s goal to make a great product that people want to actually use, but my guess the profit is in the spillover, where there are a bunch of users that need the service, sort of. They are pretty low cost subscribers, and won’t need the latest and greatest advances from Adobe, they just need to remain compatible with colleagues.
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