Spotify

Spotify’s free version has limited skips, intermittent ads, and only shuffle play. While the free tier is enough for many Spotify users, the interruptions can be so disruptive that users want to upgrade. And once you get Spotify premium, its so difficult to go back. This, along with the fact that music/podcasts are such an integral part of daily life, keeps users on Spotify for their entire lifetimes.

The interruptions create enough friction that some users will pay to get rid of them, but not enough that users will stop using Spotify altogether. There is a delicatebalance, or else people would move to other music streaming platforms.

Figma 

On Figma, you can access everything as an individual user from the free tier, but using any collaboration tools requires an upgrade. Figma’s main value is the collaboration capabilities though. 

Collaboration tends to occur within organizations or companies, so they can charge the enterprise/company without putting burden onto the individuals. I think that the burden to team tradeoff helps to balance the friction. I think the growing pricing based on collaboration group size is also smart as it reflects how much the group would be able to pay. More people, more money!

NYTimes

The NYT gives you a couple free articles before it has this annoying popup that bar you from looking at anything more. When you try to scroll, the popup just covers more and more of the screen. The product suite intentionally builds your habits before the paywall kicks in. 

The paywall limits free reading just enough to make frequent readers subscribe, but casual readers will probably turn away. I remember people used to post hacks of how to bypass the popup. I think this shows the most friction since people REALLY don’t want to pay.