Death of Subscription: Nothing to Fear but Fear itself

Today of course almost no one uses dial-up and greater and easier access to the internet has allowed many companies to launch online competing online services for free. For companies who got where they are through a subscription model it must be a terrifying prospect to go from having all your customers pay a small fee to you every month to restructuring an entire company in a way where the money coming in isn’t from customers. However, to let that fear of change dictate the direction a business moves in is a much greater mistake. Go ask all the companies in the 50's that thought television was just a fad if they think it was a good idea to stay the course. You have trouble finding them though, many of them went out of business. The simple truth is there isn’t a single right way to monetize a free service that will work for everyone, the service needs to be built from the ground up with the idea of free in mind, not tacked on to an existing product.