We recently did a stock take of all the subscriptions we've ended up with - versus the ones we actually regualrly use - and it was clear we've been wasting money for some time
This year had me reduce my subs to a grand total of Youtube and Discord. And even then Youtube is on shakey ground. Just sucks because Youtube is prety much an uncontested monopoly serving as that middleground between tiktok shorts and high budget TV shows.
A few months ago we'd had Disney+, Paramount+, Hulu, HBO Max but we've cut back to Netflix and YouTube premium.
Switched to purchasing and renting when there's something we want to watch that isn't available and we're finding it to force us to be more conscious of what we're watching.
We're considering ditching Spotify and music streaming to return to buying albums so our children can start to be more thoughtful listeners. After falling down a rabbit hole of some insider music vlogs, I recognized how much streaming is harming independent music.
I've found we can usually watch what we want on a streaming platform in a month or two then cancel the subscription and move on elsewhere - it also makes us think about what we actually want to watch rather than what's available to watch.
Mubi can be a slightly cheaper alternative. They now provide one movie-theater ticket per week in some countries, which is a good deal if you enjoy watching films on a slightly bigger screen with slightly louder speakers.
I really don’t think you need much more than a Criterion streaming subscription. I’m filling my head with quality and art that makes me feel and think now.
It's weird. When Netflix came about, I was excited to dump all the bespoke pirating stuff that it replaced. I didn't mind paying for content, in fact, I was glad to.
Fast forward a while, and now Netflix seems to be an undiscoverable mess of old and foreign content while charging twice as much. Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, there are things just not available on any of them. And now, more than ever, the high seas seem so enticing again.
I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented, but they really soured people on their value proposition.
The only time I had a Netflix subscription was in 1999, for a couple of years, when they were mailing DVDs. Can't remember how much it costed. Never got any streaming subscriptions.
I get annoyed with the Netflix button on my TV remote. It wastes a minute when press it by mistake.
In the past I used to pay for Netflix, Spotify, and even YT Premium.
However, they keep raising prices every year.
In the past Netflix 4K cost like $22 and with family sharing it was about $5 - totally acceptable.
Now they cracked down on family sharing in different households and charge $37. No way.
Spotify: they increased prices again last month to $20 USD for the individual subscription. I bought a 12 month Colombian gift card for $40 USD and activated via VPN. Should this stop working, I will unsubscribe entirely.
YT Premium: it's at $23 per month now. Considering they aren't producing movies themselves, I consider that one the most egregious pricing out of all three. They can absolutely forget it - I am unwilling to pay any more than $10 for it.
I like the AI-disclaimer :). This might become a thing for blog and news articles: (c) all words written by <editor> on <date> without AI. And then there will be a robots.txt directive that allows collection of this self-declared human material for AI training. And a google search option: "ai:no" :)
The issues with subscriptions to streaming services are manifold (if you ignore the gargantuan waste of time that mindless TV-watching is):
- the UI is deliberately crap
- the library is deliberately incomplete
- accessing content is deliberately complicated
I had an experience recently where my phone provider bundles 20+ OTT services in a single plan within a single app that runs on your TV/phone/browser. The kicker: you can add stuff to a watch list, but the watch list is never exposed anywhere. While they want you to pay for stuff, they do not want you to be choosy about it.
YT has, to my mind, the best user interface of all the services I have tried.
I only have a single service at any given time and keep rotating them over the year. Even bad services have one or two interesting series you can watch and then dump the service after a month. It's a lot cheaper than cable still...
It's funny, I have never thought of it this way, but, reflecting, I realise the way I do think about it is very similar. Whenever I have to justify a subscription on JetBrains or hosting or what have you, I always just ask myself: will this bring me joy? Specifically will it bring me as much joy as e.g. a Netflix subscription? Very easy to justify then.
To be fair, I used to smoke cigs, and drink heavily, which are both very expensive habits. I've since quit those (they weren't bringing me joy) but the benchmark is the same.
Finally jumped ship to a Jellyfin based home server and couldn't be happier.
The ui is surprisingly good and polished (especially for the users who don't have to manage the library), video quality is amazing (with bd source files, who would have thought, but even DVD is often better than what modern streaming provides), and I can cache the movies on my phone when needed.
It works in ANY browser under ANY os, doesn't have ads, doesn't track me, and has all the content that I could ever desire (and wouldn't be able to find in any one service. In some cases, IN ANY service).
I can have any combination of a subtitle language and a voiceover.
Overall cost was only 500 for a used m1 air and a 16TB external storage.
Hi @nmil - Thanks for the awesome shout out! It's great to see that you've been enjoying the server. You mentioned reddit in your text. If you're active on reddit, and if you haven't done so already, maybe stop by the unofficial r/hetzner subreddit. There are a lot of long-time users there. --Katie
I wonder if it would be in the governments interest to heavily subsidize streaming services. Considering virtually everything seems to be getting hopelessly more expensive and no real progress on economic inequality seems likely outside a slim AI path - dollar for dollar free or cheap entertainment provides a lot of utility and can help keep the poor masses complacent.
$30 a month makes a hell of a lot more of a dent in entertainment affordability than it does in healthcare. No clue on how accurate these estimates are but it seems like the combined budget of most shows and movies in a given year is somewhere around the 40-50 Billion range which in the context of all the other shit in the federal budget is kind of nothing.
Last thing I want is more billionaire handouts, with all due respect. As much as the rising costs suck, it is still better than the cable lock-in contracts and bundling deals. Netflix didn't lead to the cost of living crisis we arrived in today.
I get why the general non-tech crowd pays for Netflix but why people who hang out on here do it is beyond me. Most shows/movies on Netflix are garbage, there are plenty of free services that you can stream anything you want from. Why the hell would I pay for Netflix or any other paid service?
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 49.8 ms ] threadSwitched to purchasing and renting when there's something we want to watch that isn't available and we're finding it to force us to be more conscious of what we're watching.
We're considering ditching Spotify and music streaming to return to buying albums so our children can start to be more thoughtful listeners. After falling down a rabbit hole of some insider music vlogs, I recognized how much streaming is harming independent music.
Fast forward a while, and now Netflix seems to be an undiscoverable mess of old and foreign content while charging twice as much. Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, there are things just not available on any of them. And now, more than ever, the high seas seem so enticing again.
I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented, but they really soured people on their value proposition.
I get annoyed with the Netflix button on my TV remote. It wastes a minute when press it by mistake.
However, they keep raising prices every year.
In the past Netflix 4K cost like $22 and with family sharing it was about $5 - totally acceptable.
Now they cracked down on family sharing in different households and charge $37. No way.
Spotify: they increased prices again last month to $20 USD for the individual subscription. I bought a 12 month Colombian gift card for $40 USD and activated via VPN. Should this stop working, I will unsubscribe entirely.
YT Premium: it's at $23 per month now. Considering they aren't producing movies themselves, I consider that one the most egregious pricing out of all three. They can absolutely forget it - I am unwilling to pay any more than $10 for it.
- the UI is deliberately crap
- the library is deliberately incomplete
- accessing content is deliberately complicated
I had an experience recently where my phone provider bundles 20+ OTT services in a single plan within a single app that runs on your TV/phone/browser. The kicker: you can add stuff to a watch list, but the watch list is never exposed anywhere. While they want you to pay for stuff, they do not want you to be choosy about it.
YT has, to my mind, the best user interface of all the services I have tried.
love that
To be fair, I used to smoke cigs, and drink heavily, which are both very expensive habits. I've since quit those (they weren't bringing me joy) but the benchmark is the same.
The ui is surprisingly good and polished (especially for the users who don't have to manage the library), video quality is amazing (with bd source files, who would have thought, but even DVD is often better than what modern streaming provides), and I can cache the movies on my phone when needed.
It works in ANY browser under ANY os, doesn't have ads, doesn't track me, and has all the content that I could ever desire (and wouldn't be able to find in any one service. In some cases, IN ANY service).
I can have any combination of a subtitle language and a voiceover.
Overall cost was only 500 for a used m1 air and a 16TB external storage.
$30 a month makes a hell of a lot more of a dent in entertainment affordability than it does in healthcare. No clue on how accurate these estimates are but it seems like the combined budget of most shows and movies in a given year is somewhere around the 40-50 Billion range which in the context of all the other shit in the federal budget is kind of nothing.
Also, family. I can understand not wanting to be the IT for all your non-tech family media needs.