No. Were it common you wouldn't see such a large difference in profit between the rental and perpetually licensed versions of Lightroom. Aside from support for newer cameras new versions have few, if any, compelling features. Performance improvements (LR is slooooooow), improved noise reduction, improved handling of video or non-Bayer sensors… all of that mostly fell to the wayside in favor of things like that AI garbage, improved mobile integration, enhanced geolocation support.
Or the subscription made LR more accessible to people. It also included storage space and made it easy to take and edit images on any device. That may not matter to you, but that is the market now.
Or the subscription made LR more accessible to people
lol, no.
The Lightroom CC is the mobile/desktop product. That is and always has been a separate "more accessible" product. Moving Lightroom "Classic" (the desktop only product) to a rental only model simply makes profits more accessible to Adobe.
That may not matter to you, but that is the market now.
Of course it's the market now, there's no other option from Adobe.
Is it common for people to upgrade LR or similar software every year?