The reason subscriptions are spreading everywhere is that stock markets and private investors usually value recurring revenue at a much higher multiple than non-recurring revenue. The effect can be so large that it can be better to have less recurring revenue than more non-recurring revenue, at least if you are seeking investment or credit.

It creates a powerful incentive to seek recurring revenue wherever possible. Since it affects things like stock prices and executives and sometimes even rank and file employees often have stock, it's an incentive throughout the organization. If something is incentivized you're going to get more of it.

In the past it was structurally hard to do this, but now that everything is online it becomes possible to put a chip in anything and make it a subscription. We are only going to see more and more of this unless either consumers balk en masse or something is done to structurally change the incentives.