Over the past two decades, there's been a sort of tectonic economic shift happening under our feet. More and more companies have switched from selling goods one by one to selling services, available as a subscription. These days everything from razor blades to meal kits to car washes have become subscriptions. But all that convenience has also come with a dark side – some companies have designed their offerings to be as easy as possible to sign up for and also as difficult as possible to cancel. Many consumers are now paying for way more subscriptions than they even know about. On today's show, we discover how we all fell into this subscription trap – who is winning and who is losing in this brave new subscription based world – and what both the government and the free market are doing to try and fix it. This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Jeff Guo. It was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Valentina Rodriguez Sanchez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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A couple weeks ago, I got an email telling me I just paid $30 for a subscription to Fortune magazine that I didn't even know I had.
Yeah, that is a classic problem.
I think I'm subscribed to, like, two workout apps that I never actually use.
Yeah, happens all the time.
I realized I'd signed up for this $1 introductory trial to read a single article about crypto bankruptcies, and then I had totally forgotten about it for six months.
But instead of canceling this particular subscription and moving on with my life, I decided to call up someone whos thought a lot about this vexingly common annoyance, an entrepreneur named Haroun Muktarzada.
All of the companies ive started start from just a problem that annoys me.
Its like the Larry David approach to business.
Sure.
Thats a way to put it.
About a decade ago, Haroon and his three brothers, who are all business partners, were trying to come up with a new idea for a startup.
They gathered a few times a week to brainstorm in one of their basements, which they'd given this kind of fun nickname.
We called it the floundery because we said we don't know what we want to do.
So what we're going to do is we're going to flounder on ideas.