I tried out some new software today: [Descript](https://www.descript.com/), a service for creating and editing podcasts. This is not an ad or review of that service though, they will just serve as the example to support today's discussion. # Value Add and Value Neutral The software mentioned above, Descript, is software for recording and editing spoken audio. You hit record, you speak into a mic, your voice gets transcribed and the text becomes editable. Pretty wonderful experience, certainly beats editing speech audio directly as audio (which I've done enough of in the past to know it's tedious). Once you have your audio recorded and edited you can hit "Share", which let's you either 1. Export to disk 2. Publish Exporting to disk seems straightforward enough, although I didn't try it so I'm not sure exactly what the file output would be considering there's both text (the transcript) and audio. However when you export you don't get the full-quality, uncompressed audio file unless you've paid for a subscription 🤔. This sucks. It's an example of remove-value-and-charge-to-add-it-back, a inelegant term I just came up with. This is what I'm calling "Value Neutral," because utility is removed and only restored when you hand over money. This is also not a great term, but I'm not sure what to call it. Compare this with the transcription feature, which is a clear value add. What's the difference? - I can record a high quality audio file on my computer and import it into Descript. In fact, the audio file is almost certainly recorded on my disk already by Descript before being spirited away to their servers and deleted from my machine. Although slightly less convenient, this situation incentivizes me not to use their record button and instead to import my own audio and in doing so decreases their value pitch. This value removal model creates value I'm loth to pay for. - I can also transcribe my own audio but it's not easy and will probably cost some money to boot. I can set up audio transcription with either AWS or GCP but neither API is particularly pleasant to use and they both cost money. For this reason, Descript is providing _a lot_ of value by taking care of transcription for me. This is value I'd be happy to pay for. # A service-oriented economy There's a trend in software these days towards recurring payment. On the whole, a subscription model is an excellent option to have. Software takes time and effort to develop and if an individual or team is going to keep developing it they need to keep getting compensated (otherwise they will stop, and the software will stagnate). However, a subscription model is only one business model for software, albeit an extremely attractive one. Not all software lends itself to a subscription. --- - add value and charge for it vs remove value and charge to add it back - other examples? - Dash, removing dark them under the pretense of fixing a Catalina issue - I'm pretty sure he could backwards patch it, but now if you upgrade to the version you already paid for you lose a feature which is conveniently available in the new paid release. - To dash's credit it has not become a sub model that I know of, even though maintaining hundreds of docsets is a much better reason for ongoing payment than that of dayone (See below) - DayOne - Removed syncing (which they supported via dropbox, maybe icluod but I didn't own it back then) in favor of their own sync setup - This gives them something to charge for, after all they have to maintain their sync servers and database, but this was entirely duplicated effort. Dropbox already support cross-platform sync, they removed that so theyd have something to charge for. - They limit photos per entry and do not allow other media types. - Similar to above. If they use an external sync service the only disk space being used is your own and that of the external service provider. They have no recurring cost. - I really like the app, that's why I use it. but this app is better suited to a single-purchase model with every new major release being paid - Apple is probably part of the problem here, since they make it very difficult to monetize existing users unless you move to a subscription model or in-app purchases. But a new major release, i.e. a separate app, can't be an in app purchase because apple views it as a separate app. Thus you would have to sell it separstely. - my somewhat reluctant optimism comes from the fact that software would be more useful, provide more value, if it worked together. Interconnected systems can provide more value than standalone systems. Users being able to build up their own systems from a number of other tools is the only way to create systems that work well for everyone, because no two people are likely to have exactly the same needs there's no reason any two people should be forced to use the exact same system.