Consider my recent experience renewing my favorite magazine, The Week: My subscription was given to me as a gift. After a couple weeks of not receiving issues, I figured something was up. After looking into it, I found my subscription had expired. I’d have known this from their mailings, had I not gotten into the habit of throwing out all letters from magazines due to their high rate of silly offers. I went to TheWeek.com, clicked “Subscribe now”, which goes to a page that doesn’t match their design hosted by palmcoastd.com that asks me to pay $49.50 for the next year. I checked “Check here if you want us to bill you later” and they sent me an invoice, in the mail (you read that right, no “e”). Who does that anymore? So I had to type the code from the mailed invoice into a web form so I could pay by credit card.

In Japan you can buy a coke from a vending machine with your phone. The magazine industry’s still mailing invoices?

The Week isn’t unique in this regard. The vast majority of magazine subscription systems are woefully out of date. I recently bought a Groupon (NSDQ: GRPN) for a year’s print and digital subscription to The Economist. How long till I get the first issue? “Allow 5 weeks for delivery of 1st issue,” according to their fine print. When I bought a Groupon to Dos Toros I used it that very night for a delicious burrito. Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Prime will ship me a microwave in two days at no additional cost. Even the hottest new Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) products get only backed logged for a week or two. Why do those otherwise clever Brits at The Economist take 5 week to fill a new order for a product they’ve been making for over 150 years?

It’s time for the magazine industry to take a page from companies like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Spotify: charge by the month, require a credit card, auto-renew payments and let people cancel anytime.

Subscriptions in this modern style are fueling impressive revenue growth of companies serving a wide variety of consumers and corporate clients, including Dropbox, GigaOM, Birchbox, 37signals, JibJab and MailChimp. (My company recently adopted this model by introducing a professional version of Muck Rack.) Here’s why magazines should do it too:

We'll be addressing some of these themes during our next conference, paidContent 2012, May 23 in New York City. You can find out more about the agenda and register here.