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As was always the plan. Openly published and painfully obvious.
I think people forget that cable originally didn’t have ads, neither did XM radio. Putting ads in after the fact is old hat at this point. Doing that and then charging more is even more so.
I don’t pay for any of them. There’s the public library and other options. Fuck em.
My library is getting rid of their CDs now. Next up is all the DVDs. Its sad man. Anyone my age also thinks I’m a weirdo for using the library. Libraries won’t exist in a decade, at least not in the US.
Buy the ones they’re getting rid of and… rip!
Oh I will be. I collect CDs.
See deez nuts!Ah sorry.
I have a simple way of dealing with subscription services, for the most part I just ignore them.
But if I see one that seems interesting, I try to find if I can pay for it using giftcards, without adding a credit card to the account.
For the last five years or so I have completely funded my Geoguessr gaming through giftcards, I don’t have to worry about cancelling anything if I hit hard times, I can just let it lapse and not care.
Same when I used Netflix, only used giftcards and when I got bored with them, I simply let if lapse.
If there is no way to register an account using only giftcards, then I will not use the service
Stremio, TorBox, Real Debrid, and qBittorrent = never subscribing to any of these ever again. The one freedom we all have left is that we can still speak with our wallet on a lot of things, and streaming is one of them. Let’s do our best to make these greedy fucks lose their shirts.
Weird, my Usenet subscriptions seem to be very stable.
What subscriptions? I’ve always had the problem of not knowing which to pick.
Would you mind explaining Usenet a little bit for a middling skill PC user,m
Usenet is something of a forum, where members can have discussions. It also has the ability to host files, but broken up into a lot of pieces. It’s kinda hard to find anything, but some people have put effort into indexing what’s scattered across the Usenet spaces. You can subscribe to their index, and find what you’re looking for in the usenets you’re a member of. There are programs that will then take all those pieces, download them—since it knows where to look now—and put them back together again, resulting in a working file. And since buying isn’t owning… I see no problem with this.
TIL Usenet still exists.
Does that mean there are still some people hosting bulletin boards out there too?
Yup, among other things they’re hosting a BBS you can dial in with telnet or visit the more modern way. I’m sure others are out there too.
Uh, the top tier of Netflix in my region is $27/month, not $20. A 238% increase.
Does your region use the US dollar?
Yes, I’m in the US
What “region” of the US are you in? I’ve never heard that in my life.
I was using “region” in reference to however Netflix identifies distinct pricing markets. I don’t know if they have unique pricing for the US or if they use the same rate for all of North America.
That said, the US does absolutely use the term regions to colloquially refer to distinct geographic areas. The Pacific Northwest, the South, the Rust Belt, etc
Luckily unlike cable, streaming services are easy to cancel.
cable figured out they can bundle internet+tv cable+wifi into an expensive tier. streaming isnt part of that scheme.
And people spend way too much yearly:
Americans spend an average of $552 per year on streaming subscriptions, according to our streaming survey. Along with Netflix, other paid subscriptions with high subscriber rates include Amazon Prime Video (51% of our respondents), Disney+ (49%) and ESPN+ (44%). However, only 10% of people said they wouldn’t cut any subscription regardless of price increases. The majority would be willing to eliminate subscriptions, with Disney+ being the first to go for the highest percentage of people, at 44%.
That’s an average! I find it absurd what people are willing to put up with.
I admit I play the streaming game, but only one at a time. If there’s something I want to watch, I wait for the full season to come out, subscribe for a month, and cancel. Even with some overlap in services it’s never more than $20/mo and I feel like that’s too much.
Don’t be afraid to walk away folks, the same exact content will still be there next month or even next year. Maybe buy a DVD or sail the high seas if there’s something you watch on repeat.
My co workers spend $250 MONTHLY on streaming services between sports and all the channels for their kids on Disney etc. I just keep quiet and smile. I don’t have any subs.
I don’t have any kids! The subscriptions are practically free in comparison.
wow that insane. how rich is that guy.
Normal amount for a 45 year old guy with 4 kids and a rich mother in law. Who also is bankrupt but has a brand new house.
This was always going to happen. Producing content is not cheap. Investors in public companies want to see a certain level of profit every reporting period. Cable put so many channels in the tiers because at that price level because there would be enough channels in it that a customer at that price point want that they would get sales for that, even though basically nobody wanted all of those channels. Everyone would see some channels they didn’t want, and that would vary from person-to-person, but there was enough they wanted that it didn’t matter.
On the back end, the cable networks were getting money from each subscriber the cable companies had, whether those subscribers wanted those channels or not. They weren’t actually making much money per subscriber, but there were so many subscribers that it worked out. Most channels were under $1 per person, typically in the 25-75¢ range. Only ESPN had the clout to command serious money, nearing $5 per subscriber for a package that often included 4 or 5 channels.
There are a lot of those channels where people would say they’d be happy to pay 50¢ or even $1 a month in building their own package. The problem is those numbers only work when everyone pays. If a channel was on cable companies with 50 million customers that got them 50¢/month each, that’s $25 million/month. If that channel was a streaming service with 1 million customers who actually want their content they’d have to charge $25/month for the same revenue.
The only advantage customers have in this streaming landscape is no one is making them subscribe to all the services and there usually are no contracts, so consumers could change who they subscribe to every month. If you’re only watching a couple shows on one or two services you can save money. But it seems like many people don’t do that.
