The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices
The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices
arstechnica.com
The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices
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
I cancelled all my subscriptions and just pay for a seedbox instead.
Only two subscriptions I have now are Spotify and Game Pass...because they are actually worth it.
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!
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.
My boss pays for my spotify and my google opinion award pay for my disney+. That's all the subscriptions I have
What exactly is a seedbox and how much is it?
It's, in layman's terms, server space you rent out and can use for your downloads. torrent clients like transmission are usually built in. I pay £5 a month for 2tb space and enough bandwidth to keep a good ratio.
So instead of downloading to my pc, I download torrents to the seedbox (at a blazing fast speed) and then download files from there to my pc whenever I feel like it, again at stupid good speeds.
I have FTP access, so I've just added it as a folder/mounted drive on my windows and Linux mint file explorers. Works great. Also have it on my smart TV as a web address for quick streaming of whatever I downloaded.
Edit: this also eliminates the risk of downloading Torrents locally.
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
Nah, in the case of Spotify, I've ady lost all my faith on the music industry and remain on the sea for a while now. I rather take times to listen to the music instead of giving even a quid to those mf.
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.