Why I Canceled My Medium Membership

I jumped on-board the Medium Membership train back in March, as soon as I could. I was excited about it. I couldn’t wait to see the great content behind the paywall and to see what new features they were going to roll out just for members.

Well, three months later I’m cancelling my membership. Here’s why:

The members-only content isn’t that good. The best stuff on Medium is already available to the public. I don’t care about the thinkpieces Medium features on a daily basis. I bookmark and recommend articles on Medium multiple times per week, so they have data to build a recommendation engine on. They need the archive of content there first, though.

The audio feature is too small to be useful. I check the selection of audio versions of articles 3-4 times per week and I only found one so far I was actually interested in. Unfortunately, the reader sucked. Huge letdown. I can get past it if there is a wide implementation and more articles I wanted to read were available in audio, but that isn’t the case.

I don’t need an offline reading list. I’m usually connected. If I’m not, Pocket, Raindrop.io, or Evernote can save a copy.

No new tools for publications or authors come bundled with Membership, or at least none that I could find. It would be completely awesome if Members could submit audio versions of their own articles.

I hope Medium becomes profitable and stays around. But unless they roll out more features and get some compelling content behind the paywall, my membership is permanently on hold. Gotta deliver value fast and keep delivering, or your customers wont stick around.

Yeah, I know I’m n=1 and all that, but it is hard to see the real value add to a Medium Membership. It certainly isn’t worth $60/year to me. I wanted to love it, but it is a letdown.