With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
I don’t use them.
I never had subscriptions. Arr!
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
About 3 months back I cancelled Netflix (after being in it for many years) and moved to free Tubi.
I got tired of all this B’s long time ago and just resorted to torrenting. I missed the series management and resume feature so I coded a app to do it.
PS: in case anybody wants to use it… It’s open source. https://github.com/Dr-42/offflix
Good sir you are a gentleman and a scholar
Thank you so much
I get a lot of value out of Netflix, I watch tons of their shows every month.
I use Prime quite a bit also obviously for Amazon shopping and try to watch Prime Video a few times each month, and now they’ve expanded the music I’ll try that too.
I will be canceling Disney and just pirate what I want to see, which isn’t much, literally just one show.
E: I canceled Spotify ages ago and use their free version but for my favorite bands I downloaded their MP3 discographies. I buy their music on CD because it pays them better than streaming their songs thousands of times, plus I buy merch and go to the concerts so I’m OK with that.
E2: someone mentioned Patreon, I cancelled most of those as well because my gaming group broke up and all my patreons are for gaming 3D files. I have years worth of stuff to print and will never reach the end.
When Netflix was the only service that mattered, i paid for the convenience. As soon as i had to check 3 places for something I wanted, i cancelled and started pirating again
I never had them. Pirate life for me!
I cancelled netflix cause i was barely watching and the only reason i kept it was because we were 3 friends sharing it. We pay for 4 screens so we expect that to keep working which it didn’t. So we cancelled cause we spoke about it and nobody really watched a lot.
In the end unfortunately for Netflix it is worth it, just look at their stock which is going up again, which means more people bought the extra subscription rather than cancelling.
Sad times but if the majority of people don’t go against enshittification they will keep squeezing as much money out of everyone as long as it is profitable
i never had them, i just pirate everything. frankly it’s less hassle most of the time, i just download what i wanna watch to my laptop and plug it into the tv, saves me the headache of using their apps too. Also found out recently that there’s a modded version of spotify for android that gives the premium features without a subscription and have been really enjoying that.
Yo, can you pm me with info on that modded Spotify? Thanks!
Me too 👀
Yup, cleaned out some of my subscriptions, will buy physical copies of seasons, pirate, or worst case only sign up month at a time
Mullvad is only $5 a month just sayin’
I’ve noticed all my British shows have gone missing over the last couple years from the usual torrent sites. I’m kind of surprised because (I’m going to get my head bitten off for this take) the BBC is making better content than anything America has put out in the last few years.
Still on prime because I save more than I spend using it.
For the main streaming services, I had Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+.
I cancelled Netflix back when they announced a price hike in early 2021? I’d been a customer since 2006.
Disney+ I cancelled a few months ago, but the plan goes through November, so we still have it technically. Not planning to renew.
Prime will get renewed, but I don’t subscribe to it specifically for streaming, it’s just included in the package.
For non-traditional streaming services, I still have a number of subscriptions on Twitch and with Subtember, I’ve gotten a bunch of 6 month subs to my favorite creators. Also given out gift subs to my favorite creators.
I also subscribe to Dropout and while my subscription is expiring in the next few months, I’ll certainly renew it for another year when I have time to binge Dimension 20 again.
I really don’t have any interest in streaming services that give traditional options anymore. Even before I cancelled Netflix, I could look in my recent connection history where it shows the five most recent logins and see timestamps going back 2+ years. I transitioned away from that kind of content a long time ago.
