> I'm also intrigued by how many very wealthy people are unwilling to pay $10/mo to stream music/video and/or share passwords, when I recall paying $20/CD at the record store in 1998 dollars.
Because everything is a recurring automatic charge to my credit card, and one more thing to try and keep track of and continually reevaluate if it's still valuable enough to me to continue paying for it.
When you bought a CD you didn't have to from that point forward continue to think about if you want to continue paying money to have access to the CD.
I personally find the subscription model in some ways better in terms of cognitive load - choosing between concrete things can be paralysing enough that the two most likely outcomes are failing to make a choice or choosing something and regretting it. The sense of now owning something that I spent hard earned cash on can feel a burden if money gets tight.
Subscriptions, on the other hand, match how consuming media feels to me - I spent time doing something I liked and the cost enabled that.
Looking on it from a pure economics point of view, clearly it makes more sense to buy a CD and have access to it forever from that spend. But psychologically it feels very different
Because everything is a recurring automatic charge to my credit card, and one more thing to try and keep track of and continually reevaluate if it's still valuable enough to me to continue paying for it.
When you bought a CD you didn't have to from that point forward continue to think about if you want to continue paying money to have access to the CD.