Netflix and Spotify actually makes sense to be subscription based. Amazon depends on how often you do online shipping through them since it’s actually free (if you don’t include the fees) to function. I definitely wouldn’t pay for Dropbox but cloud storage and sync pretty much has to be a monthly subscription. If you are going to be against something at least be against to the parts that makes sense to be against of.
Yes, and life still works fine without them…nobody is forcing you to subscribe to Netflix. Keep paying your monthly cable subscription like the old days.
I ain’t got no cable, last time we had cable i watched for 2 weeks and after that everything was just repeating what i had already seen in those 2 weeks and loads of nonsense shows.
I prefer doing things, like learning new skills or doing something active.
On mobile i’ve got an app that lets me play youtube videos with the screen locked so i use that as well.
It’s a bit annoying cause the app does have ads as well, but only when you open it. If you put a video on and close it (leaving it playing on the background), there’s no ads
My YouTube algorithm is just terrible. It will circle back the same 5-10 videos I have watched or liked some years ago, sprinkle in some rightwing political bullshit, or show only very tangentially related results.
Recent example: an underground artist popped into my head I used to listen to during my school days, and I wanted to go through their album for nostalgia.
Entering the artist and album name gives me two tracks from that album, a handful of other artists who have at some point collaborated, and the aforementioned unrelated or political results. Clicking through some of the videos always cycles back to the same few suggestions.
I even tried this on incognito mode to see if my login bricked the algorithm, but it was equally shitty. Apparently google can’t even get their own content indexed properly, not to mention actual web search.
bandcamp is pretty great. Granted, they are still a for-profit company; a popular community based solution would be nice. But they do let you download lossless file to self-host or just listen on device.
The only complain is the lack of classical music (not modern/contemporary classical) on there. But I would imagine most classical music is public domain by now. I just don’t know where to find them…
Edit: found it: www.classiccat.net or internet archive has a huge collection of classical music.
My very hyperbolic point was that most of us don’t subscribe to just one service. Pretty easy to subscribe to multiple of these and others like cloud backup services, car navigation, and other media like maybe even a news service. That’s a lot of subscriptions, and companies are trying to find even more ways to make us pay subscriptions. Everything from having to pay subscriptions to have parts of your car work to computer games. My point was a sarcastic take on how much we are being forced to subscribe to if we want to participate in what constitutes “normal” things these days.
As everyone else here, I think piracy is illegal and immoral. We should accept that we don’t own our services and software and we should never doubt that corporations have our best interest in mind.
Therefore you should never have a Plex server, never use protonmail, never use AdGuard Home, never use AdGuard DNS for private DNS.
Also you should never use Firefox with UBlock origin sponsorblock and consent o magic.
Lastly you should never ever use re-vanced and x-manager, and God forbid don’t use a VPN
This is gong to sound nuts, but subscriptions aren’t a problem for me, auto renewals are. I like to be in control of my finances, so whenever I sign up for something I pick a term I can live with, 1,3, 6 or 12 months, I pay, and I immediately go to the account management screen and cancel.
I don’t care if it’s inconvenient to have to think about it every so often, but I’m in control of the spending and to me that’s what matters.
Is paying via credit card with auto renewals the only payment method companies provide you? That’s pretty bad, I’d say.
Because, considering what you are having to do RN, it means that they can simply change a policy and next time you pay, you might find out the “account management screen and cancel” becomes unavailable.
There has to be a way to pay without having to give your credit card details… e.g. The payment gateway sends a request to your bank; your bank asks you for confirmation for one time payment; you confirm payment; the bank sends acceptance to request; payment gateway captures it and gives you your bill.
See, game pass I’m cool with because it’s an up-front transparent deal that you are buying time to access this library, and the library also changes. There is no pretense of “buying a copy” or whatever.
It’s nice for modern games anyway. For classic stuff that I want to have access to forever, I alreadty have access to that stuff forever. It might stink for the kids who are playing their “classics” right now, though.
Dropbox, Spotify, and a VPN are worth it: fight me.
Sure, Spotify doesn’t pay artists enough and I miss having Neil Young available for streaming, but what are the other options that work well in the car? I’m not going to go back to using discs or plugging in MP3 players to the aux port, and I don’t mind paying the bands directly for merch/albums if I’m really a fan. Considering I mostly listen to vinyl at home, I’m not paying Spotify for music; I’m paying Spotify for the convenience of being able to not listen to terrestrial radio and to be able to listen to what I like in the car or at work without the need for Youtube.
And my personal Dropbox account that I also use for work is well worth 15$/mo for 2TB of storage. It’s saved me so much grief to be able to back up phone photos, access my work files from any computer, keep records of my personal documents, etc., and the software is both more cost effective and better designed than Google Drive or OneDrive. PDF’s of my RPG books/characters/maps? Dropbox. Grocery list text file? Dropbox. Place to stash tabs/sheet music that is easily kept organized without the need for a physical copy? Dropbox. Phone number of that parent who saw my partner’s car get tagged in the parking lot at school? Wait, I think I have her phone number in an spreadsheet from when I coached her daughter in tee-ball…gimme a sec…yep, it’s in my Dropbox. In a side note, Dropbox may have turned me into a digital hoarder.
But the rest of this subscription-based garbage can get bent.
Agreed Spotify is totally worth it. I use it a lot to go on like rabbit-hole deep dives into some artist or genre or something, I use it a lot for stuff I will listen once and never again. That would be completely impossible if I was buying individual songs or albums or whatever. Paying for a nearly infinite database of music I can peruse at will following whatever random interests I have that day, that is absolutely worth the subscription fee.
I can’t speak to that as I don’t use any of the recommended playlists. It’s pretty easy to avoid artists you don’t like if you make your own playlists or pick your own music
Pandora is cheaper than Spotify and arguably better at picking new and random content based on your input. But it won’t play specific songs that you request like Spotify does. And Pandora works via Bluetooth, car apps, etc.
I used Pandora a ton a decade ago when there weren’t really any mainstream streaming services to compete with. But as someone who listens to albums and makes my own playlists, Pandora won’t cut it for me. I’m enough of a music snob that when I say I want to listen to The Stones, I want to listen to Let It Bleed front to back.
For some applications, Pandora is great, but it’s not what I need.
I loved and used Pandora for a long time. It was really good at recommending songs. I quit when they started playing ads in my feed despite paying for an ad free experience. These were like voice ads for concerts or similar from artists. I contacted customer support and the response was basically “we don’t think those are ads, they are ‘special messages’ from the artists so they aren’t going to stop.”
The problem is that I mostly use music streaming as background at work. Having a 30 second clip of some guy’s voice saying “Hey I’m Bobby from the Bobbles and we are excited to be touring in your area next month! Come check out our show for a Bobbling-Good-Time!” is very disruptive in the same way an ad for anything else is. They were clear that they weren’t going to stop so I walked away.
I recently switched from Spotify to Deezer. They offer high fidelity audio streaming which is a very noticable difference. Also, they’re a bit cheaper, and you can easily move all your songs/saved playlists to Deezer
You need to be a certain kind of person to perceive audio quality difference. One, you need to be able to detect the difference. Two, you need to be able to appreciate the difference. And Three, which everyone seems to ignore, you need to have bought a sufficiently expensive device that can make the difference.
In short, if you have an $18 desktop speaker, get the FLAC outta here.
Not really. It’s noticeable over Bluetooth as well, if your device supports codecs with a high enough bitrate. Obviously Bluetooth is still lossy, but listening experience is way better. The headphones I’m wearing now use aptxHD, with a bitrate of 576kbps. Spotify only offers AAC, with a bitrate of 256kbps.
As far as who can appreciate the difference, I guess? But you don’t need to be a concert pianist to appreciate audio. That said, I play many instruments, so maybe I’m biased.
It also has an absolutely terrible algorithm for recommending music in my experience. I’ve tried Apple Music several times over the past few years as I’m heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. My experience never changes. I put in a random artist like Green Day or Hans Zimmer or Gregory Alan Isakov and within 4-5 songs the station is playing hip hop or rap. No matter what genre I start with the stream always turns into hip hop or rap and it’s mostly nobody artists that aren’t good. I have some songs in those genres in my library but the majority are not. (Also if I’m starting a station with an orchestral film score it stands to reason I probably want to hear more film scores not rap.)
All I can say is I’m glad I haven’t had the same experience. Not huge into rap or hip-hop and have never had them come up. It seems pretty good at recommending new songs to me. Not sure if it uses my current library or my searches but I’ve been happy with it.
It is a little pricey, but when I tried hosting my own server, it was way too much hassle (for me). Frankly, I don’t mind paying Dropbox because they make the experience so fool-proof and borderline invisible.
Dropbox runs in the background and just acts like just a local folder in your Documents folder (or wherever you put it). When you save anything there, it’s automatically backed up online in real-time and added to any other computers you use that have Dropbox installed. If you have too much online for some of your devices, it will use a a “shadow file” that is just a link to the online file so it takes up zero space on your other local devices while acting just like the file is already local (in terms of being able to right-click, access properties, open it from other programs, etc.). Plus, it has built in functionality for sharing files or entire folders by giving you a quick download link with just two clicks, which is great for sharing files that are too large to send via email.
Could I get all that functionality cheaper? Almost certainly. Could I find something cheaper that is also just as user-friendly? I’m open to it, but I haven’t found anything yet that is close to competitive.
Have you checked out OneDrive (Microsoft)? It’s what I use for school. I don’t store pictures or anything, strictly school documents and random odds and ends.
I have a OneDrive account through my work, so I’ve used it a bit, but it doesn’t seem like it handles downloads and uploads as quickly, nor keeping the right files local intuitively the way Dropbox does.
Plus, it’s almost as expensive as Dropbox per TB with a personal plan, and Microsoft doesn’t need any more of my money or information.
Perhaps it 'tis a silly thing. But I just want to thank whoever did the art work for drawing the stick figure guy with the shotgun as being left handed and holding a left hand shotgun.
My mental status thanks you and as another member of the Bar Sinister, I also thank you.
Funnily enough I used this gun as an asset in a scratch game. I think it’s more likely they found a picture of a gun from that angle and decided to draw the person like that afterwards, I’m not a gun owner though so I don’t really know what I’m talking about😜.
Unfortunately, there isn’t really an exit plan. Buying the music outright is not worth it because of how many different artists I listen to so I will probably always be paying for Apple Music or Tidal.
It’s only 4 dollars more a month and I will have a real job to pay for it.
who is downvoting this? 😂 maybe they live in a poor country, or maybe they’re making an obscure joke. Why would people go past this comment and be like “nope, fuck this person”
Ubisoft should get comfortable with the idea of going out of business. I refuse to buy anything of theirs or interact with their shit launcher. Bad practices and bad products combined mean bankruptcy and i hope it happens soon so decent companies can get ahold of their IPs and make some good games out of them because Ubisoft is clearly not interested in doing so
It doesn’t make a difference. He still wants you to get comfortable with that. It doesn’t matter how he dresses up his sentences his thought process is the same, thats how he got to CEO.
The point of the dishonest article is to make you believe the CEO feels entitled to gamers becoming OK with subscription models. What he actually feels is a hope that subscription models will take off. It’s rage-bait. Did it work?
…you believe the CEO feels entitled to gamers becoming OK with subscription models. What he actually feels is a hope that subscription models will take off
That sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.
People keep pointing this out like it’s some kind of misinformation.
The Ubisoft executive is saying gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games before subscription services will take off.
The Ubisoft executive would also very much like subscription services to take off.
QED the Ubisoft executive is saying “I’d really like gamers to get used to idea of not owning their games so our subscription service can take off”.
It comes back to the same thing: Ubisoft is saying aloud what they want the future of gaming to be.
And please don’t tell me you’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, here.
The problem is people apparently haven’t figured out yet how to read what the CEO of a for-profit company means when they say shit publicly about their services. Learn to read between the lines.
There’s a mile of difference between saying “consumers need to get comfortable not owning their games” and “we want consumers to get comfortable not owning their games (but using subscription services instead)”.
The former statement is extremely arrogant. The latter is just obvious. And it’s reasonable even if you or I personally don’t want to get our games on a subscription model - millions of people get their music through Spotify and it suits them just fine even though other people don’t want that. So it’s a way of straw-manning the people pushing subscriptions so you can hate them.
The saying comes from an opinion piece that was sponsored by the WEF. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page. The article presented a future where the climate problem was fixed because the entire economy was based on services instead of the production of goods. It certainly has some elements that could work, but also has relied heavily on the neoliberal “the market will fix it” mentality.
Are streaming services that different from cable TV? You’re paying for access to new content. If you want specific content to own, don’t they all let you buy them? I know I was able to buy GoT discs when I wasn’t willing to pay for an HBO subscription. Has that changed?
Difference is that most games made anymore are online access dependent even if they aren’t dedicated multiplayer only games. What happens when subscriptions get so low that upkeep is unprofitable? You lose access to a game that you’ve paid a lot of money for, for no good reason as online isn’t necessary but the studios rarely patch it out at game sunset
yup, the very popular stuff you can usually (but not always) buy on disk. the less popular stuff you can sometimes (but not often) buy on disk if the creator really pushes for it
The only sub I use is Spotify. I share it across my friends and family and like their vast catalog. They also don’t charge for their API so I can integrate it with Home Assistant.
My friends and family agree downloading songs manually sucks.
Piracy is a service issue. I have no problems with subscriptions as long as the price and service outpace piracy.
If the price gets to a point it doesn’t make sense, I go back to piracy.
Tfw I paid for a subscription to access my textbook this semester.
Granted, it’s not just a textbook. My Spanish classes use VHL Central, which includes a textbook with videos, audio files, virtually endless practice assignments, and pretty much all of our assignments and course material.
It’s a really great tool, I guess I just wish I could keep access to it after I graduated. (I think you can purchase a textbook, but definitely not the full program.) Ah, well. ¯\(ツ)/¯
That kind of model is unfortunately common for university courses. I had it for my language courses, and a couple of the core maths courses.
The online platform justifies a subscription by providing additional resources, homework grading, etc. Fair enough, honestly, if they want to charge you $15 or something reasonable. But when textbook access gets rolled into the bundle, it tends to inflate the subscription cost and also have the convenient-for-the-publisher side effect of temporary access to the text. Lose-lose, from a student perspective.
I had a course that required we buy a license to Pearson’s service in order to submit homework. $100+ to view a pdf for a semester and submit homework through a buggy form interface. I still hold a grudge against everyone in the department for that decision.
With that model the company can afford to offer far more content than with a pay-once model. With a pay-once model they only generate enough income to be able to offer a book, and maybe a smattering of supplementary material. Go subscription-based however, revenue increases, so output increases and now they can afford to create and maintain a whole lot more while keeping the price affordable to those who need it during the period that they need it.
It’s a similar principle to renting vs buying. If they were to offer all of those materials as a one-off purchase at a price that would allow their business to be sustainable, it would cost more than most are able to afford.
If we go back to one-off purchases, we go back to getting less for life as opposed to a lot for a limited period of time. It’s a trade off, and clearly one that most people are willing to make.
People get so angry (OP) about the way things are just because they’re unhappy in general and looking for something to blame. Not all companies are fair with their subscription models, but most are. Not every company cares about their customers, but most do. Some companies are run by sociopaths, but most are run by normal, nice people.
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