• @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • defunct_punk
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      172 years ago

      The fact that you can no longer buy software like Adobe and it’s all subscription based

      100% the biggest factor in me deciding to buy Magix Vegas (formerly Sony Vegas) video editing software was because they still sold lifetime codes. Have I gotten $400 worth of value out of it? Fuck no. But I can use it whenever I want for as long as I want without worrying about whether or not I can afford it for the month.

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        The you have companies like Filmora who tried to turn lifetime licenses into subscription ones…

        • defunct_punk
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          42 years ago

          Ironically enough the only reason I bought Vegas in the first place was because of the changes to Wondershare

  • @[email protected]
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    162 years ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    272 years ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I’ve tried Tidal a couple of times and it never felt like it was hitting the mark. The HiFi is a solid feature though.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        I haven’t had any issues with it, the quality isn’t as good as self hosted flac files (unless you want to pay for the highest tier, I assume) but it’s at least as good as Spotify imo. Big selling point initially was Plex integration though

      • @[email protected]
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        52 years ago

        Yeah had the same feeling about tidal as well. Settled for Apple Music since they offer hifi and a nice interface. Spotify still has the best playlists but it’s getting feature bloat and the quality isn’t up to par

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        The best deal you will get is Apple Music. Especially if you are a classical music fan it is unbeatable. But another HiFi one that isn’t apple, is qobuz, although the song selection isn’t as wide as spotify or tidal or apple music. But they do pay artists a lot more and they have a webstore for purchasing FLAC and MP3s if that’s what you like.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      Most music steaming services have garbage selection for dubstep anyways, so local library is the only way to go.

      I pity that iOS users don’t have a good option for downloading music off YouTube though.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        Can you make any suggestions? I think I’m into dubstep but I have a hard time finding new artists

      • dblsaiko
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        12 years ago

        I pity that iOS users don’t have a good option for downloading music off YouTube though.

        This looks good, not sure if you can customize the linked iOS shortcut to download music though: https://projectlounge.pw/ytdl

    • @[email protected]
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      82 years ago

      Passing along advice someone else posted on lemmy. If you have an android TV box, look at Stremio + Torrentio. Game changer!

    • @[email protected]
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      62 years ago

      I do go for YouTube premium but that’s my primary source of entertainment nowadays and it does result in more money in my favorite content creators’ pockets (apparently more than ad-based revenue according to some sources at least). Plus YouTube music is included in that and is actually quite good.

    • defunct_punk
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      22 years ago

      If you have at least 6tb of storage space and good internet, the RedTopia torrent is more than enough to fill out a personal music library. That + SoulSeek for whatever new stuff shows up in my feed is everything I could ever need. Streamed anywhere onto my phone through Plex or PlexAmp

  • @[email protected]
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    412 years ago

    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 [email protected]!]

  • Polar
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    532 years ago

    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…

    • @[email protected]
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      72 years ago

      WoW and other MMOs are not just games with slapped on subscription costs. It is a very specific subtype of games which have much higher maintenance cost than an arena shooter. There is a reason these games get shutdown when certain financial thresholds get passed beyond let’s do something more profitable.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      Personally I listen to new music for free and then buy the songs I like to support the artist. Spotify doesn’t pay them shit afterall

    • @[email protected]
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      62 years ago

      Honestly, this.

      The economics of the world are such that people need to be paid for the content they produce. Having a direct relationship between me as the consumer and them as the producer is the way we don’t get shit like all of the ad-based spyware that surrounds shit like Facebook. It won’t completely prevent it, but it gives a good business plan for it not to happen.

      I’d vastly prefer something that didn’t require some megacorp as evil as Amazon. But… this could actually make as much sense as is possible with our current economic system.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      Nah, fuck subscriptions. If I can’t buy it once and own it, then it’s a scam on consumers. Change my view.

      • Polar
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        62 years ago

        I did. Look at my Spotify example. It’s literally more expensive to own the songs than to pay for Spotify.

        Unless you only want like 30 songs.

          • Polar
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            22 years ago

            Still cheaper, though.

            I’d rather have access to pretty much every song on demand for $4 per month and not own it, than pay per song.

            I pay $4.25 per month for Spotify. That’s $51 per year. I have access to pretty much every song, or I could buy 39 songs to own instead.

            I save more than 39 songs per month. Financially it makes no sense to buy them. Especially if you consider I get bored of some songs, and never listen to them again.

            • @[email protected]
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              32 years ago

              The way I look at it, is I don’t pay to listen to the music, I pay for the convenience.

              Most music I listen to is on YouTube, where if I wanted to, I could just download it and “own” the song for free. However, in the interest of saving time, letting Spotify create playlists based on what I listen to, I just pay a monthly fee. Not to mention that I can share my playlists on multiple devices, whereas if I download music, I can’t.

              I also have a family plan with all spots filled up, so that’s 6 people listening to all their music for $20/mo CAD. Far superior to buying an album or individual songs.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • m3t00🌎
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      22 years ago

      moved my house phone to a Gvoice account. gets mostly spam anyway. voicemails transcribe to email. bye att

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      Do you pay on a recurring cycle? Can you function in society without it? If yes to both: subscription.

      You need a phone, utilities, rent/mortgage, insurance (if we’re being realistic) so I wouldn’t call them subscriptions.

  • LaggySnake
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    972 years ago

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

    • @[email protected]
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      242 years ago

      It’s infuriating.

      I mainly play on PC where thankfully I don’t have to worry about that.

      But I also have a Nintendo switch, and get this shit… they don’t even let you back up your save games online. we’re talking about fucking kilobytes of data per game that they’re too stingy to provide.

      You can’t even back up game saves to the microSD!

      If your switch breaks, is stolen, or you just get a new one, you lose your game saves unless you pay for Nintendo online.

      • MeanEYE
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        122 years ago

        They are not stingy, it’s all part of a plan to keep you locked in.

          • MeanEYE
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            32 years ago

            Exactly. If you could move across consoles, you would, especially when a competitor like SteamDeck comes along.

    • redfellow
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      62 years ago

      No I don’t. Gold was there pretty much from the get go. Without would be better, but what you asked I don’t recall existing.

        • redfellow
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          2 years ago

          Only selected few games had that on PS2. Games were largely SP on top of that. It wasn’t default free, it was a fee except for few exceptions.

          Never owned PS3 so no comment on that.

          BUT, my original question is still applicable. The past you speak of wasn’t common and not something that’s agreed to be the “good old days” so to speak.

          Not saying what you peddle wouldn’t be great, it would, but your statement simply isn’t accurate.

  • @[email protected]
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    212 years ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    2752 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      202 years ago

      the problem is that making the line go up even a little gets exponentially harder with time. because the graph not going up at any given point in time is so unimaginably horrible to them, they keep having to think of new insidious ways of satisfying it

      • @[email protected]
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        202 years ago

        I actually find myself wondering lately “what’s so bad about stable (+/- 5%/annum) profits for some stretches of time.” Sure you’re not eating up market share, but a couple million in the pocket every year really isn’t that bad…

        I… May not be cut out for capitalism…

        • @[email protected]
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          122 years ago

          Only private companies can get away with thinking like that. Companies that can put the stakeholder’s interest ahead of the shareholder.

        • @[email protected]
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          72 years ago

          Companies who stay private can do this. It’s when you have investors that you’re fucked and the ponzi scheme starts.

          The idea, in its purest form, is that companies will innovate to keep investors happy. They will keep expanding and making wonderful new products. As an example, a printer company will start making phones, then laptops, then maybe expand into chemicals or farm equipment, making bold innovations at every step.

          Companies who can’t innovate do this shit (inflate prices until they suck) and then they die because they’re no longer competitive.

          …in theory.

    • @[email protected]
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      1022 years ago

      Yeah that’s totally galling. Shrinkflation for online services.

      You know some shiny-suited corporate asshole got a huge bonus for coming up with that though.

    • @[email protected]
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      282 years ago

      Yeah it’s crazy. We have TV plan with some 100 channels bundled up with internet, and sometimes rarely when I watch TV I’m just baffled by the fact a paid service still is full of ads

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        Given my entertainment options, I found a small developer that sells an app for a couple bucks that allows me to pull streams through my phone and transcode it and chromecast it to my projector. Juijitsu Kaisan never looked so good.

      • @[email protected]
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        412 years ago

        We let it happen. You either put your foot down at the first instance of this thing or you lose any ability to do it because it eventually gets so big you can’t stop it without some whole new technology. But there’s always going to be people who say “how else are people going to pay for websites if not advertising” I say not my fucking problem. Just like robbing my free time with bullshit ads wasn’t their problem.

  • @[email protected]
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    1412 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      162 years ago

      I’m gonna go pay for that silly looking onyx the fortuitous film just so he gets my money for doing something different and helping other people make a dollar

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        Hells yeah. Really excited to buy his film on bluray and something else because shipping will be a bitch but still excited for his film.

    • @[email protected]
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      132 years ago

      While listening to Spotify using a custom APK, which enables premium features: I support this message!

    • Fat Tony
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      52 years ago

      In fact you should even pirate piracy. Next time steal someone else’s torrent and seed that instead!

      Note: Yes, I do realise ;)

    • SuzyQ
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      12 years ago

      It’s the only one we pay for. ~$35USD/year for the family plan is worth it to us.

    • @[email protected]
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      132 years ago

      Nintendo online is even more shitty than the others. We still have zero games with dedicated servers splatoon smash none of them have dedicated servers which is the whole point in why they needed to charge a fee. You might like having the old games on the emulator for the monthly fee and that would be fine but there’s no reason to charge for matchmaking. Matchmaking and leaderboard should be free it might cost like 5 to 10 cents per year per user and they make way more than that with the 30 to 50% licensing fee for each game. To make the Nintendo one even worse third parties still have to pay for online services even though Nintendo also charges the customer. So if you buy a game that wants to use matchmaking or leaderboards they have to pay Nintendo additional fees for you to use them even though the customer you’re all so paying the fee for the same service

      • Crass Spektakel
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        2 years ago

        Who buys his kids products from Apple or Nintendo is most likely also torturing cute cats in his basement. And enjoys it.

  • Resol van Lemmy
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    82 years ago

    Wait, Spotify? Don’t you mean “a pile of garbage”?

    I have to be honest, I hate this thing even with the paid plan. Everything sounds so compressed.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      blame the loudness wars, not the streaming service. they don’t alter audio files, the only exception being loudness normalisation between songs.

  • Sippy Cup
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    782 years ago

    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.

    • MrSilkworm
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      212 years ago

      we shall pirate on the beaches, we shall pirate on the landing grounds, we shall pirate in the fields and in the streets, we shall pirate in the hills; we shall never surrender

      • @[email protected]
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        42 years ago

        We shall pirate in the alleys, in the fields, in the chats and we shall never surrender to the greedy hands of Sony, Nintendo and alike