What subscription finally gave you "subscription fatigue"?
Learned the term recently and really enjoy it, subscription fatigue is the feeling we all have had now where we are just over how everything is subscription based.
Which one was the last straw or most annoying/frustrating to you?
What’ll really aggravate you is that way back when cable was first rolling out, it was billed as paid TV service without ads (as opposed to the ad-supported OTA local networks). Obviously that promise didn’t last long.
It’s a tale as old as time. Its happened before, it’s happening now, and it’ll happen again.
Why limit yourself to subscriptions if you can do both and earn even more money? 🤑
PS: Microsoft perfected this with Windows bloat ware, adverts and tracking. Why did they need to integrate that, if you already paid ca. 150€ (Home) or 250€ (Pro) for a licence? Those prices are integrated into the prices of hardware purchases too, in case anyone is wondering. Purchase a laptop without an OS and it’s generally about 100-150€ cheaper. Anyone interested in Microsoft 365 and Windows 365?
I’m still refusing to pay for P+ in the UK. They nicked us about so much with Discovery, Picard and Lower Decks all being on Netflix and Amazon, then started pulling the rug from under us with Dis S3 and it appears maybe LD S4 this year. I’m not paying for a whole new service for one franchise no matter how much I love it. At least Disney got Marvel, Star Wars and all the Fox content before trying D+.
Imagine how we feel over here in NZ when we wanted to watch S2E1 of GH we actually got S1E3 of DOOL instead! Boy when the NPD were told about this I bet they ASAP’d their pants!
YouTube premium raised their prices. I had got it back when Google music was the thing. Then they raised the price. Then they raised the price again. Then they raised the price again. The last price raise gave me the motivation to check out Spotify and newpipe.
I’m still grandfathered in from the Google Play Music days, paying $7.99/mo for YT Music + YT Premium. I will never interrupt that subscription and lose that price, haha.
I’m sorry, I could’ve been more clear. There is an app called InnerTune (F-Droid is an app store on Android that contains only free/open source software) which lets you stream and download all of yt music for free. You can also use the website beatbump.io to stream.
Youtube Premium is also unnecessary when you use the adblocker Ublock Origin on Firefox. On Android, NewPipe is also a great app to watch and download the videos ad-free.
That is possible because Google badly protects its content APIs.
You likely lose that price in December. I got an email telling me so and I believe it applies to all of us grandfathered in. Here’s the relevant part of the email:
As a long-standing and valued member, you are currently paying a lower rate for Premium than the rate available to new subscribers. To show our appreciation for your loyalty, we’re giving you at least three extra months at your current price before the price increase will impact your plan. Your price will not increase before your December billing date. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to notify you again at least 30 days before the new price is effective.
Had to investigate, and turns out you’re right about the origin. The original grandfather clause was meant to exempt blacks from voting. See en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause
I’m not a fan of term banning, however. We still use the number 9 even though Hitler said it a lot.
Yeah but Hitler did not create the number 9. Slight difference. There is also no other term to express the number 9.
Legacied means the exact same thing and does not have the racist origin. There is certainly no ban on using ‘grandfathered in’ but there is no real reason to use it since it does not convey anything that the term legacied already does.
“To continue delivering great service and features, we are increasing the Premium plan price to $13.99/month.
As a long-standing and valued member, you are currently paying a lower rate for Premium than the rate available to new subscribers. To show our appreciation for your loyalty, we're giving you at least three extra months at your current price before the price increase will impact your plan. Your price will not increase before your December billing date. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to notify you again at least 30 days before the new price is effective.”
HBO Max and Spotify were the only streaming services I paid for. I had HBO Max since the first few months of it’s launch but when they raised the already high fee I cancelled it. Shortly after they changed it to Max, definitely don’t regret it. HBO Max used to feel special but that specialness died.
To be honest, sporify is the only one I actually use. But I get a fuck ton of use out of it. I used to be able to use Netflix without paying for it. Bit it just didn’t really work for me
Evernote. I’m not sure why I even stayed with them for so long; probably the pain of moving after so many years. Switched to Joplin before they doubled their fees for zero new (useful) features.
Yeah, I dropped EN years ago, when they doubled (at the time) the fees after acquiring Skitch. I floated around trying to make other things work, then found Joplin in the past year or so. Haven’t looked back.
Sublime Text 4 going subscription based instead of major release based. I downgraded back to ST3 and am keeping my lifetime license on that one. The alternative is a 3 year usage license which is trash for the price you need to pay
this is correct, you get access to every update in that window, instead of everything in that major release. It is better than it could be but, it’s rediculous to purchase a software that doesn’t even give you the full release of it. It also doesn’t alert you before upgrading/updating to a release outside your license window and relies on you figuring out how to downgrade after if you let it auto update.
I bought a new PC in 2021 (because building was hard due to supply shortages) and it came with GamePass Ultimate. When I combined my existing Xbox Gold subscription, it gave me something like 1.5 years worth of GamePass Ultimate, which was really great! Once that subscription expired, I had saved up for a year worth of another subscription up front, but noticed they only offered month-to-month at that point. I realized I wasn’t playing GamePass games enough to warrant the subscription (might have been different if I could install on my Steam Deck, not through a Windows install or streaming).
Once that GamePass subscription came up, and then Netflix started cracking down on password sharing that I was sharing with my sister in the next city over, it made me question a lot of recurring subscription. For streaming TV shows/movies, I think going forward we’ll have one service subscribed to but bouncing around to catch up on shows that my wife and I may want to watch. For GamePass, I’ll probably resubscribe once Starfield comes out.
Your idea for resubcribing to gamepass is an idea everyone should use for every subscription. Only pay for a subscription if there’s something on it that you want and stop paying for it when there’s nothing on it that you want.
There was never a last straw for me, because I never subscribed to any bullshit. I read and understood the dangers of SaaS as a school kid long before the term was cool and long before privacy community and corporate industry popularised it. Unless something really requires realtime work collaboration, like Google Docs/Office 365, or if there are realtime social activities like multiplayer gaming or messaging/chat/videocall, just about everything else does not require an active internet connection, and should be doable locally on a system. This is why devices like iPhone, iPad, Chromebooks and so on are NOT real computers, but merely rented kiosks.
I read and understood the dangers of SaaS as a school kid long before the term was cool and long before privacy community and corporate industry popularised it.
You need to clear your foggy head and get some sleep. Your cheeky comment was BS and your comeback was too lame. Strengthen your game if you want to do these kind of replies.
The first subscription I turned off is my gym membership 10 years ago. That was the first time I realized I was paying for air. With a few hundred dollars spread over years, I’ve amassed a pretty stellar home gym with machines and weights. Granted, the trade off is space.
In the digital age, really nothing. The wife has Netflix but nothing on that service does shit for me. I get a screen of Max from a close friend and in return she has access to my Plex, and I let her make requests when I go sailing the seas. Max has some ok stuff.
Anyhow, I do everything not to have a subscription to anything, minus my VPN. I also still buy blurays. Conversely, I haven’t bought a physical video game in at least 5 years - so I’ve succumbed to convenience in that regard.
Netflix, and when they said I’d have to pay for password sharing for my stepkids, because they use my account when they’re at their dad’s.
That was the last straw. I cracked the shits, bought a couple of ex-enterprise servers, and setup … something different. I then cancelled all streaming services (I got wind of the second Disney hike coming).
The cool thing is they now email me with cheap rejoin offers, telling me about all the cool shows I need to be aware of. ;)
How are your kids coping with, uh, something different? I imagine it’s a tad less convenient, even with your server. Also, I haven’t done something different since the rise of Netflix. Is the quality of something different generally higher with streaming services just putting their content on the internet themselves?
I admit, last time I tried something different years ago, it wasn’t that good, but thought I’d give it another go. I’d bought a lifetime pass way back, so had nothing to lose by trying.
The kids are coping fine - the apps for something different are all pretty rock-solid now - macOS, iOS, Android, Chromecast GTV. Plus I’m on a decent fibre internet connection, so even full high quality things work just fine when they’re not at home. Honestly, there’s not a lot of difference, except my catalogue of things is better than any single service.
Plus I take requests. :D Actually, I allow automated processing of requests, within certain limits.
It doesn’t compress video more on mobile devices, that’s all I need to know. When I connect an iPad or iPhone to the home cinema setup, the compression is much worse then on an old laptop.
Mine are handling oit perfectly fine - and we have the added difficulty of having German as mother tongue, and wanting to keep the English language content in the kids library low. Finding german language torrents is rather tricky.
I started again since a year or so. And decided to set up a home server (from an old pc) with the whole *arr suite this summer. Automation these days really is marvelous. You just tell it once which show you want to watch. It fetches you all the shows that are already out and also fetches you each new episode every week. And it’s all in good quality. And you can set automatic subtitles straight from the app’s interface.
Just watching all these new subscription services for everything gave me the fatigue and started my self-hosting and actually-owning-things journey, even just paying for Netflix (when I still did) was too much for me, it didn’t have everything I wanted, if it did it would remove it after a year or so, and every couple years the price would hike.
My aunt is still paying those leeches $20/month. Her excuse was that she didn’t want to lose her email, but I’ve told her so many times that the email is free. I eventually just gave up trying to save her money that she’d rather burn.
AOL has always made its living not on providing a service worthy of the money, but by exploiting the technologically illiterate.
That said, I have a weird nostalgia about AOL since the early era of the internet was defined by my use of AOL, and AOL chatrooms, and “You’ve got mail” and all the various associated accoutrements, even if I’d love to stab Steve Case in the eye with a brick.
Ignoring anything I subscribe online for and can’t cancel example (Just cancelled my cable internet was more painful than ID like)?
Any service that tries to auto deliver me another product in a monthly and won’t let me order one without the auto replenish. (Example: Meal services and the like you tubers like to promote, but I’ve been seeing many things attempt this lately)
When I couldn’t just purchase a season of a tv show (Drag Race). You should just be able to buy a show or movie if you want to watch it.
The most recent season was exclusively on Paramount +. I guess they had exclusive right because it wasn’t available anywhere else. It was 3.99/month with a discount so I figured I’d keep it as long as the season aired. I was fucking amazed that there could be twenty fucking commercials in an hour show. If I wanted to skip backward or forward I had to watch three more ads first. Two weeks before the season finale they raised the price to 5.99 so I cancelled it. I didn’t need to watch it that badly. Their other content was shit, all nineties MTV and made for tv movies. When I signed up they advertised Yellowjackets so I was going to watch that. But no, that’s another subscription to Showtime.
It was the cheapest subscription I’ve had but the most aggravating experience, because it’s not about the money. It’s about feeling like I’m getting fucked over with every goddamn thing I buy lately.
I really want to watch Mike judge’s tales from the tour bus but it is only on cinemax. I would have no problem just buying the seasons but you can’t, the only way is to ad cinemax to my already paid sub of Hulu. Fuck that
Same but “when there was only netflix, and Hulu got caught being cool so they had to go legit and became a subscription service instead of a pirate streaming site.”
Held out on streaming until kissanime/kisscartoon started bugging me for my adblocker, then switched to downloads.
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