so for many services the subscription model is much better both for merchant and consumer. Your specific examples for the vast majority of people work better as a monthly subscription service.
From merchant perspective, monthly subscription is good, yearly is better, decade is the best. Not sure about consumer perspective. 
I prefer pay as you go model myself. Take a look at the success of companies like Netflix. They are not charging you a micropayment for every
minute of content that you consume, but rather charge a flat monthly fee.
I highly doubt that Netflix would be more successful if they would abandon their current business model.
Micropayments are a viable solution for many other problems, but the subscription model has
several advantages when it comes to stuff that is consumed in large amounts - not only from
the merchant perspective, but also from the consumer perspective.