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Tag: Subscription

  • Want Faster Acceleration in Your Mercedes? That Will Cost $1,200 Annually.

    Want Faster Acceleration in Your Mercedes? That Will Cost $1,200 Annually.

    Mercedes is the latest automaker to jump on the most deplorable trend in the industry, charging $1,200 annually for faster acceleration.

    Automakers looking for ways to nickel and dime their customers have turned to subscriptions as their method of choice, locking access to existing features unless customers pay the subscription price. Mercedes is the latest to adopt this practice, with plans to charge $1,200 for customers that want faster acceleration.

    Mercedes EQ electric vehicles (EVs) will come with reduced horsepower and torque, which will be increased if customers pony up the extra cash annually. The overall performance of the vehicle will increase as well.

    “Fine tuning of the electric motors increases the maximum motor output (kW) of your Mercedes-EQ by 20 to 24%, depending on the original output from factory,” Mercedes explains on its website. “The torque is also increased, enabling your vehicle to accelerate noticeably faster and more powerfully. This shortens the time it takes to accelerate from 0 to 60 MPH by around 0.8 to 0.9 seconds. This additional output is available in all DYNAMIC SELECT drive programs.”

    Mercedes’ move follows similar ones by other automakers. For example, BMW announced plans to charge $18 per month to unlock the heated seats already present in the vehicle.

    The problem has become so bad that New Jersey lawmakers have introduced a bill that would ban automakers from charging a subscription for features that are already built into a vehicle.

    As we have stated before, it is completely understandable to charge a subscription fee for services that require ongoing updates, such as GPS mapping services. It is certainly understandable to charge for other subscription services, such as satellite radio.

    On the other hand, it is nothing but unmitigated greed and absurdity to charge customers to use features that are already included in the vehicle and that do not cost the automaker anything. If a user purchases a vehicle with a certain set of features, ALL of those features should be available and unlocked.

  • iOS Users Can Purchase Amazon Content In-App

    iOS Users Can Purchase Amazon Content In-App

    iOS users can finally purchase Amazon Prime Video content in-app, significantly improving the user experience.

    The Verge was the first to notice the change, and confirmed the prices for content did “not appear to have been raised to account for the 30 percent fee, as some platform owners like Spotify have done in the past. It was not immediately clear whether Amazon reached a deal with Apple or whether it is indeed deciding to pay the full cut.”

    In a statement to 9to5Mac, however, Apple confirmed it was an “established program for premium subscription video entertainment providers to offer a variety of customer benefits,” including “the option to buy or rent movies and TV shows using the payment method tied to their existing video subscription.”

    While Apple calls it an “established program,” when it was established remains to be seen. Logic would dictate that if this program had been available all along, Amazon would have taken full advantage of it from day one. Instead, iOS users have had to purchase content via their web browser or other method, rather than in-app. As any marketer will attest, the more steps in a process, the less likely someone is to follow through with a purchase.

    Whenever this “established program” went into effect, it’s good news for Amazon and similar services. It is also good for customer ease-of-use, although it’s probably safe to say there’s about to be a lot more impulse movie and TV show purchases.

  • Disney Takes a Playbook Out of Digitally Native Companies

    Disney Takes a Playbook Out of Digitally Native Companies

    “All of a sudden people are realizing that Disney is going to take the advantages that they have, content that nobody else has, moats that give them actual real leverage in the negotiations, and then they’re going to actually take a playbook out of these more digitally native companies,” says Sean Ammirati of Birchmere Ventures. “They’re going to actually build direct relationships with their end customers. They’re going to switch their business model from transactional to a subscription model.”

    Sean Ammirati, Partner at Birchmere Ventures, discusses how Disney has potentially reinvented themselves with the launch of Disney+ in an interview with Bob Evans on the always engaging and relevant Cloud Wars podcast:

    Disney Takes a Playbook Out of Digitally Native Companies

    Innovation is not relegated simply to 20-something small brand new companies. Large companies are able to leverage their assets and their unfair competitive advantages to play in this also. For instance, Disney recently had its Investor Day and announced its Disney Plus streaming offering. Disney Plus has been framed by a lot of people as a kind of “Netflix Killer.” The interesting thing about what’s happened there is the reaction from Wall Street tech journalists. All these different groups have been incredibly positive.

    All of a sudden people are realizing that Disney is going to take the advantages that they have, content that nobody else has, moats that give them actual real leverage in the negotiations, and then they’re going to actually take a playbook out of these more digitally native companies. They’re going to actually build direct relationships with their end customers. They’re going to switch their business model from transactional to a subscription model.

    How Do We Transform Our Relationships With Customers?

    These are things that we’ve been talking about for four years with lots of legacy companies under the category of digital transformation. But it’s hard every time someone steps up and tries to do that, you’ve got to re-educate Wall Street on how to think about your financial metrics. It turns out that GAAP accounting is not that similar to subscription accounting. To be fair, that’s an easier challenge than it was a few years ago. I remember years ago when Adobe made that pivot and what a struggle that was to say (to investors) we’re going to make less money next quarter and you should be excited about that. Their stock went through kind of a full J-curve there as they walked people through it.

    What was encouraging is after Investor Day there was a massive jump in Disney stock. All of a sudden these pieces that you’d watch the leadership put together for a while kind of came into a full mosaic picture. Not only did Disney stock shoot up but this arch competitor Netflix, they took a hit right away, although they’ve come back a little bit with recent earnings. I’m hoping that other CEOs in other boardrooms are taking note of this and asking themselves the same questions. How do we create products and services that transform our relationships with our customers to allow us to have that same type of growth mindset?

    Case Study: How to Be a CXO In This Subscription Economy World

    We have gotten to a point where we assume that if you’re a company that was born in the digital age and you’ve gone through the full capital formation prospect and gotten out and gotten public you must have certain things in your DNA that makes you the only organization who can win a market. Just look at the grocery industry. Amazon’s coming into grocery so I’m sure Amazon’s going to be the winner in that business. Maybe. But then you see the largest grocery chain in the United States (Kroger) partnering with Microsoft to actually be proactive instead of reactive.

    Companies can actually play in this business that weren’t born in the last thirty years. Disney is a great illustration of that. Now Disney needs to continue to execute. They’re going to need to actually finish the vision that they cast. They’ve got to launch these. They’ve got to make it work. They’ve got to pick the right partners. I really think in a couple of years this will be a case study lots of executives point to and say, man, we can do it. In the same way that the Adobe thing has been how to be a CFO in this subscription economy world that we live in.

    Disney Takes a Playbook Out of Digitally Native Companies – Sean Ammirati on Cloud Wars podcast
  • 24 Gone from Netflix, Now on Amazon Prime Instead

    24 Gone from Netflix, Now on Amazon Prime Instead

    You may have seen the warnings that popular series 24 was vanishing from Netflix on April 1st, but today Netflix users were hit with the harsh reality, like a Jack Bauer punch to the throat. It’s no April Fool’s joke–24 is gone.

    Netflix allowed their streaming rights to expire on the groundbreaking FOX series, but it hasn’t disappeared from the streaming world altogether. In fact, it’s just hopped over to Amazon. Starting today, Amazon Prime Instant Video can boast exclusive streaming rights to the entire series–192 episodes in all.

    “24 has been extremely popular with Amazon customers over the years,” said Brad Beale, Director of Digital Video Content Acquisition for Amazon. “Whether they are hard-core Jack Bauer fans or just discovering the series for the first time, Prime members are going to love catching up on the previous seasons of 24 as well as 24: Live Another Day.”

    As yes, speaking of 24: Live Another Day–we’re pretty close to the premiere of the new miniseries. The 12-episode “television event,” which will see Jack Bauer back in action one more time, will debut May 5th on FOX.

    And later in the year, Amazon Prime Instant Video will get that miniseries as well (exclusively, of course).

    This isn’t the first popular series that Amazon has snatched up just months before a new season premieres. They recently did the same thing with NBC’s Hannibal and the BBC’s Orphan Black.

    If you’re a Netflix subscriber and a 24 fan, well…

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Elder Scrolls Online Will Cost You $14.99 A Month

    For those of you who are eager to get your MMO on in Tamriel, some recent news may take some of that wind out of your sails. If, however, money is no object, carry on with your anticipation. While those who populate the World of Warcraft are probably asking what the fuss is about, the fact that the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online will feature a monthly subscription rate of $14.99 a month apparently caught some by surprise, at least according to Twitter. Those familiar with the MMORPG traditional business model–before dreaded microtransactions moved in–expected something along these lines, but for others, it appears as if Bethesda and ZeniMax may have just lost some potential customers with their confirmation of the subscription price.

    In an interview with Gamestar.de, Matt Firor, General Manager of ZeniMax Online, did just that:

    Since you’ve been so forthcoming, could you also reveal the available subscriptions? How much will a month of ESO cost?

    We’ll go into details on this later, but the basic monthly charge will be $14.99/€12.99/£8.99 and expect some discounts if you buy multiple months at a time. We’ll also support game time cards as well as a variety of payment methods.

    From the sound of it, players will be able to buy subscription gift cards that will secure blocks of time, much like WoW’s Game Time. Judging by the reaction on Twitter, apparently, some people were hoping for the Free-To-Play/microtransaction model instead of paying a monthly subscription after the base game has been purchased:


    However, at least one lone dissenter prefers the monthly charge to having to buy essential in-game items while they’re playing:


    That, however, seems to represent the minority reaction, but then again, maybe some of the negativity is from people following the current trend. With that in mind, which side of the fence are you on? The “Hell yeah more Skyrim” side that will pay willingly or the side that says the hell with monthly subscriptions?

    [Lead image via]

  • John McCain Talks ‘A la Carte’ Cable Bill, Says It’s About Lower Income Families [VIDEO]

    As you may know, Arizona Senator John McCain has sponsored a bill that would take on cable and satellite TV providers by forcing a new “a la carte” system for consumers to pick and choose which channels they want to pay for. Of course, consumers now pay over a hundred dollars a month for hundreds of channels – many of which they never watch. McCain argues that it’s simply becoming too expensive, and that forcing people to pay for channels they don’t want is wrong and must be curtailed.

    McCain recently spoke to Bloomberg TV about his new bill, the TV Consumer Freedom Act, which aims to “allow multichannel video programming distributors to provide video programming to subscribers on an a la carte basis, and for other purposes.”

    In the interview, McCain likens the current system of subscription-based television to a restaurant with a menu full of pricey packages:

    “When I go into a restaurant…I’m given a menu and I can select from it. And the waiter doesn’t come up and say ‘which package do you want, of different courses?’ Now there may be a menu there that you can select, that has entree, appetizers, etc., but you don’t have to pay for things you don’t order. Now, because these people have monopolies…and why don’t restaurants do this? Because other restaurants don’t so therefore they can’t force you to.”

    McCain goes on to discuss the efforts against his legislation.

    “Are we gonna win? I dunno. I’ll tell you, their lobbyists, when I testified this morning, they were there in their $500 dollar suits…It’s gonna be awful hard to beat them, but they look nice though,” said McCain.

    Check out the interview below:

  • MoviePass Offers Unlimited Movie Subscription for Theatres

    MoviePass Offers Unlimited Movie Subscription for Theatres

    Now that the 3D movie fad is dying out, studios and movie theaters will have to find a way to compete with large HD televisions and services such as Netflix. With the home movie-viewing experience now rivaling that of theaters, something will have to give: either movie theaters will die out, or their business model will change substantially.

    Today, a company called MoviePass has launched a service that theatre owners should have been offering years ago. The service is a Netflix-like unlimited pass to view movies in theaters. For a monthly fee, subscribers will be able to view one movie per day at any theater that takes credit cards. The 3D versions of movies are not included. MoviePass will, at first, offer pricing based on location, but the national average is $30 a month.

    “MoviePass gives moviegoers the opportunity to see the movies they want, at the theaters they want – perfect for film enthusiasts who are at the heart of Hollywood’s economic engine,” said Stacy Spikes, CEO and cofounder of MoviePass. “Moviegoers now have more at-home entertainment options than ever before, and MoviePass is dedicated to driving traffic back to theaters and reducing the friction of moviegoing.”

    MoviePass is rolling out their service Gmail-style with an invite-your-friends system. MoviePass also has an iPhone app that is required for subscribers to “check-in” at a movie theatre and unlock their MoviePass debit card. The company has stated that an Android app is in the works. A video demonstrating how the MoviePass app works can be seen below.

  • WSJ Pulls Free Google-Searched Content

    Certain content exclusively accessible via Google’s “First Click Free” program on the the Wall Street Journal’s website is being pulled behind the paywall, a practice that some suspect other newspapers might emulate. And the WSJ has been blocking certain stories from the program since last summer.

    In a statement from Ashley S. Huston, Vice President, Corporate Communications, for the Wall Street Journal, she explains that “Google First Click Free is a way to introduce our content to new readers and broaden our audience. As a strategy, we hold back a few of our top stories by not having the full story crawled, which limits select articles from being available via First Click Free. We have been doing this since last summer as a strategy to encourage subscriptions.”

    Google’s First Click Free program allows users to see full-text content that is typically hidden behind a subscription barrier. With certain articles remaining “unlocked,” Google can understand them better as it runs a query, which in turn affords more visibility to the website of the publication. Also, Google doesn’t have to worry about users getting mad that they can’t fully read articles that show up in a search. Basically, if a user searches for something in Google, the full article comes up, though subsequent clicks within the site are blocked per subscription status, as detailed at the bottom let of the image below:

    Google allows 5 First Clicks per day, to limit the amount of free content one can access, but publishers are still pulling back on this. So far, news outlets have been all or nothing on the matter, with the New York Times offering all of their content available to be first-clicked. Some outlets allow none. The Wall Street Journal has been implementing a sort of hybrid model where only some content is available. Google wants to be able to search and index all of the content of an entire website, which can make subscription news sites tricky, as an outlet might mistakenly (or purposely) cloak some of their content, to maintain site traffic, while still locking their stories. The WSJ’s hybrid system looks to be mutually beneficial to its website and Google.

  • OnLive – A Cloud Gaming Service Launches

    OnLive – A Cloud Gaming Service Launches

    The evolution of gaming has taken interesting turns in its relatively short history. We’ve gone from arcade machines, to home consoles, with the latest breakthrough being downloadable gaming content. OnLive, is a gaming service which looks to be pushing the boundaries yet again; with cloud gaming.

    Will OnLive be a successful venture? tell us

    The OnLive service was announced at the Game Developers Conference last year, and since there has been wide speculation as to how successful they’ll be with their plans. This week, we go from speculation to finally seeing the service in action. Before getting into the details, you might be curious as to how the service works.

    OnLive service

    OnLive works the same way as cloud storage does for accessing files. Games are hosted on a server and players access content through these servers. Let’s say you wanted to play the game: Batman Arkham Asylum. Instead of going to a store to buy the disc, or download it, OnLive will allow you to simply click on a link and have the game loaded instantly. Batman: Arkham Asylum will then pop up on your screen and you’re on your way.

    Game saves will be hosted through these servers as well, so when you’re done playing a game you can pick up right where you left off. All with a simple click.

    Batman Arkham Asylum

    With the synopsis I provided above, you’d think OnLive would be a successful venture. The problem is everything I’ve explained has been simple theory. The question now remains; how will it work in practice?

    Luckily, this week we get to find out as the service has officially launched. You can signup for the ‘Founding Members Program‘ which provides your 1st year free, with a $4.95/month charge for the second year. When they say "free", it means you have access to demos, community features, ‘friending’, chat, and spectating. Actual gameplay will require a separate purchase.

    This separate purchase is called a ‘PlayPass’. Each game will have its own PlayPass, so to play Batman Arkham Asylum you’ll need to purchase its PlayPass. You can purchase a Full Playpass, which provides unlimited access throughout the game’s lifetime on the OnLive service. You can also choose to ‘rent’ the game for three or five days. OnLive has guaranteed games on the service will be supported for at least three years.

    As of now you can connect to OnLive using a PC or Mac. They’re developing a MicroConsole TV Adapter to bring their service to the living room. No release date has been announced as of yet.

    Obviously, OnLive is pushing the boundaries of gaming to places never attempted. The problem being, it might be ahead of its time. Streaming a game through a server to players’ broadband connection is a strain which could cause all sorts of lag. Potentially causing a game to be unplayable.

    Stever Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO, has voiced the potential of the service, along with the potential problems,

    "Despite the enormous potential of OnLive technology, it is important to emphasize that the OnLive Game Service is a very different way to experience videogames. We are using the Internet and computers in ways that have never been tried before and, like any brand new technology, you can expect a few bumps on take off until we reach cruising altitude and achieve a smooth flight. OnLive has been tested in an enormous variety of locations using a vast number of combinations of computers, ISPs, displays and input devices. Even so, there are endless possible combinations. So while most OnLive testers report good results with their gameplay experience, we still run into situations where the user may have to take some action (e.g. reset a cable modem or use a different mouse), or unique situations that we have not yet accounted for and require further changes to OnLive technology. "

    The success of the service will really boil down to two things; the frequency of lag or other technical problems, and price. They’ve announced the monthly free will be $4.95 a month to simply access OnLive (with the Founding Member Discount, anyway). What they haven’t provided is how much the PlayPasses for the various games will cost. If they set the price points too high, then you’re charging people a monthly fee along with another charge which might be too great for players to handle.

    The evolution of gaming has been started by lofty ideas, and goals much like OnLive is presenting. The potential of the service is too great to ignore, but so are the foreseeable problems along with it. Whatever happens, cloud gaming is certainly something to keep an eye on.

    Will you sign up for OnLive? tell us