cross-posted from: https://yiffit.net/post/1072752
For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh
Even Spotify though continues to Jack their prices with no extra benefit. I’ve hoped for lossless audio from them for so long, but instead they just charge more for a bad UI driven by engagement instead of user experience
I don’t mind Spotify increasing.
Inflation is real. And nobody wants to see the service turn into a Little Caesars “$5 Hot N Ready” pizza that erodes in quality, rather than gradually price increase with inflation.
The advantage we have with music streamers is that nearly ALL the content is on ALL the services. So, if one service goes bananas with pricing, we can jump ship to a cheaper one.
But TV is siloed into mini monopolies. The only source of capitalism competition they face is use choosing to do without. And frankly, if I’m gonna be forced-fed ads, I choose to do it on YouTube which costs me $0 and not $7.99 a month.
Netflix is gone. And as someone who leaves The Simpsons running 24/7 on Disney+, I’m frankly getting thiiiiiiiiiis close to dumping their asses, too!
Spotify increased the price of everybody’s subscription by £1/$1. They have some 200 million subscribers. That’s at a minimum an extra $200m a month. Is that really necessary?
Try switching to apple music. It is cheaper and the quality is way better. UI is also waaaaay better than spotify’s. Also, I learned that if you dont have any money on your card connected to google play store apple music will be just fine for extra month. So you can use apple music 2 months for price of one month.
Thanks for the recco! Though I’ve actually been using Tidal for the last few months because they’re one of the few lossless audio services, just annoyed because I was a Spotify customer for years waiting for lossless and instead they bumped prices without improving their services
It’s basically a web based software that handles the download of torrents for you and then offers a download link for you to get it on your machine
Wait, aren’t seed boxes just VMs that run on the infrastructure of some internet hoster that doesn’t give a crap about the users utilizing it for torrenting? But AFAIK on most seed boxes the user needs to configure the VMs themselves to some degree. So it acts as some beefed up proxy server to torrent stuff without you compromising your own ip address + you have access to high bandwidths and some tb of storage to store your downloaded stuff
Same for me. Had Netflix and Prime.
Cancelled Prime. Student plan ran out and wanted to spend less (on Amazon and buying random stuff.
Cancelled Netflix. Didn’t use it, convinced my mother to let it go (only after saying how much it costs).
Renting a seedbox for 15€ per month, Spotify for music and since this month I burried my life long hate for YT premium and now also have that (and wish for a plan without yt music for 3-4€ less).
Reason why I did YT premium was, because I already watched more YT than Netflix anyway. And it’s near daily for about 2-3h. Well worth it (for way too much money).
For YouTube premium I just did the whole vpn to turkey and pay for a year upfront which was like £12 for the year
I absolutely loved the idea of Game Pass. I had it for two years. I actually stopped buying Steam games.
I was annoyed of their whole file structure (like it’s extremely difficult to move saves from a PC Game Pass game to a Steam/Epic Game). It’s using some weird Windows DRM and has constant connection issues with the Microsoft server. But the value was good and I accepted that hiccup.
After the Steam Deck dropped, I quit PC Game Pass.
As a busy parent, Steam Deck is way too convenient and the future of PC gaming is portability. And once the Steam Deck reaches critical mass, if PC Game Pass isn’t on there, it’ll be the Bing of gaming and play second fiddle.
I have Disney+ for Marvel and Star Wars, $4 Google Play rent or theater watch everything else because I’m not a big TV/Movie guy.
Had Gamepass Ultimate, dropped them when they shut down the family plan, raised the price of Ultimate by $2/mo, cut the value of gold-to-ult conversion pretty significantly, and ditched the monthly games in favor of a perpetual list of games I mostly already own.
My new preferred plan is PS+ Premium+PC Gamepass, in part because the game offerings on PS+ are actually pretty good, but also because I realized that I can very sustainably get PC Gamepass from Microsoft Rewards. They have an auto-redeem plan with a low enough point value that, if I were to do nothing except the daily Bing/Edge searches, I’d rack up enough points for the next month in 25 days. That’s pretty significant for something I can mostly do sitting on the shitter.
Piracy has steadily been getting more accessible and easy to use (see: Jellyfin, Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr etc.). There is basically no reason anymore to pay for any digital context, especially considering the streaming services are screwing over both the users and the creators. I like to support game developers that make really enjoyable games, but I can’t and won’t tolerate any shitty subscriptions that offer increasingly less content for increasingly exorbitant prices
Piracy and software was already really easy to use a decade ago ( sick beard / couch potato ) it’s just that the services at the time were good enough that you could watch practically everything on Netflix +1 so it wasn’t really a problem to stomach the cost. now I need 7 different subscriptions to watch shows I’m interested in which is a ball ache
I’ve already made the decision to sail the high seas in 2017 and selfhost my media.
Best decision I’ve ever made.
Sonarr + radarr + jellyfin
I never stopped, but I doubled down a good 10 years ago when Netflix first announced they were gonna put an end to people getting around geolocking. I’m Canadian. I’d pay (at the time) for US Netflix 100%. Canadian Netflix wasn’t worth the cost of the pot to piss in.
Spun up a Plex server, set up Sonarr, Jackett/Prowlarr, Radarr, Tautulli, and now I am Netflix for 20 people lmao.
Edit: And I’d have it no other way.
That’s the way!
I feel your pain as I had Canadian Netflix around 2015. I was bummed when I knew that the new seasons of Suits (iirc) wouldn’t be available in Canadian Netflix for a couple of months.
I had to watch it in putlockers while I was paying for a freaking streaming service.
Such a mess lol. I take pride in knowing that every movie, tv show, comedy special, album, game (up until the ps era cause i’m not made of hard drive money), comic book, novel, piece of software, basically anything I ever enjoyed over the course of my life (as well as a couple terabytes of random data hoarder shit) are sitting 2 feet away from my fingers at all times.
Does your ISP still provide Usenet access or do you subscribe to a Usenet provider?
Paying $9 a month for Usenet makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just keep paying for Hulu
I don’t think my ISP provides it.
Id suggest you to setup sonarr and radarr behind a vpn as it’s a set and forget setup.
Fully automated.
@deleted
Oh? You don’t have to setup a usenet provider to Sonaar work?
I’m out of the loop then. You have any recommendations for modern setup tutorials?
Usenet access used to be included by ISPs. It’s been a long time since that was standard. I’m not sure which Usenet providers are worthwhile now.
Good news for Lemmy. Pirate the fuck out of everything and never ever feel any guilt about it comrades.
🏴☠️ ☠️ 🏴☠️ ☠️ 🏴☠️ ☠️ 🏴☠️
Trusting promises of corporations is like believing that a wild cobra won’t bite you. It’s definitely possible, highly unlikely they will keep the promise.
