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.
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.
Enshrinklification of the internet
Rolls off the tongue
En-shrink-if-ication
missed an L
Man’s only gets Ws
Welcome to cable TV in the late 80s…
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
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.
I’ve become a strong proponent of the joys of piracy.
The creator of the radio and even the US government were wary of the idea of introducing ads into American living rooms, but look at us now.
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 Kaisen never looked so good.
Which app?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instantbits.cast.webvideo
I guess I should mention they also defang, adblock, and can fake useragents if they attempt to block based on usermask/profiling. See why I wanted to pay this cat?
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
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…
Only private companies can get away with thinking like that. Companies that can put the stakeholder’s interest ahead of the shareholder.
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
59,99 on every platform the game gets released on because Todd won’t stop
If you bought Skyrim on Steam before 2016, you got all PC versions for free up to now.
Me but with Factorio and even more hours
2000 hours gang, where y’all at?
Gamepass is a great deal if it has 4 or more games a year come out that you want to play, and that’s if you pay full price instead of buying cards, etc.
What if I play all my games on a 3 year delay and buy all 4 games for $15 with DLC included?
I feel like that’s stretching reality unless you’re getting localized pricing for lower income countries. I’ve never seen an AAA game drop below $10 in just 3 years, especially if it’s an AAA game that also got DLC. On average it’s usually just 40-50% off after that kind of duration, mayyyybe 60% off. Anything more than that is usually because the game sucked ass or it’s really old.
Bro at at this point wait one year and get it free on Epic.
Well then that’s a different situation to the one they described.
I keep hearing how great Gamepass is but I really fail to see how unless you just began gaming like one year ago. Every once in awhile I look to see what’s on there and it’s just old games I’ve played before.
I really don’t get much use out of reviews and trailers. The only way for me to know if I like a game is to try it. I test tons of Gamepass games and finish half a dozen a year, give or take.
Gamepass is great for extended trials, especially indie games with middling to good ratings. Other than that, it’s nice to play the back catalog of MS games if you missed them. At least for PC, that’s what I got out of it.
Until MS ramps up the prices because the current pricing is unsustainable
I paid $10
The price per minute I’ve paid for playing Skyrim + Skyrim SE + Skyrim Anniversary Edition, all DLCs included: Less than 0.01 USD/minute
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.
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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.
While listening to Spotify using a custom APK, which enables premium features: I support this message!
As do I (while also listening to a modded Spotify apk).
In fact you should even pirate piracy. Next time steal someone else’s torrent and seed that instead!
Note: Yes, I do realise ;)
Remember when you didn’t have to pay for a subscription to play console games online?
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.
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.
Playstation 2 and 3.
I like to bootleg the major studios and patreon the indie artists that are giving their shit away for free.
Yes! I’m right there with you.
Where do you stand on indie artists that are using Patreon to act like major studios, e.g. nothing is free and their work is limited release and deleted after the month?
I find it harder to be upset about what an artist does with their work because they’re the sole creator and didn’t exploit anyone to make it. The limited release stuff doesn’t sound great but none of the artists I follow do that, I certainly wouldn’t support them if they did. If they’re planning to never release the art ever again then I think there’s a fair argument to be made for piracy, although if you’re just waiting for the month to turn over to look at it guilt free, well, I think you’re just trying to justify it to yourself.
I’ve seen a few that delete their stuff after the month and never release it again. IIRC, at least one of them was making relatively huge cash per month and only ever released cropped previews publicly, so that one was definitely what I’d call predatory, but that is just the most extreme case I’ve seen. I hate that false scarcity works so well.
I’ve never seen an indie artist on Patreon that delete shit or used any kind of DRM. At least no artist that I’ve been inspired to support.
I try to never steal from people, only corporations.
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?
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Comcast voted the most hated company in 2017 Comcast?
So truly terrifying psychopath if looking at their cancellation process is any indication
Kabletown
Never pay any of this services BTW, I have no regrets and I never feel that I miss something.
Concur. I pay for the following subscription services:
- My internet connection.
- My cell phone plan.
That’s all. Everyone else can go fuck themselves. If I can’t buy it outright, I don’t need it. If it’s digital, it’s on the Pirate Bay. Prime is bullshit anyway. I don’t need a predatory gym membership; Putting an elliptical machine in my own house cost me all of $200 and it’s mine forever. I don’t pay for Dropbox or OneDrive or whatever; I have a massive hard drive in my PC and I can access remotely it via my VPN. Etc.
Same. I would never pay them for their shitty little services. Imagine paying monthly for dropbox, sporify etc for years… That’s so much money.
Eh Spotify gets a whole family unlimited for 17 euro, it’s pretty convenient compared to going finding and uploading to my device or purchasing individually.
There once was a piracy website so grand in the world of music streaming that even to this day nothing comes close
Grooveshark :(
Wow I haven’t thought about grooveshark in years…
Hey I don’t judge you, probably depends on the income as well!
…and Spotify doesn’t pay artists shit.
Or you can just use apps like ViMusic or InnerTune, which are foss and provide infinite offline adless playback for free.
people worship amazon then get mad when they make changes, a business is gonna business
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
I present to thee enshittification.
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.
The you have companies like Filmora who tried to turn lifetime licenses into subscription ones…
Ironically enough the only reason I bought Vegas in the first place was because of the changes to Wondershare
Davinci Resolve is another great value editing program.
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We wouldn’t be ever hearing any of that if SOME PEOPLE weren’t actually paying for them
/j?
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 itPassing along advice someone else posted on lemmy. If you have an android TV box, look at Stremio + Torrentio. Game changer!
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.
Can you make any suggestions? I think I’m into dubstep but I have a hard time finding new artists
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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!
Do you want us to run aground woman?
…but capitalism is so good, things only get better!!! The market is too regulated, is the problem
It is very regulated. Remove copyright protections and things will change instantly.
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.
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