The sneaky sticker shock of subscription culture

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

In recent years, much of my life as a consumer has shifted to what I like to call background spending. As I've subscribed to more apps and streaming platforms, significant sums of my money tend to drift away each month.

Think of it as automated capitalism. Spending without the hassle of spending. Acquisition without action. Or thought.

But while this swell of subscriptions was sold to me on the premise it would make my life more hassle-free, there was a certain sticker shock I felt upon actually discovering how much I'm spending without realizing it each month ($179.45) — after I've already spent it, of course.

I can't help feeling I'm being conned just a little. I admit I had forgotten I was paying monthly for the privilege of Apple TV+ after being hooked by the first season of "Ted Lasso," before quickly falling off the bandwagon. When I reopened the app for the first time in eons, I was confronted with dozens of shows I've never heard of but to whose production budgets I've been contributing generously.

"Hand over your credit card details and let us take care of the rest," these companies assure us. But by agreeing to this trade, we've become passive consumers who are allowing the balance of capitalism to tilt away from us. We have ceded one of our key powers as individuals: our agency.

I know it's not just me who is suddenly living life as a smooth-brained subscriber. The average consumer spends $273 per month on subscriptions, according to a 2021 poll of 2,500 by digital services firm West Monroe, which found this spending was up 15% from 2018. Not a single person polled knew what his actual monthly spending was.

It's understandable why this model is so alluring for businesses. As companies questioned traditional advertising models (especially on social media platforms and digital publishers), subscriptions offered the promise of "selling once and earning forever." (In a sign of the times, even social media companies like Meta and X, formerly Twitter, are now offering subscriptions). And while subscription services have been around for decades (think Wine of the Month Club), more customers have been willing to sign up thanks to the prevalence of smartphones and the increasing ease of home delivery.

Demand is so high that the investment bank UBS has estimated the entire subscription economy will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025, more than doubling the $650 billion it was in 2020.

But while these subscriptions promise ease and happiness, not all of us are satisfied. Last year, the Kearney Consumer Institute found that 40% of consumers believe they have too many subscriptions. Almost half of us also think we pay too much for streaming video-on-demand subscriptions, in particular, while roughly a third intend to reduce the number of such subscriptions, per an April report from Deloitte Insights.

There's also evidence we are spending way more on subscriptions than we realize. Last year, C+R Research asked 1,000 people to estimate what they fork over in subscription costs before actually having them itemize this spending. They found that the average monthly spend was $219 — more than 2.5 times higher than the $86 that people guessed.

During the workday, you might get a Sweetgreen salad for lunch (whose premiere loyalty program costs $10 per month) or perhaps just a coffee from Pret ($40 per month loyalty program). When you get home after a commute spent listening to music on Spotify ($10.99 per month), be sure to check your lobby to see if any Amazon packages have been delivered ($14.99 per month for Prime membership). And don't forget to pick up your Hello Fresh groceries (roughly $70 for three two-person meals) or your wine subscription box from SommSelect ($99 per month for four bottles) or your new pet toys from Barkbox ($20 per month for a year's subscription).

After dinner, it's time to unwind by watching ad-free streaming sites like Netflix ($15.49 per month for a standard plan) or Hulu ($17.99 per month) or Disney+ ($13.99 per month) or Paramount+ with Showtime ($11.99 per month) or Peacock ($11.99 per month) or Apple TV+ ($9.99 per month). And if you somehow can't choose what to watch on any of those, maybe see what's airing live on YouTube TV, which is similar to TiVo and cable but costs $72.99 each month.

Finally, as you get some shut-eye using your Whoop health and sleep tracker ($239 per year), you can rest assured that any photos you took on your cellphone will quietly update to the extra storage you pay for in the digital cloud ($2.99 per month for a standard Google One account).

If we're going to rebalance the wheels of capitalism just a little, we could do worse than to support a recent proposed rule from the Federal Trade Commission. In March, the agency suggested a "click to cancel" provision that would require companies to make it just as easy to end a subscription as to sign up for one. No more being forced to go into the gym to end your membership if you were able to join online! (For apps, Apple already has a version of this cancel button buried within its App Store.)

Additionally, under this extra layer of consumer protection, businesses would need to remind subscribers annually about their membership before these are automatically renewed. This rule would mean any background spending would, if only just for one moment a year, be at the forefront of your mind.