Subscription models for services, even internet services, have worked for a very long time for all sorts of things. I'm not talking about streaming video, I'm talking about things like people paying for online courses or access to something like Harper's Magazine's website (or even the local newspaper's website; my mother has an online-only subscription to the local newspaper). Because is charge is generally reasonable and is also not endlessly rising year over year. Subscription costs to those things go up, but not at the rate of things like Netflix.