Subscription Affliction.

Rocket Money claims it’s saved $245 million for 3.4 million customers, just by cancelling unwanted subscriptions.

Yes, being able to see all your subscriptions in one place is a great idea. But what I really want is for someone to charge me one payment for subscriptions I customize each month like a HelloFresh box.

Netflix, HBO Max, YouTube TV, Amazon Music, Patreon, Substack, Audible. Those are the ones I pay for that I can remember off the top of my head. For each I have a separate log in and password and a separate charge on my credit card.

Separate from media subscriptions, I’ve subscribed on and off to clothing boxes, wine clubs, meal-prep kits and more. These are likely to remain one-off subscriptions since their value is not apples to apples. But the media stuff — literally pixels you’re paying to see or hear each month — are dying to be menu-ified.

Let’s go back to the dinosaur age (when magazines were a thing)

Years ago, a company called MagHound developed an idea for magazine readers to pay one tiered price to subscribe to magazines of their choice. Recognizing that people were more interested in cooking magazines at the holidays and travel magazines in the summer, MagHound let people alter their subscriptions and make one payment per month instead of paying $9.99 to a variety of publishers and having to remember the 10-digit subscription number that was on their white mailing address sticker. (Gen Z, stay after class and I’ll demonstrate how you had to rip these off before recycling magazines because… mass murderers.)

Sadly, magazines tanked before MagHound could really take off. Yet why can’t tech take a page from print’s playbook? The copywriter in me already is envisioning names and taglines.

Is anyone on this? Or are they too busy stuck on hold with their credit card trying to dispute some auto renewal?

Until next time, remember that culture is the new creativity.

NOTE: I write about the future of creativity every week over at Substack. You can subscribe free to my newsletter "Creative Entrepreneur in Residence" here.