Morning Brew proves people pay premium prices to avoid choice
Newsletter subscriptions surge as information abundance creates new scarcity: curation itself.
Morning Brew reaches 4.1 million subscribers who pay for pre-filtered business news delivered in a single daily email. The newsletter company, valued at $75 million when acquired by Insider in 2020, represents a growing media category where curation commands premium pricing. Similar publications like The Hustle and Stratechery have built eight-figure businesses by reducing thousands of potential news sources into digestible summaries.
This follows the exact trajectory of luxury personal shopping services. For decades, people assumed more choice meant better outcomes. Department stores expanded selections. Online retailers offered infinite inventory. But choice abundance created decision paralysis. Now people pay others to choose for them across every category—from Stitch Fix for clothing to Morning Brew for news. The business model has flipped: scarcity isn't about limited options anymore, it's about limited attention. Companies that filter noise into signal capture the premium that department stores once commanded through selection breadth.
When everything is available, curation becomes the luxury. People don't want more choices—they want better choices made for them.
Build filtering mechanisms into your product experience rather than expanding feature sets. People increasingly value services that reduce decision fatigue over those that increase options.
Source: Morning Brew