The Subscription Bait

Yuvan Singh Kain

7 min read

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4 days ago

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There was a time when spending money required an event. You walk into your local grocery store, pick up your favourite soda, pay for it and feel the transaction happened.

Now, money quietly leaves your account while you are sleeping. You wake up, check your bank statements, and discover three transaction alerts that read,

₹199- Renewal

₹599- Renewal

₹999- Renewal

No receipt in hand, no shopping bag, and most importantly,
No immediate regret.

For you, it is a small expense with the illusion that you barely spent anything.

This is the genius, and the danger, of course. Subscriptions do not feel like spending because they are designed not to. A one-time purchase feels like a liability while a subscription feels like a low friction purchase. But repeated periodic fees, multiplied across apps and years, can quietly become one of your largest invisible expenses.

The invisible monthly bill

The average consumer now has more subscriptions than they can count. In the United States, CNET’s survey found that adults spend about $90 a month on subscriptions, roughly $1,080 a year and $200 of that goes toward services they rarely or never use.

In simple words,
Many people are paying for a gym they never visited, a streaming platform they forgot, a cloud plan that isn’t even 10% full, and a photo editing app they downloaded for one trip.

India is following the same pattern, only faster. A FICCI-EY media and entertainment report found that digital subscription revenues in India grew around 60% in 2025 to ₹163 billion or ₹16,300 Crore, with 143 million households paying for 216 million online streaming subscriptions.

The problem is not that people enjoy entertainment or convenience. The problem is that every service has learned to charge periodically. You are not the problem, but the organisations trying to prove that their subscription is not “want” but “need.”

Help! Subscriptions ate my money!

A subscription is psychologically clever because it splits a large amount into tiny pieces.

Let us take an example.
You, aka my dear reader, are an avid music fan, and decide to purchase a subscription for one of the best music streaming services for ₹199 per month.

Nobody worries over ₹199, right?
But ₹199 every month is ₹2,388 a year.

Upgrade to their higher tier subscription level, let us consider a ₹499 plan, and you are looking nearly ₹6000. That is almost triple the original amount.

Do not forget, I am excluding food-delivery memberships, content streaming, cloud storage, fitness apps, or AI tools.

This is why subscriptions succeed where lump-sum purchases fail. If a company asked you to pay ₹12,000 beforehand for a year, you would pause, maybe you would step back and cancel most of your subscriptions. But ask for ₹999 a month, and it sounds manageable.

There is also a hidden trick: auto-renewal.

Auto-renewal eliminates the moment of decision. Once you subscribe, the default question goes from “Do I still want this?” to “Do I want to go through the trouble of cancelling?” For busy people, the answer is clearly no, not because the service is valuable, but because cancellation requires time and attention.

The free-trial trap

Yes, free trials exist because companies are not feeling generous, rather it is the subscription economy’s favourite magic trick. You sign up for a month of premium features, convinced you will cancel before the charge. Then life happens. You forget the date, miss the reminder, or assume the trial ended automatically.

Suddenly, a service you used once becomes a monthly expense. Cancelling it is rarely as easy as subscribing. Companies make sign-up frictionless, one tap, one saved card, one confirmation. Cancellation, however, may involve hidden menus, multiple confirmation screens, retention offers, and a final guilt-trip asking whether you are “sure you want to lose access.”

You are not losing access. You are declining to keep paying for something you no longer use. But wording matters. “Lose access” sounds like penalty meanwhile “cancel payment” sounds like control.

Research from C+R shows how effective this forgetfulness is. In one survey, 74% of consumers said recurring charges are easy to forget, while 42% admitted they were still paying for a service they had stopped using. These are not careless people; they are normal people that are victims to the FOMO attitude.

All roads lead to subscriptions.

Dear reader, have you noticed one thing? Free versions of most apps are almost unusable nowadays. That is because companies have figured out ways to force users into buying a subscription. Here are some malicious ways companies force you into getting a subscription:

Paywall: Many features previously available in the free version have been locked behind their subscription. So, say goodbye to your favourite features.

Ad-mageddon: Imagine listening to your favourite artist and suddenly there is a thirty second ad break. Fine, you can survive a thirty second ad break. But companies are increasing the duration; one minute, two minute and even three-minute ad breaks in some platforms.

Bricking hardware features: Imagine you get a nice fitness band for your health monitoring and fitness tracking. When you open its app, you realise that most features that the device boasted are locked behind a subscription. What will you do? You get the subscription, since you know the device is expensive and a subscription that costs around ₹99 is not a big deal.

India’s subscription fatigue

India’s experience makes the problem visible. A Bango survey reported that 89% of Indian subscribers believe there are too many subscription services in their households, while 93% reported having more than two subscriptions and 23% had more than six.

The same survey found that 66% of Indian consumers wished they could easily opt out of auto-renewals, and 56% struggled to remember billing dates. That is subscription fatigue in its purest form, not hatred of digital services, but fatigue from managing them.

OTT platforms demonstrate the issue well. India’s OTT audience crossed 601 million viewers in 2025, but only about 148 million held active paid subscriptions. Many users switch between platforms, rely on telecom bundles, account sharing, or piracy. The market is growing, but consumers are also becoming more selective and more suspicious of platforms that make cancellation difficult.

Small Charge, Big Damage

The danger of subscriptions is not any single charge. It is the aggregate effect of charges that never feel large enough to question.

Consider a typical digital lifestyle:

· One streaming platform: ₹299 a month

· Music streaming: ₹199 a month

· Cloud storage: ₹210 a month

· Food-delivery membership: ₹149 a month

· Fitness app: ₹399 a month

· Premium AI tool: ₹1,999 a month

Independently, these are all “affordable.” Together, they exceed ₹3,000 a month, ₹36,000 a year. This is not a small amount. It could fund a domestic holiday, a substantial investment contribution, gifts for your family, or even savings.

Why cancelling feels harder than subscribing.

Subscription businesses represent a simple truth: retention is easier than acquisition. Once someone is paying, the company’s goal is to conserve their userbase. Hence the rise of dark patterns aka the design choices that force users toward staying subscribed.

These include:

• Hiding the cancellation option under several menus.
• Making the “pause” option more prominent than “cancel.”
• Offering discounts only after you attempt to leave.
• Sending emotionally loaded messages about losing playlists, saved projects, or progress.
• Using annual plans that renew automatically with little advance warning.

Flip the Script: Take back control.

Look, you do not need to become an anti-subscription purist. Some subscriptions genuinely add value to your life, maybe a streaming service you use daily, cloud storage that stores your photos and videos, or a productivity tool that saves real time. The goal is not zero subscriptions; it is intentional subscriptions.

Here are some suggestions that you can.

1. Review your statements: Search for recurring charges, especially small ones. Lesser amounts are easy to miss but easy to identify.
2. Make a list of every active subscription: This includes everything. Start from free trials, then spot annual renewals and family plans.
3. Introspect: Go ahead and ask yourself this question “If I cancel this subscription, will I miss it?” If the answer is no, go ahead and cancel it.
4. 30-day rule. If you have not opened an app or use a service in a month, it does not deserve your hard-earned money.
5. Double the sub, double the trouble (and half the cash!): Subscribe to one platform at a time and use it! You do not need multiple similar platforms at the same time.
6. Set reminders: Put an alert one day before the trial ends and mark all your subscription renewal dates.
7. Essentials Only: Annual discounts are attractive (I know), but they are risky for your expenses.
8. Do a quarterly detox. Spend ten minutes every three months reviewing frequent charges. Trust me, it will be the best financial habit you adopt.

The subscription you should keep.

Ironically, the best subscription may be the one you build for yourself: a monthly transfer to savings or investments. It uses the same psychology except it works in your favour instead of against it. If an app can quietly take ₹299 from your account every month, you can send ₹299 to your savings every month. One builds a company’s recurring revenue, while the other builds your future.

As I told you, Subscriptions are not evil. Convenience is not a crime. But convenience should have a price you consciously choose, not a charge that cripples you.