I basically canceled almost all my subscriptions and pirate stuff. Except music, since I build a CD collection and buy the rest online which is still cheaper than a streaming service and I can keep the music as long as I want without having to fear that songs will get removed from the service.
For music piracy if you’re needin’ try soulseek. I understand collecting physical items though, I do it with records, comics, and VHS tapes, just figured I’d spread the word just in case.
I finally dropped Spotify, I still maintain a YouTube Premium subscription, only because I’m grandfathered into their old Google Music plan. I’m finally looking to setup my own Nextcloud and Jellyfin server on a NAS because Google cloud storage starts to get pricey when HDD are so cheap. I do still pay Means TV because if I’m still paying for a streaming service, at least it’s a co-op.
I have YT Premium because I watch 95% of my YouTube through Apple TV, which doesn’t support ad blockers. I discovered that I can “visit” Argentina and sub to YT Premium for about £3 a month. I’m happy enough with that.
Not sure if you mean finding more music or having people find music you create. If you intend for people to find your music you created on a private self hosted platform you obviously need to look elsewhere but if you want to find new music to listen to there are still options.
You can connect Tidal to your Plex and listen to any music on Tidal on Plex and get discovery/recommendations. You can also connect Plex to Last.fm and get recommendations that way. If you want to manually discover music you can use a site that does that like everynoise.com
I think that Spotify (or any other music streaming service) are the only ones still worth it. I don’t have to sign up for Spotify and Tidal and YouTube Music since any of them has whatever I need.
If that were to change, then I’ll be subscription-free.
Also, I like paying for Spotify since it’s the only European big-tech.
If that were to change, then I’ll be subscription-free.
At this point you will also be music-free since you do not own any of it, and that is what keeps people locked into these services even as the companies jerk them around.
The real value in Spotify is the music discovery. That’s driven by data that very few are in a position to collect. Of all the big tech companies, Spotify is the only one I can think of that uses the data they collect from the users to give the users a uniquely better experience. Even YouTube is littered with promoted ads and videos. If you’re avoiding ads anyway, it’s a win win for the user to pay for Spotify premium.
Then you can do what you will with all the playlists you make.
I’m gradually getting to the point where I’ll drop Spotify. Shoving ads for podcasts in my face every time I launch the app was bad enough, but now their app has become such a bloated mess that it bugs out whenever my phone is switching between wifi and mobile data. I have more than 1k songs downloaded just so I don’t have to deal with that, and now I have to deal with it because it’s more important to them to show ads and promotions than it is for their app to do what it’s designed to do.
And before anyone says “tHoSe ArEn’T aDs,” showing me recommended artists and podcasts against my will is absolutely a form of advertising. Do you think they’re showing me new releases from Joe down the street? These are paid promotions, aka ads.
Good question. Im really not interested in the setup and support that Jellyfin needs to match Plex’s ease of use. The fact that I can download Plex on my desktop, direct it to scan some folders in my hard drive, and play those files on my PS5 or phone 10 minutes later without ever having to do any kind of serious work myself makes the $5/month more than worth it
For me, Plex has a better ecosystem of apps and a far better sync or “downloads” as they call it now. The sync is a killer feature for someone who travels a lot.
I run both similarity on the same box with the same source library but still prefer Plex for many reasons. One is that the nicer findroid app doesn’t seem to support Chromecast, which is how I watch all media 99% of the time. Also the JF UI is a bit rough between laggy menu interactions and views sometimes having transparent backgrounds causing you to see the previous view underneath while transitioning between screens. I also don’t like that the continue watching in the default UI uses landscape cards for each title that take up way too much space, and neither the default app or findroid has a recommended tab for individual library folders (like how in Plex I can go to movies and see recently released, added, top in genre x, top by director y). I think that would really draw me to use JF more. As it is it feels like I just have to resort to browsing the alphabetical list which I hate doing with thousands of library items.
It does, but monthly subscriptions give Plex much more monetary support. Maybe one day when I really need to tighten my budget I’ll buy the one-and-done option, but for now $5 a month is negligible for how much I use the service
People like us just don’t see it, they are want us on subscription plans for every service that exists. Starting from movies and series, which you don’t own anything, and once you signup you agreed with their terms, they do what ever they want, to phone where your storage space will max out, and you have to pay monthly, to upload all your videos and photos in the cloud/server. They want us to keep paying for even basic things, because why should be free right?
Greed isn’t the ultimate human trait. Cooperation and curiosity are. We never would have built societies without either. We never would have advanced to the point we have without both. Everyone has greed in them, just like everyone has the opportunity to be angry or sad. But the notion that it is the ultimate human trait or somehow stronger than other characteristics is truly capitalist propaganda meant to justify their immoral hoarding of our wealth.
After all, if greed is the most natural and strongest human attribute… well, the do-nothing takers at the tippy top of the food chain can just continue to suck our blood and deprive us of our agency since it is natural.
There is a reason we don’t live in libertarian hellscapes. It is because greed is not the ultimate human trait.
The last thing I paid for as a subscription service was Curiosity Stream a year ago. I’ve stopped watching movies and documentaries since and I don’t miss it.
It was ok. It didn’t offer as much content as I thought, it had a lot more in-house content that felt low budget, and I found it hard to find a topic that was truly enticing despite the variety. The service is fine and it was great as background noise while working, but it wasn’t enough for me. I would still recommend it.
That’s fair. There are not as many documentaries as I expected too. Many of the documentaries there are actually old and re-broadcasted from other TV channels around the world years ago. In a way, there is a sense of exoticness to them because otherwise they would have been forgotten by the passage of time and restricted by geographic distribution.
Tried to cancel my paramount plus account. “You purchased the year subscription. In 6 months, you will not be billed.” Two months later: “Oh, Lower Decks is cool. I should keep this subscription.”
I will tell you a trick now that may blow your mind. Xbox live gold, upgrades at a 1:1 ratio to xbox game pass ultimate. If you stack 3 years (thats the max) of xbox live gold for maybe $50 a year. And then buy 1 single month of xbox game pass ultimate once you have loaded up all your live gold. It will automatically convert all of that gold into gp ultimate. So you end up paying like $165 for 37 months of game pass ultimate.
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