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RufusFirefly ,
@RufusFirefly@lemmy.world avatar

I stopped watching network television because of ads, then I stopped watching free streaming because of too many ads (Pluto TV, Crackle), I get a basic subscription to Paramount through Walmart and I stopped watching that because of the ads. I have an Amazon prime subscription because I get it for one half off but I rarely use prime video an if they start showing ads, I won’t use it at all.

nadram ,
@nadram@lemmy.world avatar

This isn’t a shitpost, this is truth brilliantly represented 🙏

sznio ,

I think that Spotify (or any other music streaming service) are the only ones still worth it. I don’t have to sign up for Spotify and Tidal and YouTube Music since any of them has whatever I need.

If that were to change, then I’ll be subscription-free.

Also, I like paying for Spotify since it’s the only European big-tech.

PraiseTheSoup ,

If that were to change, then I’ll be subscription-free.

At this point you will also be music-free since you do not own any of it, and that is what keeps people locked into these services even as the companies jerk them around.

pinkwerdo ,

Just pirate it.

nxdefiant ,

Or do both?

The real value in Spotify is the music discovery. That’s driven by data that very few are in a position to collect. Of all the big tech companies, Spotify is the only one I can think of that uses the data they collect from the users to give the users a uniquely better experience. Even YouTube is littered with promoted ads and videos. If you’re avoiding ads anyway, it’s a win win for the user to pay for Spotify premium.

Then you can do what you will with all the playlists you make.

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@midwest.social avatar

I’m gradually getting to the point where I’ll drop Spotify. Shoving ads for podcasts in my face every time I launch the app was bad enough, but now their app has become such a bloated mess that it bugs out whenever my phone is switching between wifi and mobile data. I have more than 1k songs downloaded just so I don’t have to deal with that, and now I have to deal with it because it’s more important to them to show ads and promotions than it is for their app to do what it’s designed to do.

And before anyone says “tHoSe ArEn’T aDs,” showing me recommended artists and podcasts against my will is absolutely a form of advertising. Do you think they’re showing me new releases from Joe down the street? These are paid promotions, aka ads.

PM_ME_FEET_PICS ,

Ads on podcasts are 100% at the discretion of the podcasts themselves. Not spotify.

schzztl ,

I switched to Tidal from Spotify, never looked back.

learningduck ,

I don’t get the Dropbox one here. Are you expecting 1TB cloud storage for free?

But yeah, if really want those then pCloud offers a 2 TB life time plan.

Flambo , (edited )

Are you expecting 1TB cloud storage for free?

Your point stands, but let me point out that when gmail started their “9GB free” thing way back when, that was an unfathomable amount of storage for some of us. And gmail’s not the only service that’s offered huge amounts of free storage over the years. So yeah, I think it’s probable that a bunch of us have been primed to expect free storage.

edit: Also given how cheap cloud storage is from ie MS Azure…

Depending on storage type you pay $10-$18/mo once you’re using a full TB. If you use less, you pay proportionally less. Dropbox’s 2TB for $10 is a comparatively better deal if you use it all, but if you use 1TB or less it’s not. Which, now that I’m looking at it, probably means their business model is counting on a lot of underutilized storage caps from their subscribers.

nadram ,
@nadram@lemmy.world avatar

Nay i demand a decent minimum amount of free online storage. These jackasses have taken away SD cards from mobile for a reason. They overcharge a memory upgrade on laptops tablets and mobile phones on purpose. They choke companies into ditching local servers and moving to the cloud. Why? sUBsCriPtIOn BaSEd CLoud stORAgE. Shove it Microsoft Google and Amazon.

dustyData ,

The gym approach to software subscription, have you pay for shit you, preferably, will never use.

learningduck ,

Good point on the underutilized storage. It would be very good to have a pay per use kind of thing.

Transcriptionist ,

Image Transcription:

A crazy trollface stick figure hides behind a crudely drawn square, holding a shotgun and saying “I HATE SUBSCRIPTION BASED SERVICES I HATE SUBSCRIPTION BASED SERVICES I HATE SUBSCRIPTION BASED SERVICES” as an army of harp darps wearing blue helmets with various logos on them come through a crudely drawn door.

Around the harp darps are various statements they are making as they move into the room. At the front left, below a harp darp wearing the Adobe logo, is the text “You can afford it, come on”. To the right of the Adobe harp darp is one wearing the Dropbox logo. Behind the Adobe harp darps is one wearing the Netflix logo, and behind the Dropbox harp darp is one wearing the Spotify logo. Between the front four harp darps is the text “Just $15 bro”. To the upper right of the Spotify harp darp is the text “Limited Ads dude”. Behind the Spotify harp darp is one wearing a Twitter (now X) Verified blue tick, with the text above its head reading “It’s less than a cup of coffee bro…come on”. To the right of the Twitter Verified harp darp is one with the Nintendo Switch Online logo. To the upper right of the Nintendo Switch Online harp darp is the text “It’s just a small monthly payment dude”, and to the bottom right of the same harp darp is the text “You use it all the time Anyway bro”. Behind and to the left of the Twitter Verified harp darp is one wearing an Amazon Prime logo, standing outside the door.

[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜 We have a community! If you wish for us to transcribe something, want to help improve ease of use here on Lemmy, or just want to hang out with us, join us at !lemmy_scribes!]

Godric OP ,

Good human.

No, fantastic human!

Transcriptionist ,

Thank you, fellow human 🤖

Zaki5549 ,

Is this AI on steroids?🤔

zbyte64 ,
@zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It’s what capital wishes it could be: an indispensable person

Transcriptionist ,

I wish I were an AI 🙁

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

Good thing from the current situation is it being the end of times for these services. Constant need for income increase to appease share holders means infinite growth, which is impossible. But individual doesn’t see that, they just want more. So progress of any software towards service model is pretty straight forward.

First they start splitting software into smaller versions and selling both for slightly higher price combined than when they were single piece. Then they start releasing more frequent versions but that has limited impact. So they start introducing forward incompatibilities. Only new software will support both old and new versions of the document, forcing buyers to buy latest. When that reaches its optimal maximum they decide to switch to yearly subscription and force everyone to use those by same ways as they forced them to use newer versions.

Subscription based model is limited. It has no progression other than increase in price and it’s only a matter of testing how much people are willing to pay. Sometimes even go above reasonable price but then go with “exclusive” content as if to justify higher price. This of course works for a while, but exclusive content costs money and is harder to produce consistently at high quality…

And after that, there’s no progression. It’s a battle royale among service provides but they can’t back out because of share holders and can’t revert to other business models. So some of them will stretch themselves thin and burst others will keep on living from that vapor until a new contender comes.

Lt_Cdr_Data ,

Yep, absolutely. My family still has spotify and netflix subscriptions, but i already canceled prime before the previous price hike. I’d have already canceled netflix if it was my decision and the only service i still see value in is spotify.

hamsammy ,

Unfortunately, I believe that feeling will change if you look into how Spotify actually harms the artists by forcing them to use their product even though they make slim to none profit. The more you know.

Lt_Cdr_Data ,

Not really. Fixing systemic problems is not up to the individual. I’m paying for music, which i already only due to the convenience.

Illuminostro ,

“Muh stonk price.”

kamen ,

Arrr.

Spendrill ,

Lois Griffin speaking to crowd.jpg

Subscribe…

to a usenet server.

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@midwest.social avatar

What’s a good service provider for this? Most ISPs don’t provide usenet access anymore, and I’ve heard the free service providers are wack.

Spendrill ,

Good depends on what you’re after but this post here names all the major players.

Lemminary ,

The last thing I paid for as a subscription service was Curiosity Stream a year ago. I’ve stopped watching movies and documentaries since and I don’t miss it.

crackajack ,

You don’t like Curiousity Stream?

Lemminary ,

It was ok. It didn’t offer as much content as I thought, it had a lot more in-house content that felt low budget, and I found it hard to find a topic that was truly enticing despite the variety. The service is fine and it was great as background noise while working, but it wasn’t enough for me. I would still recommend it.

crackajack ,

That’s fair. There are not as many documentaries as I expected too. Many of the documentaries there are actually old and re-broadcasted from other TV channels around the world years ago. In a way, there is a sense of exoticness to them because otherwise they would have been forgotten by the passage of time and restricted by geographic distribution.

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Cancelled prime yesterday, felt great.

Last service standing is HBO and I’m thinking to cancel that shit too.

CrowAirbrush ,

Do it.

SternburgExport , (edited )

I basically canceled almost all my subscriptions and pirate stuff. Except music, since I build a CD collection and buy the rest online which is still cheaper than a streaming service and I can keep the music as long as I want without having to fear that songs will get removed from the service.

ArcaneSlime ,

For music piracy if you’re needin’ try soulseek. I understand collecting physical items though, I do it with records, comics, and VHS tapes, just figured I’d spread the word just in case.

the_seven_sins ,
@the_seven_sins@feddit.de avatar

It’s not that I don’t want to pay for the service, it’s just that I hate the automatic recurring withdrawals, even if I can cancel monthly.

I would probably use more subscriptions if I could just pay like three month of access in advance - basically like these gift cards work.

learningduck ,

Aren’t most of these services offering 6-12 months plans that are cheaper on average?

camr_on ,
@camr_on@lemmy.world avatar

Not all of them. Spotify doesn’t, they know that people will just pay monthly, they don’t have any reason to offer a discount

CrowAirbrush ,

It’s not that i don’t want to pay, it’s just that their “service” isn’t serving me and thus not worth the money.

Give me my cd’s back lol. Let me own what i purchase.

DJDarren ,

I use an iPod that I’ve modded 128gb into. It’s great. All the convenience of my own high quality music library, without having hundreds of CDs around.

CrowAirbrush ,

My phone is 512gb and i use about 80 myself, largest part is porn(yeah i’m aware, it’s bad…very bad,i need some time).

I’ve decided to start pirating again as my device has plenty of space to keep my music.

The biggest thing is getting all lf the music, so nowadays i’ll just play what i have and sometimes go: “oh damn i forgot about billie eilish” for example and make a mental note until the next time i’m at my computer with some time to spare.

Slowly but steadily decreasing my porn stock and replacing it with music i would’ve bought as cd’s.

DJDarren ,

As long as the porn is legal and consensual, then knock yourself out.

CrowAirbrush ,

Nah, it needs to be brought down a couple notches.

It’s bad.

The porn is legal, just so we’re clear on that lol.

patachu ,

Everyone is saying Piracy but I say Public LIbraries, which often have CDs/DVDs/BDs/games now (depending on your locale). They’re taxpayer funded, so you might as well get your money’s worth, and they keep track of how often stuff gets borrowed which determines future financial support.

(And if you are tech-savvy enough to be on Lemmy, you probably know how to make a … permanent copy … for yourself to keep)

redcalcium ,

Libraries are great. Just think about it, if libraries as a concept hasn’t already exist, there is absolutely zero chance it will be invented in our time due to our overly restricting copyright law.

Heidur ,

And also due to a rightward shift in the Overton window. A place where people just get to borrow books for free? That’s socialism. And it will completely kill the entire books industry

Restaldt ,

By god what will they burn then?

Miqo ,

Nikes and Bud Light.

CosmoNova ,

Which is exactly why big corporations are lobbying hard to get public library stripped of funds by any means necessary. I mean you can even 3D print spare parts in many libraries for free by now! The super rich cannot have that.

Polar ,

Or save the time and gas money and download it.

I mean shit, I don’t even have a DVD burner in any of my computers. Haven’t for a decade and a half. You expect me to grab my external drive to burn a copy? I can download anything on my gigabit connection in 5 minutes.

Katzelle3 ,

Why would you need gas money to go to a library?

Polar ,

To drive there? How would you expect I get to my library 35km away?

Katzelle3 ,

You live in the Sahara or something?

Polar ,

No, I live in the second biggest country in the world.

librechad ,

I just got charged $165 a couple days ago from two yearly subscriptions I totally forgot I had. We need a better solution. The banks should just implement the usage of Virtual Cards like Privacy.com does. It’d be so much more convent for people to cancel subscriptions, if they’re allowed to have multiple different virtual cards that they can easily toggle on or off.

Why don’t the banks do this?

Fk_taxes_23 ,

The banks are in on it.

Mr_Blott ,

We need a better solution

Sorry to sound harsh, but…self control?

I have a subscription for a VPN. I’ve been sitting here for a couple of minutes trying to think of others. I suppose my internet etc is a subscription

I can’t think of anything else

EddoWagt ,

I just have a subscription for music and cloud storage, that’s it. I don’t understand how some people have all of the subscriptions

joenforcer ,

Why don’t the banks do this?

They get a cut of every transaction, and the more debt you accrue, the more money the bank makes if you carry a balance. They are financially disincentivized from protecting you from your spending.

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

No one wants this other than user. Banks, just like everyone else, are in a business of making your wallet lighter.

CosmoNova ,

Yep. Once they got you signed up for a bank account, the last thing they want is you thinking about money.

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

It seems people think otherwise according to down-votes. Not that I care about those but am finding it incredibly humorous there are people who think bank is your friend. Lol.

IdleSheep ,
@IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Why don’t the banks do this?

Both of my banks allow unlimited virtual card creation. I think it just depends on where you live.

Jako301 ,

Most subscriptions can be canceled with a few clicks, usually right after buying it without loosing the paid for time. If you cant manage your subscriptions, that sounds like a problem you should address yourself instead.

Your suggested solution of simply turning off the credit card the subscription is linked to doesn’t cancel said subscription, it just results in a breach of contract from your side. That only works cause most companies can’t be asked to deal with you, otherwise the subscriptions would continue and the incurring cost would sooner or later be sent to a collecting agency, with additional charges for late payments.

drathvedro , (edited )

You are right. The fact that cashless transactions are built on a pull model, where a shop/service is charging you instead of you being the one who sends the money, is absolutely fucking insane. I recently lost a few hundred bucks just because the shop used the wrong currency to charge me, leading to a double conversion at the absolutely shittiest rates, and by the time I got to someone in charge, the transaction was already cleared and set in stone. With a sane system this never would’ve happened.

In my home country they actually recently started to adopt such a model. Instead of you giving the card# to everyone, they instead show a QR code with all the necessary payment details: BIC, SWIFT, IBAN, the rest of scary numbers, order number and the invoice. You just open the bank app on your phone, point it at the code, review the sum and any possible fees, press confirm, and the moment the transaction is cleared the page just reloads automatically with order confirmed. I believe there’s also a special URL schema for when you don’t have a PC, but I haven’t tried it yet so can’t tell for sure. With this approach, subscriptions are much easier to manage, because it’s the bank’s job to send the money, so they can list all recurring payments on a special page where you could just cancel one. Also helps with scummy services that stop providing service the moment the subscription is canceled - they won’t even know you did until the the next day the payment is due.

EDIT: There is indeed a custom URL schema, and lots of cool stuff like offline payments without plastic. But some of it is still clunky, including subscriptions, which only a few banks support and most services are opting to use their own billing systems for now.

JokeDeity ,

Yes. Fucking yes. I’m so tired of it all. I just want to own things again.

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