I end most nights watching a show on a subscription service, reading news from a handful of subscription publications and newsletters, and brushing my teeth with a subscription toothbrush as music from a subscription service plays. Finally, Ill fall asleep in my apartment, my biggest subscription expense of all.

As someone who writes about streaming services each week, I certainly thought there were too many new subscription services last year, with Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+ and, yes, Quibi all debuting within a few months of each other. The services duked it out to offer varying Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell and Reese Witherspoon projects apparently the mighty content algorithms holy trinity. Even so, all of these additions still felt second tier to Netflix , Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Now Discovery is packaging cable channels together into a streaming service (called, naturally, Discovery+), and Roku is reviving Quibis cursed content in a desperate attempt to get into the game as well.

All of this is to say, there are now too many subscriptions. You know this. And yet more subscriptions keep coming. Why?

Companies know that its quite hard to convince consumers to purchase individual goods, as a buying decision must occur each time. Subscriptions, on the other hand, are set it and forget it. Bundling shows and movies together in a package of goods further confuses the consumer since its hard to determine the true value of gaining access to 100 shows and movies you kind of, sort of want to watch.