Weekly News Roundup
1. Inspirato launches travel subscription with $24K price tag – Subscription Insider
With a new travel subscription service from the American luxury vacation provider Inspirato, with a hefty price tag, travelers can select three trips a year from a variety of options. The trips are not all inclusive. They do not include airfare or rental cars, for example.
“For these trips, subscribers can stay between two and 14 nights, and can select from more than 500,000 choices in over 150 destinations.”
2. Cost of living in the UK: Music subscriptions cancelled to save money – BBC
Over one million music streaming subscriptions have been cancelled in the UK, with the cost of living crisis forcing households to make savings, a report from market researchers Kantar found.
“The rising cancellation rates of music subscriptions is evidence that British households are starting to prioritise the spending of their disposable income.”
3. Telegram now offers a premium subscription costing $5 per month – Engadget
Telegram has launched its paid $5 per month Premium subscription tier first revealed last month. Some of the notable features include a larger maximum file upload size, faster downloads, more channels and unique new stickers.
“Telegram also announced that it became one of the top five downloaded apps worldwide in 2022 and now has 700 million monthly active users.”
4. Fairphone’s phone subscription gets cheaper the longer you look after your phone – The Verge
Sustainable smartphone manufacturer Fairphone has announced a new subscription that’s designed to encourage users to hold onto their existing phones for as long as possible. The monthly cost includes free repairs, and there are also discounts that kick in for each year you manage to go without needing to repair it.
“Although the subscription’s structure bears a superficial similarity to paying for a phone on finance or when bundled with a phone contract, there are a couple of crucial differences. First, you don’t actually own the phone, even at the end of your subscription period. Instead, you’ll have to send it back to the company for it to be reused or recycled. And there’s no included network contract […]”
5. U.S. subscription VOD revenue growth slowing to 13% in 2022, hitting $25 Billion: PwC Report – Variety
Subscription streaming video is cooling down from torrid growth rates seen in 2020 and ’21 — fueled by pandemic lockdowns — but is still experiencing healthy expansion in the U.S., one of the segment’s most mature markets.
“The 13% uptick projected for this year is down from 19.5% annual growth in 2021 and a whopping 27% increase in 2020 for U.S. SVOD. The PwC study noted that, in the U.S. and many other parts of the world, the COVID pandemic propelled over-the-top video uptake years ahead of where it would otherwise have been — a “pull-forward” effect seen by many services.”
Weekly Analysis Roundup
1. NYT CEO outlines plans to reach 15 million subscribers by 2027 – Axios
The New York Times now says it’s planning to reach 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027, a goal that CEO Meredith Kopit Levien told Axios will help the company become even more profitable in the next three to five years.
“Because the company has invested so much in cross-promoting its subscription products to the 100 million+ monthly users who visit the Times for free, it doesn’t need to spend heavily on user acquisition.”
2. Looking at data: Three lessons on how subscription businesses are maintaining growth – Subscribed
Inflation, market volatility, and fear of a downturn have many people understandably spooked. “So is a Great Unsubscribe happening?”, asks Zuora’s CEO Tien Tzuo in an analysis.
“Let’s start with churn. Does our recent data show that we are going through the Great Unsubscribe? Quite the opposite. Our data is showing us the opposite is true: monthly churn rates continue to be lower than pre-pandemic levels […]”
