From their prospective (book publisher, either paper or digital)...they are concerned over customers having cash to spend on ‘extras’.
I would offer this observation. Around 2008, a bunch of folks suddenly had low cash flow, and one of the top twenty things hit....was magazine sales. Up until that point, most families had five or six magazines minimum...arriving monthly or weekly. Suddenly, everyone cut drastically, and subscription levels have never returned to the previous expectations.
Maybe cash flow just got to the point where it made people realize how overpriced magazines had been for some time. And how few really good magazines there were. From what I’ve observed since about 2008, the magazines generally aren’t worth 20% of what they cost.
The internet killed magazines also. In the 90’s I used to hit the bookstore twice a month and buy $40-50 worth of my favorites and never paid over $5 for one.
All that ended around 2000 when internet content along the same interests become prolific.