Tbh, the worst part is when you pay for it and still get ads anyway. Feels like double dipping, but it's obviously going to happen because wall street doesn't like when line only goes up a little.

Pirate everything. Pirate streams, torrents, whatever.

Pirate. Everything.

*unless it's an independent artist of some sort. then, just buy some merch from them or something.

The price of playing skyrim for every minute of my life until I die

With game pass: Over $9000.00

Just buying the game: $59.99

Remember when you didn't have to pay for a subscription to play console games online?

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)

Brothers, sisters, others, it's time we return to the old ways. To the high seas. We steal from those who own, but do not pay to own, the content they distribute. We will share this media amongst ourselves until they learn that we were willing to pay with dollars, but not with time.

I like to bootleg the major studios and patreon the indie artists that are giving their shit away for free.

I don't have Peacock but I'm hanging out at my parents house and apparently when you pay for Peacock you have to watch ads at the beginning and end of shows PLUS every time you pause.

Every single time they paused it transitioned to an ad. What psychopaths run NBC?

Never pay any of this services BTW, I have no regrets and I never feel that I miss something.

I don't hate subscription based services if they're priced fairly and make sense.

Paying monthly for a service that then starts giving you less, adds more premium plans, introduces ads, etc. is garbage.

Paying for a game, then having to pay a monthly fee to play (WoW, for example), is garbage.

Paying for software, but then having to pay monthly to use the software, is garbage.

Paying for software, but then having to pay monthly to be allowed to contact support (Blue Iris), is garbage.

But paying for things like Spotify, where you get access to pretty much all songs as they release, have no limit on how much you listen to, and it has a fair student pricing or family pricing, that's fine. Way better than paying per song.

I mean shit, if I paid for every song I have in my library on Spotify, I'd owe $1430. My Spotify is $17 per month, spit between 4 people, so I pay $4.25. I can either pay for every song in my library and not add any more, or pay for Spotify for 28 years and continue growing my library..

There was a prophetic podcast episode from the series Plain English a while back that I constantly think about.

In that episode the author describes how the internet is going through a revolution.

Basically 20 years ago, the internet was all about gaining numbers. Companies could operate at a loss if they got people signed up. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Uber, Deliveroo, etc. they were all about getting you in their mailing list or consumer list and who cares what happens then.

Now there’s an issue because that model is not profitable. In order to continue, all the internet is moving towards subscription.

In a sense, I don’t think of that as intrinsically bad. Patreon is a good example. The internet is now filled up with so much shit that people are willing to pay to filter it. So with Patreon, you pay a fee to support an artist to produce the content you want. That itself isn’t a bad idea.

Now that being said, a lot of “bad things” do emerge. The fact that you can no longer buy software like Adobe and it’s all subscription based. That’s shit. But that also inspired software alternatives like Affinity Designer.

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.

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.

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

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.

..but capitalism is so good, things only get better!!! The market is too regulated, is the problem

You know, what you can not find on EBay you can find on PBay. Or whatever warez site you prefer.

The only subscription service that I pay for is tidal for music (pays artists more than Spotify, same cost) and that's only because maintaining a local library of music is too much of a pain for me right now. I may slowly build a local music library of only music I like, but I love listening to new artists so the $10 per month is worth the convenience.

YouTube? Ublock origin
Movie/tv streaming? Self hosted media library, plus some random services that are provided through my phone bill at no cost
File storage? Stored with my movies and TV on some hdds in raid
Amazon? Its not hard to find other retailers (or direct providers) with better prices and no subscription needed. Sometimes have to pay for shipping and it's slower, but worth it

What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? Early in the morning!

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

If it is subscription, then wen you lost your stream of income, you lost everything.

That including your house, if you live in subcription house.

We wouldn't be ever hearing any of that if SOME PEOPLE weren't actually paying for them

Arrr.

Lmao literally the only "subscription" I have is my phone bill, which I pay yearly. Also maybe you'd consider my insurance a subscription? Sounds very dystopian.

Edit: is rent a subscription? Regularly refilled prescriptions? Where is the line? I have fallen into a quandry.