One of the highest-value streaming subscriptions you can get is PBS Passport. You get it with a $60 donation to either a PBS TV or NPR radio station. The donation is tax-deductible and the PBS subscription is rich with high-quality content for both adults and children.
The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
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Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#222Ok a price increase but: "nine streaming subscriptions". No one sane will do nine streaming subscriptions. The market is insane in itself for assuming that.
Apple Music, Netflix, Disney+, BBC. That's four. I don't want any of them. Three I have to take due to kids' nagging, the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats.
> the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats.
I get a letter every month from the licencing people, it just goes in the bin. I've had 1 visit, he asked to come in, I said no. That was basically the end of it.
(For the record, I have a TV but I currently have no way to watch live TV on it, so why should I have a licence! I don't use their service)
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbh just recently I found the full extended version box set of LotR on DVD just lying on the street together with ~dozens more decent movies. I could probably fund my viewing habits entirely out of found stuff. As for music; my dad ripped his whole CD collection many years ago, many thousands of CDs; more than I could listen to in a lifetime probably. Plus I buy music on bandcamp to support a few artists I really lik…
DVDs are 480p.
It’s unwatchable. I’m not being sarcastic. I pulled out some of my old DVDs, they look terrible.
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#224Several of these services launched around 2021 with introductory pricing, which is necessary for attracting new users to a new service.
Most people I know don’t subscribe to every service and then leave it that way. They might have Spotify and 1-3 video streaming services at a time. They cancel one and start a different one when they want to watching something new.
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#225We noticed this also for the online software services that we use. Many of them increased in price, which I can understand with rising costs. However, a large number of them also have/introduced a 'hostile' structure that force you into paying through the nose. Case in point was the timesheet software that we used: * They increased the cost of all price tiers. * They moved features from lower tiers to higher tiers, f…
To play devil's advocate a bit: running software isn't free. If you're paying for an online service, the hosting cost to the company does scale per-seat. It's easy to say that the company only paid the cost of development once (and even then, more users = more development demand), but you're not a user of a single unit of developed software. For streaming services, I think the development-hosting needle swings way to…
Taking Netflix as example - it has been going downhill steadily, they have a habit of canceling good shows after one or two seasons etc. It is no wonder users get annoyed when they have to pay more over time, and get less for their money. Increasing prices is never going to be popular even when it is justified, but users are more likely to tolerate if the price increase comes with better features or at minimum, no drop in features/quality.
Another egregious thing these subscriptions do is all kinds of dark patterns. Making it super easy to subscribe but super hard to cancel, not informing before charging (how hard can it be to send an email "upcoming charge next week"), showing ads in supposedly "ad-free" services etc. All this just add to the frustration which leads users to cancel.
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spotify is full of AI slop trying to pass as artists. That’s garbage Also, the company has a pretty terrible leadership: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-...
So dont listen to it? I mean what is the problem here. I never listen to basically anything spotify recommends me, just songs from bands I already know and love. And if I were to purchase the whole discography of the breadth of music I listen to it would cost the down payment on my house
I do not use the service, I was responding to the comment about garbage
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#227From an aesthetic point of view, I am getting pretty tired of this obviously LLM generated static site content template design in 2025/2026. 98% of the time when I see one of these it's a bunch of "content" generated by Claude or similar. Quoting the site: "Written by Rashid N. Rashid N is the editor of HonestlyRanked. He reviews every figure this site publishes against its source before it goes out, and has never ac…
I am for more sick of reading people complain about it than I am seeing it. The page is a table. It was fine.
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#228I am still happy with my decision to never get entertainment subscription services. I buy CDs (that I rip) and BDs (that I let someone else rip, since that's a science in itself). This guarantees me access forever and I get to sell down the line, if I feel like it. It is way cheaper long term.
> It is way cheaper long term. Buying CDs would be so much more expensive than my Spotify subscription with the variety of music I listen to. Another helpful element of the streaming services is no incremental cost to try out a new movie or series. I can start a new show and drop it 15 minutes in if I decide I don’t like it. I will listen to 20 or more new bands each week on Spotify. It’s how I discover new music. Fo…
Try before you buy is what piracy is for. I would prefer if there was another venue to try before paying, but the industry hasn't figured this out in the past hundred years, so piracy it is.
Streaming could be an acceptable compromise if it was $10 a year for everything in existence, but the catalogues are splintered across multiple services and even when you combine them all there are plenty of things not available.
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is good! Taste still remains a differentiator so far in our tokenmaxxing era.
If you create content that people like, with a distinct style, one can direct their LLM to it and copy the style. The more content you have out there the better the copy will be. I don’t think it’s really a differentiation you can rely upon
The world you are describing assumes nobody will produce anything anymore because of theft. I think there will be a reset and hopefully content producers like Mr Beast will lose out. But, I do not think people, similar to the original participants on the Internet, will refuse to make anything. I expect a return to Live journal similar content where we get actual opinions even if we sadly lose out on long tail content/production because people do not want to work hard for free. The return of the hobby style Internet isn't necessarily bad.
Re: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021
#230From an aesthetic point of view, I am getting pretty tired of this obviously LLM generated static site content template design in 2025/2026. 98% of the time when I see one of these it's a bunch of "content" generated by Claude or similar. Quoting the site: "Written by Rashid N. Rashid N is the editor of HonestlyRanked. He reviews every figure this site publishes against its source before it goes out, and has never ac…
I'm surprised that with the complaints that companies trained on everything that it results in the LLM having aesthetic preferences. With all of the templates available on sites like Wix or Squarespace, you'd think generated sites would have more variety. Then again, I have no idea what the prompts are that generate these sites to know if there's something that gives the generator the notion the style is the one people want.