In this podcast episode, Sophie Brazell-Ng sits down with Clarasys subscription expert Tom Hart to explore what’s really happening in the world of media and entertainment subscriptions in 2026.
From the promise of all-you-can-watch streaming to today’s reality of platform overload, rising consumer frustration and fragmented viewing experiences, they unpack why the subscription economy increasingly feels chaotic for both audiences and providers.
Together, they discuss how changing customer expectations are pushing streaming services toward more flexible, usage-based models, and why the battle for attention is no longer just about content libraries, but about curation, convenience and value.
The conversation also examines the growing role of personalization, advertising and customer data in shaping what people watch, what they buy and how platforms monetize engagement.
Looking ahead, Sophie and Tom explore what AI could mean for the future of subscriptions, from smarter discovery and content recommendations to AI agents that may eventually help consumers manage services, spending and access across multiple platforms.
It’s a wide-ranging discussion on streaming, subscriptions and customer experience, with practical insight into where the market may be heading next.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Welcome to today's podcast. I'm here with the wonderful Tom Hart, to talk about, this is an alliteration, so it is gonna come out really weirdly, streams, screens, and subscriptions, who's really winning in the world of entertainment media.
Tom, do you wanna say a quick hello to everybody?
Tom Hart: Sure. Hi Sophie. Lovely to be on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm Tom Har. I lead our customer lifecycle and subscription practice. So I work with lots of different types of companies and different types of industries, helping to optimize their customer lifecycle. A lot of that revolves around recurring relationships with consumers, so subscriptions or usage-based kind of models.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Awesome. Thanks for joining us today, Tom. And, as Tom said, my name is Sophie Brazell-Ng, I am the Head of People and Change at Clarasys. Talking about a different topic than I usually talk about today, but one I think will relate to everybody in terms of subscriptions and streaming services.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I have tons of subscriptions. They are probably all coming out of my ears, and I don't think I could list them all, and I probably should have a look at that, as well, after today's podcast. But when we're reflecting on what streaming and subscriptions feel like in 2026, a lot of what we were talking about internally actually feels quite chaotic. Everybody is fighting for a slice of that pie, but does that mean that we're actually providing a great service to our customers and our consumers?
In my world, I look to certain subscriptions for certain things. I've got the classic Netflix, Prime. And then there are a few other models that are very specific to my interests and likes.
What I wanted to talk to Tom about today, as one of our subscription experts, is what the world of subscriptions and streaming services is looking like in 2026. Especially now, as we are bringing the advent of AI, that fight is becoming even more critical. And something that Tom and I were talking about before this podcast is what the role of a subscription service as a content curator is, and ensuring that we are seeing things that we're actually interested in, not things that subscription services think that we are interested in.
So, to open today's conversation, a little bit of a warmup for us. Tom, you are one of our subscription experts. Can I just ask you a little bit about why subscriptions and why it really interests you?
Tom Hart: Mm-hmm. I have always advocated for organizations thinking about customer relationships as a long-term and ongoing thing.
You are building an experience and a relationship with your customers. Subscription services almost force you to think about that from the outset even, because you end up with, or you can end up with very fickle customers in the sense of with a subscription service, if they use something and they don't like it, they've either signed up for a certain amount of time, they've got a certain financial commitment, and therefore they wanna be really confident they're gonna get value from that service or they want flexibility in how they buy it.
Buying physical products. You buy one thing, that's fine, you use it, you don't use it, it doesn't matter. Then you just go somewhere else, and you buy another thing, and you can go back to the original one, and you can have that element of fickleness quite easily. But with subscription services, you have to really understand what's valuable to the customer.
It's not just about the product; it's also about the wrapper of the service and the experience that you offer. So it forces organizations to consider the total customer experience and customer life cycle, which I think any business should be doing. I think because it directly links to your top line, to your revenue, it means that organizations organize themselves much more correctly around the end-to-end customer, which in one sense, they often don't; they organize around products, which is fine.
You'll also hear me talk a lot about why product centricity is a great thing, but I think in terms of being able to build long-term relationships with customers, offering some equipment services, forces you to organize in the right way to do that, and that's why, for me, it drives some of my passion of driving great customer experiences, by focusing on subscription services.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I think we can all agree, Tom, you're the right person for this conversation. I want to focus in on what subscriptions mean in 2026. There are a lot of words flying around AI, attention economy, quality of service, and data. What are some of the trends that you are seeing in 2026 for subscriptions?
Tom Hart: To answer that, I'm gonna take us back a little bit to, let's say 2005 and reimagine a world where people, if they want content, let's say specifically in entertainment media, where they're watching a film, or they want to watch something on TV, often that's much more transactional. So that's about, can I go and find the DVD or the video or download it from like Apple or Google or wherever, or go watch it in the cinema, or buy my favorite CD or album?
There's a lot of value in that because it gives you consumer choice, and you directly see that if you want something, it has a cost associated with it, and you're making a choice about whether you wanna do that. The origination of subscription services within media entertainment flipped that on its head.
Suddenly, you can have all that you could ever want for the price of two or three downloads of something. So the concept itself was incredible, game-changing. That wasn't a sustainable model for many of these organizations, and therefore, they created a consumer hook of this is great, I consume so much. And also, I think probably at that point, you had the conversion of love film into Netflix, where they had changed what the concept of subscription meant. It was a sort of all you can consume, but in your home right there when you want it, rather than I have to pick and choose, exactly what I want and pay for that, in a more incremental fashion. So they changed the nature of the relationship with consumers, which is great.
Then obviously they had started to get competition within the market, and now suddenly they're not the one-stop shop for TV and film, and they weren't even at the time. But you could, if you wanted to watch friends, let's say you'd watch that on terrestrial TV. If you wanted to watch Game of Thrones, you needed a Sky or HBO subscription. If you wanted to watch something on Netflix, you need a Netflix subscription. So it wasn't always that way. But now I think because there's such a number of big players and a lot of the US TV franchises themselves have created subscription services as opposed to selling it just directly to the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and Apple, we now have the point where it's like we're almost back to where we started again, where if I want something, I've gotta think where is it? And now I in effect, almost feel like I'm getting less value 'cause I'm like, I want this thing that is only on HBO and in order to get that, I need an HBO Max subscription, which I don't have. So I'm making a choice now. Is it worth me spending 15 pounds a month to get that subscription just to watch this one thing? Which is frustrating because I've already got two other subscriptions for something else. The market is becoming more competitive in this streaming sense has almost taken us back a little bit to the point where suddenly now it's back to the consumer to decide.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: It's interesting you say that 'cause I'm thinking about my own experience where instead of now going to a platform to find something, that I want to watch and inevitably spending about three hours trying to find something I want to watch and making my way through that catalog flicking between different services, I am now googling exactly what I want to watch and then looking at that dropdown tab that says where to watch it and trying to figure out if I've got that subscription to that particular thing to watch it.
Tom Hart: Yeah. And I think another factor to consider is when people would watch things on TV is because we entered this world where you could watch anything with one or two subscriptions, you couldn't really do that back then. You were deciding like either it's a terrestrial channel, in which case I watch what's available to me, or I have to pay for premium services, Sky or Virgin, etc., to watch something else.
So you made basically a decision at that point to go for free, freemium. There's obviously advertising involved there, or paid, to do it. Now, it is not just that binary, right? It's like, which kind of paid. But the reason why I'm saying that is because there was a world where you would watch what you could, you wouldn't watch absolutely anything.
And this is actually a trend of subscriptions in general, which is consumerism and the desire for, I want whatever I want and I don't want to have to spend too much effort, or ideally also not spend too much money, in order to get what I want, is a shift in consumer behaviour from times gone by where you understood that there was a limitation in what you could access and what you can't.
I think especially with social, like everyone's talking about certain TV shows, you're like, oh, I'll watch that. Oh no, actually, I don't have the service, and I'm missing out. And the consumerism aspect means that this customer expectation is they want to be able to access whatever they want.
And again, another general trend within subscriptions, which ironically we could go back to 2005, but dig a much more digitalized version of that, where, what if there was a service where I can view whatever I want, but it is back to being slightly more transactional. So by that, I mean I get my core services. So Netflix is my core, or, probably a better example, Amazon Prime is my core. I can see that I can watch shows on other services, and it's now a platform service. So it's a subscription service in itself, but it also shows me what's available and everything else. So to your point of having to search for where it's available, if you wanted that experience, you could buy a platform based service where it shows you everything that's available, but you are aware that in order to access this, you either need a, all you can need subscription, which is gonna be quite expensive, probably.
Or you can do a more consumption-based model where you have your core package, and if you want to consume other things, you buy that on top of that. And for those of us who can remember back to the sort of pay-per-view movies era, you have movies which are just contained within score, core Sky offerings, for example. But if you wanted one that was brand new out, you have to pay to view that. And that obviously is still a concept today in some ways. But the subscriptions market is actually moving to more of a fixed flex style subscription model rather than a tiers of all you can eat kind of model.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I think the fixed flex is an interesting one.
I'd like to dive into a little bit, because I think you're right. Consumer behaviour has changed. We almost make it the subscription services problem that we can't access them despite not paying for the services that they might provide, which has gone a bit backwards. The reality is, I can only watch a certain amount of content at any given time.
So there's a big question to be had as to whether or not I need access to all the subscription services at a particular time. Do you think in a fixed, flex world, there is that platform that you can be a part of, but actually you say, I want access to Netflix for this two weeks versus something that's on Prime or HBO Max for the next two weeks, because that brings a really interesting dynamic as well, which we might wanna dive into around who owns the data, what do you do with the data? I mean, data is where the money is really at. And what does that mean for production studios as well?
Tom Hart: Yeah, and to be honest with you, a lot of that comes down to organizations' appetites to work with each other to ensure fair coverage of consumer use across applications. So for that to be true, like you can already tag on all of the subscriptions in either Prime or Sky today, for example. You are having to be constrained by the agreement that Sky has with the other streaming services.
So for some of them, for example, let's say you wanna add BT Sport, you can add it for one month and take it off another. But for something like Netflix, you can't, because the nature of the agreement that Netflix have with Sky is the, is a longer-term commitment that you're making, and you can see the reasons for that. Netflix are trying to acquire you as a customer via Sky, whether it's via Sky or not. BT probably in some understanding have that they're trying to dangle the carrot, if you will, as what if you are a BT subscriber, this is what you can get. Sorry, TNT Sports. Sorry. It shows my age, subscriber of what you could get if you access that.
I think talking back to the consumerism point. If you design this without thinking about who owns the content itself, you would design it around the type of content that people like. So let's say I'm a football fan, which I'm not sadly, but let's say I was, it's pretty frustrating as you say that I need three different subscriptions to watch all sport at any one point or football at any one point.
Whereas the reality is, I want to be able to buy a subscription for football. And it is actually, that goes back to the football clubs, the premiership and the way in which they do rights deals with broadcasters. That's the limiting factor on why they want to create a market which has competitiveness, right?
So they won't give all rights to single platforms or services. And you can see that. It's a bit like why isn't the world in general a more sustainable and better place? 'Cause sadly, capitalism exists. Mm-hmm. And therefore, within the economic constraints that we have, it's helpful to have a competitive market.
So, I think the problem with that is you would ideally design around could you buy lifestyle-based subscriptions, which are like, you're this kind of person, so let's say you're not into football, you're into fantasy, and you want Game of Thrones and Star Trek. And I learned fans. Super.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: They're all my favorites. Yeah. I'm on board yet.
Tom Hart: Okay, cool. At the moment, they're made by different people, and there is a benefit in creating a competitive market. So I think it will be quite hard to do something about that. I'll set a challenge to any broadcast if you happen to be listening of, that would be cool if you could solve that problem for us as consumers.
So please do that. But I think that's the reality of you can't always design around what should be the right consumer experience, which would be basic segmenting users based on their interests and then allowing them to subscribe based on their interests rather than how the commercial deals are struck with the film industry or with the broadcasters, and the sports franchises themselves.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Well, that's sparking a lot of thoughts in my mind because as someone who, in that world that you've just described, would be saying, actually, I want sports. I like watching tennis. Give me all the access to the tennis that I can watch. The reality is to watch all four of the big championship events. I need four different subscriptions, and some of them are making me pay for a year where I don't want to access all of that content for a year.
Now that blends a little bit into the, what I was talking about of the role of subscription service as content curators. And I'm being very specific about saying curators and not creators because there's a really interesting world as to which, within that sphere, if we take tennis as the example, you've got all the data on me as a tennis fan, you can market to me as a tennis fan and you can sell that data to tennis organizations to say this person is going to buy your products.
That is a really interesting dynamic as a customer because I am being fed things that yes, I have an interest in; however, it is creating something that could be quite myopic and something that could be manipulated as well.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: What are your views around who owns the data in a subscription world, and we can take it outside of that, central platform as well, if you wanna talk about that.
Tom Hart: Yeah. Let's assume well-intended, good-natured corporate organizations for a second.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Okay.
Tom Hart: And then we'll flip to not that. But obviously, there is huge value in them understanding as much about you as they can. And we often end up talking, in a customer experience sense, about personalization of the give information and then personalize off the back of this known information or interpret information and then personalize based off interpreted information.
The goal of many of these companies is to get you on the platform for as much as possible. Again, that's about well-intended. The well-intended to that is you are way, way more likely to continue to renew your subscription if you engage with the platform and the content more. So, the more stuff that they can do, which is engaging to you, the more likely you are. That does lead them, therefore, toward personalising based on the things that you've done previously, rather than trying to guess what you might do.
And I think that is, in the world of content curation, where AI is gonna change things because predictive personalization exists today, but it's quite basic. So if I watch this thing, I might watch this other thing. If I watch this thing, then other people like me have watched this other thing. But what they're not good at is that the depth of that predictiveness is still quite basic. So yeah, they are still feeding you with things that they know you will want to, based on the past. Which normally is quite effective in keeping you glued, but it's not effective in really giving you the stuff that really matters to you, and therefore, you need this combination of being able to provide, am I interested in this or not?
On top of what you do, and you see that, for our example with Netflix, I'm not sure how many people do this, but it asks you at the end of something, " Did you actually like this or not?”
If you say nothing, it assumes you probably did, but it is adding that to did you watch anything else like this or not? So that's what I mean by it's using some element of predictiveness to do it. And in assuming good intent of these organizations' role in content curation. It is trying to give you things that you are interested in, assuming that you are gonna make the right choice about whether you do stop or start watching these things, stop watching these things.
And I think that's where things where you're just like, stuck scrolling Instagram, things like that. Obviously, getting quite a lot of heat at the moment because they haven't taken that a step further of being like, but should you be doing this thing? It seems like you want to, and behaviourally, they can use this information to get you hooked.
So I suppose this is quite a difficult situation for the streamers and the sites themselves because they do want you to spend as much time as possible on the sites, if that's directly linked to advertising revenue, for example, because that helps them to be a more successful, profitable company.
I think a lot of those organizations are fully aware that more screen time isn't a good thing for you, right? And a lot of them have things like limitations on how much time you spend on the screen, for example. But they do want to try and give you things that you want to watch, and ultimately, that is your choice, whether you do that or not.
I guess that's almost like the negative side of personalization and more data, which is like they're getting really good at showing you stuff you wanna watch, and it's harder for you to make the choice not to. But I think there is an awareness from them that that's something that needs to be considered.
And it is something that's really hard to govern. And it's coming up quite a lot, particularly in the sort of US and European courts, um, of how do governments and what legislation needs to exist to support organizations and individuals, in the fair balance between using data, to help streamline things and you give that better experience, but not so much so that, it has negative repercussions in this case for, like, spending too much time on screens.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: The more we are talking about subscription services, it almost feels like the evolution of social media and the role that they have to play in society, it is quite important because ultimately, if you can access a platform, you have access to certain information that can really change your worldview.
There are a couple of places that I'd actually like to take this. You were talking about an interesting role that subscription services have to play in terms of access to cultural information. But in parallel to that, subscription services are built on trying to get us to stay on their platform and continue to engage in their content. And I think we've all seen from various documentaries that there are different ways of doing that type of thing. In addition, the reality is that these services are going to be selling your data to other providers. Within that, there's an element of advertising that's gonna start coming in. I think there are different types of advertising methods that you can use for a subscription service. So I think you've got ad-free subscriptions. You've got subscriptions with ads. And then I think based on what you are consuming and the data that you are consuming, certain production studios can start to do product placement within any of the shows that they are creating based on what, let's say they've got a deal signed with Netflix, they've got all the access to Netflix information, they can start selling products within their Netflix only shows to Netflix consumers.
So that's a big question ultimately, but what do you think about how subscription services and the data they create can influence advertising?
Tom Hart: It's probably something we are all aware of, which is we have the commodity of cash and money to pay for things, but we do also like our insights, what our behaviours and therefore our data is also a commodity that has value to it.
And you are right, what we're actually doing where we say do something that we're not paying for is we're making an agreement with the advertisers without really realising that. And you see a lot of this in more sort of news media, publishing media at the moment, which is cookies now have to fully be accepted, in order for advertisers to really make the most of that.
And therefore, currently, people are actually somewhere in the middle of realising that it's like my data is the thing that's valuable if I'm not paying for it. And then as a result of that, my trade is that the advertisers can now do things with my data. Within that, those industries, this is the concept of consent or pay, because those are the two things which allow those organizations at a very kind of basic level to exist. And I actually quite like that because it makes the understanding of that transaction really clear. I'm like, you are either worth something because we're analyzing what you're doing and we're gonna advertise to you based on that, or because you're paying, in which case you can be exempt from that.
And I know it's quite a difficult thing, but it's again, back to the consumer's desire to have it all and not have it all, not pay for it, all sorts of things come to that, which I think is basically the origin of cookies was unfair for consumers. 'Cause we weren't aware that we were getting all of this stuff without having to pay for it because we were giving away our data, behavioural data, much more freely.
'Cause it's that behavioural data, which then allows basically advertisers, as you say, to manipulate you based on those things. So if it was like, do you want to be manipulated into being sold some products which you then may buy, but you dunno why you bought it. Click accept here.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Mm-hmm.
Tom Hart: We wouldn't accept.
So I think there's gotta be something done that is, and the consumer markets authority in Europe is doing something about this, less so in the US sadly, to try and be way more transparent about how your data is actually consumed and used so that the everyday consumer understands that is the transaction that they're making.
And it gives them a choice that if you don't wanna do that, you can not consume the service. Or you can pay to be exempt from that. I think the only thing which is doesn't sit well with me is that even if you pay to be exempt, you actually are still being tracked, and some of that data is still being used.
And if you read down your T's and C's, you'll see that you have actually signed up to that even though you paid. And again, that is in Europe, something the Consumer Markets Act is looking at addressing, and the Consumer Data Act in general, looking at addressing. Less so in the US, a little bit with the Consumer Protection Act in California. But it's still quite an unknown world.
So I think your insight, your data is a commodity, and therefore you are choosing either to exchange with that or with physical money. But it's people's lack of awareness that is a transaction that's going on, which I think is a problem that needs to be fixed.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, I think a couple of people will be surprised, or maybe not so surprising to hear it out loud. It's yes, actually, obviously that is what's happening. And as you mentioned at the start, for the subscription services to be viable, they need to find alternative ways to get paid beyond your actual subscription, because people flip-flop between subscriptions, 15.99 a month, for example.
Yes, there's gonna be a lot of people subscribing; however, content creation is extremely expensive and is increasing in expense unless we go down the AI route,
Tom Hart: I was gonna then we can have that conversation too. AI slop content creation, but that will change things. So we can get to that.
But yes, you're right, it is, they need to make ends meet.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah,
Tom Hart: In some ways, right? So if they can't do that by subscription revenues, they need advertising revenue.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And there are so many examples where brands have paid for certain shows for product placement, wear a certain clothing, and immediately within the week that goes out, that product is sold out.
It sounds really obvious when you say it out loud, but obviously, those productions are getting paid to put that product in there. It wouldn't happen without that. I think there's something that's interesting, that I've noted down is, actually, would I pay for an additional tier if I knew that my data was not going to be used for any advertising?
And I think there's something to be said about that in terms of ensuring that we continue to get media that isn't always influenced by capitalism, consumerism, in that sort of vein and related to certain subscription services that can't necessarily use your data in the same way. Particularly in the UK we've got some fantastic service through the BBC and ITV that creates great content for us.
Obviously, we've got ITV-X, BBC iPlayer as our staples, and we're starting to see some subscription services within that. I'd be really interested to, to hear what you think all of this means for the likes of ITV and BBC.
Tom Hart: Yes. Fortunately, they obviously play in a slightly different space to some of the others because their purpose is quite clear, that they are a free media organization, and their goal is to bring content to consumers who can't afford some services, and also to stay politically agnostic, and to provide, as you were talking about earlier, content in a certain way.
So it riles me up a little bit when people are like, oh, stupid TV license. This is just another tax. You can see it that way, but the BBC is quite a purposeful organization despite having some errors in how they pay their staff, for example, and in hiring certain individuals. But they're aware of that. They are a purposeful organization, and that is part of why it's important that we have them existing. I think the likes of ITV and Channel 4 are a little bit different. And obviously they do have a much more challenging environment to play in competition with the big, with the big players. For us, obviously, they're UK-specific, and for those of us who consume Netflix, Prime and others, you'll notice we are being more indoctrinated with probably US and more global content in general by those channels.
Whereas we get something different with ITV and Channel 4, Channel 5, as well. But that is for the UK, more specific content for us. There is a value therefore on having, I guess a subscription with them. But their difficulty is they know that people aren't gonna be paying the prices that others pay, and they're much more reliant, therefore on an advertising model. And they will be much more, I guess stuck by changes to data rules and governance as a result of that, because they'll never be able to compete with global players like Netflix and Prime, who can produce much more content because they just have so many more subscribers.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And more money and more backing behind it.
Tom Hart: Absolutely. One kind of question that you were alluding to in there is the role of AI, and also in content. One in content curation, but I suppose there's also something we've not spoken about here. Do you continue to use the subscription service in the way that you find what you want to watch?
And is there therefore a leap that this portal that exists, so like the Netflix AI, for example, continues to be the way in which you interact and find content and then consume it? Or do you move to a world where it's the AI that becomes the orchestrator of that? We're already seeing the AI tools play with consumption-based micropayment-style solutions, where they change the way in which you purchase things in general. So maybe you can get that blockbuster film for a fraction of the price using AI because they're able to consolidate so many transactions. In the years to come, that becomes we talk to AI, we're talking to AI on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis almost. So it has so much richness and understanding us that it's the place you go to. And then they are now the ones that start to have deals with production houses, et cetera, rather than the intermediaries existing. And I think there's already been a lot of movement in the market where they understand that. So consolidation of movie producers so that they're ready to have that interaction. Like they're not just gonna give up their content, even though that's how people wanna consume it. So I think there's a mid-state of consolidation, but we might find that we jump ahead to, we don't interact with platforms like we do today, very quickly. We interact with natural language processing.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Mm-hmm.
Tom Hart: Like LLMs. And that's just how we interact. So you almost skip out on the concept of the platform in general.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Okay, so futuristic but maybe not so far away. For those that are not so much in the AI world, we're probably talking about AI agents now, or at least at the point in time of this recording, we're talking about AI agents. 'Cause probably, in a couple of weeks time it'll be something different.
I personally really like the concept of not having to access so many apps and having to manage so many apps and being able to say, I would like to watch this, very much like the example that I gave earlier about how I'm googling it. I want to watch this. Where can I find it, and what can I pay for out of a subscription pot that I maybe assign myself each month? That for me would be brilliant. I know how much I'm spending, I know where I'm spending it, but in parallel, I wonder if there's the reverse, and you might have been starting to allude to this to be able to say as a consumer, I like products in X, Y, and Z and seeing that money actually go to the producers, the content curators, instead of it being almost aggregated through a large third party, that has the money like Netflix and Prime.
Tom Hart: Yeah, I think sadly the aggregator just changes from being an intermediary to the producers, to a tech company.
So to your point, if you were to, instead of like, at the moment, right, you might Google where it is, and you'd find it, but you just say, I wanna watch this. And sure, no problem. It's playing. What? How? Because, as you said, you've got an agreement with your AI product of choice that it has a set amount of credits, you can just consume those. So your subscription is now with the AI company of like, I spend 20 pounds/dollars a month on media entertainment content, and it orchestrates how you consume that and how you use that.
Now we're in an interim state at the moment where people are starting to move toward platform consolidation. So I guess the interesting thing is just how long it takes to get to that future state, and the benefit of moving to some kind of consolidation, because there's kind of proxies of what you said, right?
You've got, I think it's called Emma Finance, for example, where it consolidates your subscriptions. A lot of banking apps are starting to do that as well, so you can see all the subscriptions that you have for certain banks or credit cards in one place. Or platforms like Prime and Sky, where you can consolidate your consumption into one place. So I think we will see a lot more shift to that. It's the players who are already trying to expand across multiple types of entertainment media that are probably the ones that are gonna be most successful in doing that, which is why you see the likes of Apple, Prime and Netflix going after big sports franchise contracts because they obviously, have already film and a lot of, TV kind of media, but that's a big area where if they expand into that they become the same as a lot of the big media organizations in having the full offering. So I think we're gonna see a lot of platform consolidation where basically it's like, it doesn't really matter, you just pick one of them. Do I want Netflix, Prime, Apple, Sky, HBO, whatever, and via that I get access to everything. We're gonna see a lot more of that.
I think interestingly, the consumer reaction to that, we were just talking about obviously the tiering, the advertising is, how much does that need to be for that to be effective for those companies to offer? And are consumers ready to pay for that? Or are we gonna end up with a sort of alienated audience, in which case you will start to move toward, do you move more toward a consumption model?
So I think this is still kind of in its infancy because we're getting to the point where we don't know what consumers are willing to pay for. And also how much they'll switch. Let's say you realize that you haven't really watched Netflix for a couple of months, but you watch loads on Apple, so you're like, maybe I do just cancel my Netflix subscription. But I think you're not seeing that at the moment, 'cause we do have, there's so much social going on around what TV shows are on what channels, so you always get FOMO, so you need to have more. And that is driving an element of frustration with consumers 'cause you're having to spend a lot of money on streaming services.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yep, you don't wanna miss out on something and not be able to have that coffee or wine chat with a mate at the end of the day. It's interesting how the customer experience is massively blending with this now.
And a couple of things that are on my mind. I mean, if an AI agent could optimize my spending so I get the biggest bang for my buck, I would be very happy. And there will probably be a couple of different iterations as we figure out how customers like to interact with these services. I think there'll be an interesting aspect for subscription services around trusting the media that they create. So I am more likely to go and to look at X service because I know I like the content that they create, and I know that I trust what they create. Is it full of AI slop? Is it not? Should I be there? What is the purpose that business stands behind? It's probably gonna start to become more than just the service they're providing themselves. But what do they stand for, and therefore, what do I want to hire access to? So I think that will drive quite a lot of consumer behaviours as well.
We're also going back, as a bit full circle to the start of this podcast, where we were talking about Blockbuster. We've almost gone from having not a huge access, to everything all at once at our fingertips, wherever we want it from, to granting just that. And then we're almost going, oh no, we've given ourselves access to way too much and now I've got complete decision paralysis.
Tom Hart: Mm-hmm.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Now consolidate my platforms and consolidate it back to me and help me find things I'm actually interested in this enormous wealth of media. As part of that, the subscription services have a role to play in helping us find these things that we want to watch, but what do you think is gonna be a differentiator for these services? Where do you think that they can actually stand out? Because this is gonna be an ever-increasing competitive market. If you were to look at what is the world of subscription services in 2027. And I'm a Netflix, I'm a Prime. I'm looking to you to gimme some advice on where I should be placing some bets right now. What should I be doing to really stand out and differentiate multiple competitors?
Tom Hart: I think obviously people spend quite a lot of time engaging with external media most of their lives. So there is plenty of space to have multiple organizations, just like you do with supermarkets, let's say. Now obviously supermarkets are a physical thing, but people also order online shopping, and what you notice is people start to have favorites because it's very clear what they're offering is either other side or premium offering or it nuances the content.
At the moment, everyone's going after everything, so they're almost trying to compete with each other on just doing everything. And I mean, hilariously, they should look at retail organizations of what happens with supermarkets when everyone tries to do everything. And probably in the UK, like Tesco would be a great example of that where they realized that everywhere at the supermarkets working out a nice niche, you know, they were working out that like, you know, your Waitrose is for your affluent middle aged people and you've got your Asda for your kind of younger, get my sports drink sort of individuals or your money savvy individuals. I think we will see streaming services in a similar sort of space where, as you say, it is a sense of purpose, but there's something about this brand where although you can probably access 60, 70% of the same stuff just like visiting a supermarket, the 30% that is nuanced is why you buy into those brands.
So these brands having more nuance as to like, what's their differentiator about 'em, I think is the way that there should, as we talked about before, be different options within the market to keep competitive and keep consumers at the forefront. So, I don't think we're gonna see a world where it's over-consolidated, but then it's actually about what are the niches within these?
So as you say, maybe if you know that you're into, you know, you're slightly more out there, alternative films, like different cultural kind of films to your standard, that you go to Netflix for that versus if you want the kind of pre-curated, flagship sort of stuff, like Apple is the place to go to that.
I'm not predisposing Prime or Apple, you should go down those routes by the way, you make your own decisions. And then you have your certain place in the market, but there's still overlap. So it is not, 'cause again, you're annoyed as a consumer, right? I think everyone is gonna have to try and get 60 to 80% coverage of most things, but then they need to pick what's their je ne sais quoi, should we say?
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Okey dokey, some French there. I think for me as a consumer, the bottom line is I want value for money. And value for money for me in the future might not mean I get one type of content from one platform. I have, as we were talking about earlier, a wallet of money that I can spend on different places to access the content I'm actually interested in. Now we've been talking a lot about the subscription providers themselves.
But in order to make that work, the payment wallet work, we are going to need to have different ways of buying a subscription service. And I know you do a lot of work with payment providers as well. So if we are looking at like the full end-to-end solution, let's imagine I've signed up to something and I want to optimize that, there's a place for a number of payment providers in this new world. What is that looking like? Can you give us some insight into that world?
Tom Hart: Yeah. And to be honest with you, this is when subscription services started going a bit crazy. Particularly around COVID times, where people just lived a very fixed lifestyle, right? You knew what you liked, what you didn't like, and you subscribed to stuff. Part of the reason why that was difficult is because the platforms that sit beneath these organizations that offer their billing and subscription services weren't readily used. So yeah, there are a lot of big billing subscription providers out there like Stripe, Zuora, Salesforce, more of the B2B world billing platforms.
We've got more of your kind of commercial, B2C players like Recurly and Chargebee, where it means organizations can immediately become subscription businesses. So before that was seen as being difficult. You have to reprogram your ERPs, your finance platforms to do it. It's quite expensive and difficult. Many organizations will be there already. But moving into this world is now moving into dynamic consumption, usage-based billing. Which is still quite emerging within the market. So like, how can I take a payment, and then as and when you consume things, keep taking and reusing that payment. And still, like you see that, and let's say I'm hiring an e-bike, for example, where it can be a little bit jarring if I haven't topped up my wallet, for example, that I have to keep reaccepting my card. They're already billing solutions that can do that right now, where they consolidate that for you, so you don't have to keep saying, yeah, keep charging this card. Or as you allude to, the concept of wallet-based transactions, which I think if we move to AI agents being able to help you create content, is where they'll go. So, like you create your wallet with your AI agent, and then that is now working out how to consume that. So yeah, I've got sort of your major payment providers in the payments world as well, which can already help you to consolidate that.
So I think probably a lot of organizations might see that as being quite a limiting factor, but actually, all of the tech and all the platforms already exist to enable you to move to consumption-based, usage-based, real-time interaction with customers, and set up recurring, billing subscription-based relationships, but also, yeah, real-time consumption-based building.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: You touched on something really interesting there. That's the first time we've actually spoken about a physical product that you get from a subscription service, and that being an e-bike. I know we're very much focusing here on the media and entertainment industries, but we focus heavily on the digital, as in I can access this particular thing right now by clicking a button on my phone, whatever device that I'm using.
Now media isn't just about digital. There obviously are physical assets, and in a world which is ever digitising, we're actually seeing an increase in people looking to have the physical assets. Physical experience. I mean, let's just take Pokémon cards for one example. I mean, in the wealth that they provide.
There's something then also really interesting in the downstream supply chains as a result of that. So these services that we can provide, and how quickly you can provide them, based on that subscription. Do you have any insights as to kind of how you think that's going to start morphing in the next couple of years? Are we gonna have to start thinking about how we get certain services to people's front doors a lot quicker? And what does that look like if we are chopping and changing between subscriptions so quickly?
Tom Hart: I think that's why organizations like the obvious being Amazon, invest in the supply chain as part of their offering instead of being reliant on third party distributors, or services in order to do that, because for many organizations they don't need to think about physical probably in the near term, but for others, yeah, we do a lot of work with, print publishers for example, and in many ways print's declining. But the love of a physical book and reading a book, interestingly, is actually flat-lining and not growing slightly. And I think we've got a lot more parents and individuals who understand the damaging effects of staring at screens and the lack of physical interactions, where physical things, physical interactions, are gonna be back on the rise.
So I think it's hugely important for any organization to be thinking about a hybrid world of physical and digital, unless your business is so, so digital. Like you're purely a SaaS business. But for many other businesses, particularly in retail and media, that should always be the consideration of like, could you do something extra that is a physical thing that someone can feel and read and work with which enhances their experience. Because yeah, you need different operations and technologies to support a physical distribution and fulfillment approach than you do for digital. So it is important to design around that from the outset. I think in general terms, obviously, it's hard to say what the actual implications of that will be. It depends on what kind of media or retail business you would be, and in terms of how it impacts you. The only thing I would say, retail subscriptions I always find quite a fascinating subject because I don't actually think they're subscriptions, they're, if I'm making an agreement that I'm gonna get something on a regular basis, I then still decide when I get it, and I'm charged based on when I get it.
So it's almost like it's not actually a subscription, it's a commitment to, I like this product, so I'm gonna keep getting it. I like the price I'm being offered, but actually, you can decide to stop that at any point or delay it by four months. So from a business's perspective, it doesn't give you the same revenue certainty, income certainty that an actual subscription does. It can be the same regularity, but it's not necessarily a thing that you get exactly the same amount of every month. 'Cause let's say you're on a lovely three-week holiday and you have a coffee subscription, right? You delay it, you pause it, you get some more. So it is more like it's a contract, if you will, to, I like this product, and I want to buy it from you. So I'm gonna keep going it until the point when I don't. But actually, there are loads of flexibility in changing it and shifting it. And with that comes a load more complexity in terms of how you set up that service and how you build for that service. How you offer that service to the customer, as well. So maybe one for another day to talk about, retail subscriptions in a little bit more detail, 'cause I do find that fascinating.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, I think let's definitely touch on that. I'm already thinking I would like an agent that reminds me that when I go on holiday, I probably should take a pause for that and actually take the action for me if I say yes, please. So loads of different tangents that we can go on this, and it's been a really wide-ranging conversation, but to wrap us up, on this topic, what is the thing that you are most excited about in the subscription space? When do you think that horizon is going to be?
Tom Hart: Yeah. I mean, obviously, I've alluded to it with like how agents and AI more generally are gonna change the way in which we interact with goods and services, but also how they help us manage our lives.
So I think that is gonna have a radical change to how we perceive the concept of a subscription because it will actually, in some ways, go backwards for us in the sense that it's, we get what we want, when we want it, and something else is managing whether that is or isn't a subscription, almost on our behalf. Now we're gonna have to build some trust in that, but I'm excited to see where that goes.
I also would say that I've been working in subscriptions for quite a long time, and at least 50% of my customers say they're doing subscriptions. They are, but they're very rigid. Like, you've signed up for a year, you can't change anything. There's no flexibility, really. Uh, it's like, well, I'll give you a refund. We'll make it really hard. And for me, the point of subscriptions is to allow that flexibility and to interact with things, how you want to interact with them, and also get a service that provides you value. And I think we've flipped in the last few years on almost all subscription organizations now do truly understand that, and therefore they're building and pricing and packaging things in a way which assumes consumers will get pissed off, and you're not offering great service, and you're not getting what you want. And therefore, subscriptions now do truly need to be more flexible. I'm sure we will continue to see that changing, over the next few years, even if we don't get to the ultimate end state of the AI's controlled how we access things. Hopefully not our minds. I'm not saying everything…
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Not saying AI controls the world.
Tom Hart: Yeah.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Well, thank you very much, Tom. That was a really fascinating discussion, and I hope everybody listening can agree. I know you do a lot in this space with a lot of customers at Clarasys.
We will leave Tom's contact, details and LinkedIn in the notes if you'd like to contact Tom to have a discussion about subscription services, optimising your business for that, and oral conversation about whether the world of subscriptions is going. But to wrap us up, I just wanna say thank you very much again, Tom. It's been a great conversation, and I think we're gonna be talking about retail subscriptions moving forward.
Tom Hart: That'll be wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed it.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Wonderful. Thank you, everyone.
Tom Hart: Thanks.
Find Tom Hart on LinkedIn here.
Find Sophie Brazell-Ng on LinkedIn here.
To discuss anything discussed in the podcast, please contact us at podcast@clarasys.com.