I think a common factor on why torrents are having a resurgence and illegal streaming services are getting more traction, is subscription fatigue. Subscription fatigue doesn’t only contain itself to streaming services, movies or music, nowadays you’re also expected to subscribe to every app you download. Whether it’s a meditation app, a budgeting app (looking at YNAB that went from a one-time purchase to a really expensive subscription model), the Adobe suite, the MS Office suite, your Peloton bike that you’ve already paid hundreds of dollars for (referencing the earlier article on them establishing a startup fee for buying used bikes), or a podcast app where the money doesn’t even go to the podcasters themselves.
Is there a peak for this? I feel like subscriptions are becoming more of a rule than an exception. Having the ability to directly purchase digital goods seems more like a thing of the past. It’s just so stupid. But apparently people don’t care? They just keep paying for this? Apparently it’s still worth it for companies to establish a subscription model, even if there are no benefits for the customer, just the company. What are your thoughts? What can we do to stop it?
Most of them are cheap though. Like Spotify at ~$10 is nothing, you can barely get a beer for that in the city these days. That’s far cheaper than you used to pay for CDs!
Netflix really took the piss though - with the charging for no ads, HD and multiple screens. Then it gets to like $30 a month which just isn’t worth it with the diminishing library, so I cancelled that and use Amazon Prime Video for now as it’s still cheap in my country (and has no ads for now).
Imo, the mindset of “X is cheap!” what leads people to end up overspending.
Having worked with marketers, they use the whole “price of a cup of coffee” to convince people to buy services that they don’t need all the time.
I don’t have or need Spotify. Same with a lot of steaming services. I own Netflix stock but I don’t even own a Netflix account. I could afford it but why?
If the replacement for X is Y, sure! Buy the alternative. But honestly I think people should reevaluate what they really need.
A sales person was trying to sell me a timeshare with the ol “only the cost of a cup of coffee per day” tactic. The conversation got real awkward when I told them I couldn’t afford a cup of coffee everyday
$10/month would be cheap if it would cover every movie and show you’d want to watch. It used to be that but nowadays you need about ten different subscriptions in order to get what you want, plus many more if you use SaaS. So you end up paying ~$200/month for everything.
IMO, Spotify still “works” and music piracy probably is not as common as movie piracy, because Spotify has close to everything one would want to listen to.
Don’t most music streaming services have all the major bases covered? Unlike for films or TV shows, there are hardly any music streaming exclusive versions of albums. Sure, Tidal tried to make it happen but still, at this day, most streaming services have most of the stuff one wants.