LG to offer subscriptions for already purchased appliances and televisions, evolving into a provider for “Home as a Service”::Subscription fatigue is a thing and regulators are circling, but Korean giant reckons you’re ready to cough up after buying hardware
this change will solidify that I will never buy an LG product if they all have that shit
There’s only one way I’d be OK with “subscribing” to use a LG fridge: I don’t pay anything upfront and I don’t need to pay for any repairs. If I don’t even get to own it, then I shouldn’t be responsible for fixing it when it dies and spoils all my food after a year or two, nor should I need to pay for a new fridge when I give up on it after those repairs inevitably fail again. Same with their TVs when the cheap capacitors die early.
If I subscribe to rent your product, the onus is on you to make it reliable enough that it lasts until the subscription turns a profit.
Since that won’t be their business model, I’m better off buying a half decent brand and then flushing $1000 down the toilet. Fuck LG appliances. (And fuck Samsung appliances while we’re here.)
Very much fuck Samsung. LG actually produces a decent product, even if this subscription bullshit exists. Samsung are just planned obsolescence trashboxes.
I can only say [email protected]
Lame. Im in a lemmy app on my phone
It considers your comment an email.
Get a different app I guess…
This is fucking ridiculous! Do you have to buy a subscription in order to use the appliance? If so, it seems to me that this would constitute unfair trade practice. Some shit just does not belong on the internet. Can you imagine the serious and life threatening situation that could develop, if say, somebody hacked into a system and turned gas stoves on and a fire developed? No, it’s time to draw the line at IoT!
You’ll own nothing and be happy.
Fuck it! I’ll be old fashioned and use an outdoor grill.
The people who downvoted you are either unaware of where things are going, or they have no ability to comprehend humor.
Mark my words we are soon going to have to subscribe to our toilets. You get one flush a day for free. Save money by subscribing to the flush-lite which gives you 2 additional flushes. If you choose not to subscribe, you will be charged 2.99 for each flush beyond the first one.
Yup. The privatization of everything ends up with every moment of our existence monitored and metered and billed.
Don’t give them any shitty ideas
LOL! I know right.
If it’s yellow let it mellow. Is it’s brown flush it down. Possibly for $2.99. And unlock your toilet paper dispenser for just $1.99 per every 10 one-ply squares.
I literally have paid a toilet subscription for the past 10 years.
Its the fee on my water bill called waste removal.
Power is a subscription model, you want to have power at your house you pay a quarterly connection fee on top of what you use.
Yeah, in my facetiousness, I forgot that I actually do something remarkably similar in terms of a sewer bill.
There will also be a free tier, where you have to watch adds for a whole toilet visit in order to flush.
For just a low low price of $15.99/month you can use the freezer functionality to keep things really cold! Or, you can use our free ad tier where the freezer only unlocks after you watch a 60 second ad.
Right! If you don’t upgrade service periodically the freezer temperature goes up by one degree a month. It’s for your convenience!
Nice a free simulation of the global warming.
This little tidbit is left out:
In order to use LG’s smart appliance features you must agree to allow the company to track your precise location 100% of the time via phone app.
I have 2 wifi enabled LG appliances, a refrigerator and a washer. A couple of the smart features are useful such as the end of cycle notification on the washer and a high temperature / door open warning on the fridge. Unfortunately those features don’t work very well and there can be very long delays between an event (such as an end of cycle) and the app notification.
So not only is LG’s implementation poorly done and not very functional, customers are expected to give up any semblance of privacy to even use them.
Fuck that. I disconnected my appliances from wifi and deleted the app.
Paying a monthly charge for the extremely limited smart features on appliances is nuts, even if you didn’t have to allow LG to constantly track your whereabouts. I hope the general public is smart enough to make LG’s subscription service a complete failure.
My fridge drops its wifi setting constantly. Luckily it’s the dumbest thing ever so I don’t miss it. I only set it up because I was curious wtf a fridge would need to be connect to wifi for
Turns out it loves watching The Bear. Gues it makes sense
Open your fridge once per day before the door locks with our SmartHome Basic tier. You can enjoy up to five door openings per day with SmartHome Premium, or choose SmartHome Ultimate for unlimited door openings, ability to adjust the temperature AND the light turning on automatically when you open the door! Act now to get a 10% discount for the first three months!
Screw you for putting that nonsense out into the world
I dread replacing my 15 year old TV, i need dem SCARTS
Oh, SCART. We hardly knew ye. Truly France’s greatest gift to the world.
*Hugs my old ass Samsung 40" TV
If you’re not paying for it you are the product…wait if you are paying for it you are the product.
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You don’t get any dumb TVs in my country anymore. I’d assume its the same everywhere else unless you’re going back a minimum 5 years of tech evolution, which might not be all too bad.
Nah, smart TV with media box. You get the ad adjusted price, you merely don’t hook it up to the Internet.
What is “media box”?
Chromecast, Kodi, Roku, Apple TV, Nvidia shield, fire TV, etc.
I have a Fire Stick and a newer Vizio TV. For a while I could tell Alexa to turn in the TV: the Fire Stick would turn on, then use HDMI-CEC to turn on the TV and select its input. Worked great and I didn’t have to deal with Vizio
Then at some point Alexa started controlling the TV itself instead. Now I have to choose whether to deal with Vizio or to do more clicks to get to my streaming device. I really need to figure out how to get the original configuration back
Fire TV firmware also just gets worse and worse with each new version. Netflix app also follows suit.
Does it? I’ve never had one. I have a Kodi box and a Chromecast. I’ll be sure to avoid the fire brand, then.
The one saving grace is that it’s cheap and you can install Kodi on it.
I’m never buying a “smart” anything, aside from phones. I put up with Android and it already feels like too much.
By all means. But “smart” TVs come at a discount because they believe they’ll have opportunities to make revenue off of those features. However, if you prevent the thing from connecting to the Internet then you get the best of both worlds. Cheaper and ad free.
*devolving
“They’re evolving! - just backwards.” - LG probably
A few years ago, services like Apple Music and Netflix made me drop piracy. A low fee on my credit card to get convenient access to all I wanted.
Now there are 5 different TV streaming services with atrocious pricing, and they’re making sharing harder. For songs, Apple Music keeps removing music I like, YouTube Music is flawed and I’d rather not listen to music ever again than use Spotify.
Oh but that’s not all - your weather app, social media platforms, a simple note taking app, Microsoft office, Adobe, everything is a subscription.
Got a new phone? Better pay for cloud services or it will literally start hammering you with notifications to get more storage everyday.
Guess what - I’m now back to zero subscriptions and a lot, and I do mean a lot, of pirated content on my Jellyfin server.
Even the OS (like MS Windows) will be subscription. I don’t give a flying fuck, as I use Linux. And I have 0 (zero) subscriptions. I feel free, without vices (other than smoking).
I use Windows exclusively because that’s my comfort zone. I’ve been thinking of installing a Linux distro on my unRAID server to get more comfortable using it, because I will never pay a subscription for Windows.
Curious, what’s wrong with Spotify?
They pay artists the least, fund the US war machine, inundate you with podcasts when you just want music, etc.
As for your phone you can buy an unlocked one and a month to month plan. I did that about 5 years ago. Phone dies, transfer sim.
what’s the problem with spotify, i never used it, but it isn’t the first time i read about someone complaining about them
We have a group of friends who all pay for one family subscription service each, then we all share the passwords. If password sharing goes then I’m back to the high seas.
What’s your issue with Spotify?
For the same price, Apple Music provides lossless audio quality, Dolby Atmos, 4K music videos (you can’t even get those on YouTube), karaoke (Apple Music Sing), and a personalized radio station that doesn’t feed you the exact same stuff every week. Plus you can use third-party apps like Marvis Pro with your AM subscription, so you’re not locked to one app’s GUI.
My biggest issue is how they took Podcasts, which have always been open RSS feeds for audio (and Apple, the largest player, kept open and public for decades) and started making exclusivity deals that only work through their app, with invasive analytics and monetization.
My second issue is how Spotify wants me to manage my library the way they believe I should: emphasize playlists, kinda add songs to a library, ignore albums. For instance, on Apple Music if I add 3 songs from an album to my library, I can go to the Albums menu and the album will show up there - even though I only have 3 songs. On Spotify, I either add an entire album, or if I only add the songs, the album won’t show up in the albums view. In fact, the whole “liked songs” section feels like an afterthought they added after impementing playlists, while on Apple Music and most oldschool music library software the song library was the main view and the songs added there populated all other fields such as artists or albums. Ironically, Apple Music is got intelligent playlists that work way better than Spotify’s, with the downside being they can only be created via iTunes which is ancient software.
My third issue is what are the value adds to the subscription as the years go by: Spotify added short videos, QR codes, inconsistent lyrics and digital stores that aren’t even converted to my local currency… While Apple Music added karaoke lyrics, lossless audio, spatial audio (even on my Android), remasters straight from the studio, and more. It’s totally subjective, but Spotify’s gimmicks aren’t worth it to me.
My fourth issue is just the number of tracks that are no longer available on Spotify from my library. Apple Music lost a few, YouTube Music slightly less, and Spotify quite a lot which surprised me.
As you can see, it’s not like Spotify killed my cat and replaced my audio library with a 10 hour loop of fart sounds… But I have deep concerns over their treatment of podcasts, I really dislike their philosophy on how to organize a music library (and they offer less customization than an Apple product, how crazy is that?), they’re becoming increasingly more popular yet their catalogue is actually shrinking for my music taste, and I don’t see real improvements in the service while their competitors keep adding actual value as time goes on.
Either way, don’t mind me - I’m actually now using a huge library of FLAC files on my PC that get converted to MP3 and sent to my phone. Free, no songs vanish, no internet connection, no issues 😄
My fourth issue is just the number of tracks that are no longer available on Spotify from my library.
Yes this is what led me back to buying and downloading music again to keep a local back up of.
The podcast thing is not Spotify’s fault, it’s an industry-wide thing.
As podcasting took off, the most popular podcast hosts wanted to be fairly paid for their stardom. An exclusive distribution deal is the easiest way for the podcaster, who otherwise would have to grind their audience with paid subscriptions or intrusive sponsorships.
Good explanation. Apple Music is still solid for me and I greatly prefer it over Spotify since I prefer listening to and collecting albums over playlists. Am also not a fan of what they’ve done with podcasts, the overall sound quality or the integration with the products I use.
While not ideal, I’ve found that most of the songs or music removed is due to some weird licensing issue and is still there. For example Wolfmother’s first album needing to be re-added as the 10th anniversary edition. Kind of annoying still but manageable.
I’d love to switch to Apple Music. I wish it’s let you add an artist to your library instead of individually doing all their albums.
I get the podcast thing. I never use it, and I don’t think most others do. I’m hoping they just kill the idea at some point but who knows.
The library used to be more straightforward, but in the most recent updates or at least since I’ve started using it again it’s seemed much more playlist focused. To me, this actually makes more sense - with iTunes the “universe” of music is what I have downloaded, with Spotify it doesn’t really matter what’s in my library, everything is already accessible. Rarely do I just browse by artist in my library when using Spotify.
That being said, I do like to add music to iTunes still and sync it to my iPod as I have no faith that Spotify will be around for my entire lifespan.
I use podcast addict. It works.
I also have no interest in the Spotify “value adds”: they add no value for me. Last year I did try to leave, with their focus on podcasts that seem actively harmful to society, but their play lists are just the way I like to listen to music. Apple Music kept annoying me with focus on albums, and iverly targeted play lists, so I did come back
Amazon music has held my attention for several years now
Sorry, I just want to make sure I haven’t missed anything - why don’t you want to use Spotify?
5 TV Streaming services? More like 25 at this point.
If corporations are gonna be greedy. It’s time to steal some of that value back for us. Huzzah!
Just curious why the hate for spotify?
Did you start with Jellyfin or go there from Plex? I’ve been thinking about setting it just as a backup in case Plex gets shitty.
What about a VPN?
You know my story isn’t very different from yours.
As a teenager I massively pirated everything, became an adult with a paying job streaming was sensible so I paid for Netflix/Spotify eventually adding in Prime video + the occasional thing like P+/disney+ or whatever flavour of the month I wanted to watch.
Then earlier this year I realised I was paying for 6 different movie/tv streaming subs and when I went on holiday none of the services I had worked properly and I couldn’t continue watching the show I had been watching at night before bed and I just went nah fuck this. Blew about 2 grand on a Mac Mini m2 and a ton of hard drives and just went full on Arr stack + usenet + plex lifetime.
It isn’t even about the fucking money anymore it’s just how inconvenient they make everything, I’ve had enough and I don’t think I’m ever going back.
Disney Plus straight up refusing to run anything while we were on vacation just made me really mad. Here I am setting up the tablet for the kid, and then - nah wrong region mate. Even VPN didn’t help somehow.
Yeah Disney+ legitimately made me mad also. Fuck the streaming services.
I think they use the tablet location info to block you.
