Ownership is quietly disappearing from every part of our digital lives. From Photoshop to Spotify, Kindle to Netflix, we’re trading permanence for convenience — and losing control in the process. Web designers felt it first, but now the subscription trap has swallowed everything from creativity to culture.
There was a time when being a designer — or honestly, just being a consumer — meant owning the tools you used and the things you loved.
You paid for Photoshop, and it was yours. You bought a CD, and it sat proudly on your shelf. You purchased a movie on DVD and could lend it to a friend or watch it whenever you wanted, no Wi-Fi require
Not your design software. Not your music. Not your movies. Not even the fonts on your website.
Ownership in the digital world is dead — and it didn’t go out with a bang. It disappeared quietly, wrapped in slick marketing about convenience and the cloud, while we were too busy binging Netflix to notice.
Web design was one of the first creative fields to get caught in the subscription trap.
Remember Adobe? Back in the good old days, you could buy a box of Photoshop or Dreamweaver and install it on your machine. Sure, it was pricey upfront, but once you bought it, it was yours. You controlled when — or even if — you upgraded. You didn’t need to check the terms of service or wonder what would happen if you missed a payment.
Adobe changed all that with the launch of Creative Cloud. Suddenly, you weren’t buying software — you were renting it. $60 a month for access to Photoshop, Illustrator, and the rest. Stop paying, and you don’t just lose updates — you lose access to your own files. The tools you use to make a living are now hostage to a recurring payment plan.
It didn’t take long for others to follow.
Figma showed up with a fresh, collaborative vibe and a freemium model that seemed friendly at first. Free for casual users, sure — but if you’re doing serious work, collaborating with teams, or managing complex projects, you’re pushed into a subscription tier.
And Figma files? They live in Figma’s cloud, not yours. Exporting them is clunky and incomplete. You don’t own the tools or the files — you borrow them, at the platform’s pleasure.
Even the assets we put into our designs aren’t really ours anymore. Stock images, video clips, icons — all licensed. You don’t own the photo you put on your client’s homepage. You rent the right to use it until the stock service decides otherwise.
And fonts — the lifeblood of good web design — have gone the same route. Adobe Fonts, Monotype subscriptions, Google Fonts APIs — access, not ownership. Lose your license, and your carefully designed site might suddenly look… very different.
While designers were busy adjusting to life without ownership, the rest of the world was quietly moving in the same direction.
Take music. Once, you bought albums. CDs, vinyl, even MP3s. You owned a collection. It was personal — the scratched cases, the liner notes, the mixtapes you made. Today? Spotify gives you access to 70 million songs for a monthly fee. It feels limitless — until you stop paying, and your entire music “library” vanishes into the ether.
The same thing happened with TV and movies. We traded DVD shelves for Netflix queues, and now we rent access to shows that can disappear overnight due to expired licensing deals. You don’t own your favorite series — you stream it. If Netflix, Disney+, or HBO Max decides it’s not profitable anymore, it’s gone.
Apps? You used to pay once and own them. Now, it’s “freemium” plus in-app purchases, or subscription models everywhere. Want to use that photo editing app? It’s $2.99 a month now — forever. Want access to extra storage on your favorite note-taking app? Another monthly fee.
Even books — the most fundamental form of ownership in human culture — have fallen.
With Kindle, you don’t own the ebooks you buy. You license them. Amazon can — and has — removed books from users’ devices. That dog-eared, margin-scribbled relationship you once had with your personal library? Reduced to another conditional access point.
The death of ownership wasn’t a hostile takeover. It was seduction.
Why buy when you can subscribe? Why clutter your shelves when everything can live in the cloud? Why pay hundreds upfront when you can pay ten bucks a month for the rest of your life?
Subscription services sold us convenience — and we fell for it, hard.
We loved the instant access, the automatic updates, the lack of commitment. But convenience has a hidden price: control.
When you stop paying, you lose access. When the platform changes, you adapt — or you lose your work, your library, your creative output. When terms of service shift — and they always do — you have no leverage.
Try moving your Spotify playlists somewhere else. Try downloading your full Figma archive into usable files. Try switching your entire Adobe workflow to another ecosystem without breaking a sweat. It’s not easy, because it’s not supposed to be.
The convenience we worshipped has turned into dependency.
Ownership is more than just legal rights to a thing — it’s autonomy, permanence, memory.
When you own your software, you control your creative process. When you own your music, you curate your culture. When you own your books, you safeguard your knowledge.
Without ownership, we’re not building libraries — we’re building subscriptions to libraries we can be locked out of at any moment.
In web design, losing ownership means losing control over our creative work.
In music and TV, it means losing control over the culture we consume and remember.
In apps and services, it means becoming perpetual renters of functionality — forever dependent, forever paying.
There are cracks in the system. Open-source software offers a glimmer of hope… Artists are selling direct to consumers again. Some musicians are pressing vinyl or offering DRM-free downloads. Indie app developers are moving back to one-time purchase models.
But it’s not just about the tools — it’s about a shift in mindset.
We have to remember what ownership felt like. We have to value freedom over friction, permanence over immediacy.
Otherwise, we’re not users anymore — we’re subscribers. Not owners — tenants. Not collectors — renters of our own creativity, culture, and memories.
The web design world was the canary in the coal mine. What started with Creative Cloud and Figma has now consumed everything from our playlists to our libraries to our very idea of what it means to own something.
The only real question left is: Do we even want to own anything anymore?
Or are we too comfortable renting our lives back, one monthly charge at a time?
There was a time when design meant making something—actually making something. You’d open Photoshop (or, if you’re older, Illustrator 9), throw ideas on the canvas, and wrestle with composition, hierarchy, rhythm,…
Let’s say it out loud: blogging, as we once knew it, is dead. That romantic era of handcrafted posts, quirky sidebars, and RSS feeds buzzing like bees in your browser? Yeah, that’s…
Let’s be honest: most designers who put something on Gumroad don’t make enough to buy a fancy coffee, let alone pay rent. It’s not because they’re bad designers — it’s…
Once upon a time, photographers dreamed of landing the holy grail: passive income from stock photography. Upload a few well-lit shots of businessmen shaking hands, a woman eating a salad…
Microcopy is supposed to be the quiet hero of user experience: those little lines of text that guide you through a form, reassure you about your choices, or gently explain…
Let’s cut to the chase: if your product requires users to dig through labyrinthine settings just to stop you from hoarding their personal data, you’re not designing—you’re manipulating. And it’s…