I did the math and if I subscribed to all the major streaming services, games, plus YouTube, plus news sites, other subscription/paywalled sites I’ve wanted to check out, I’ve be paying around $700/month on subscription services
Yeah, like I said earlier on a YouTube adblock post, they are the same problem as piracy.
It’s a service problem, not an adblock/piracy problem. Gabe Newell hit that nail on the head so perfectly.
I used to watch and listen everything pirated, because:
- Most content I wanted to consume took years if not decades to be shown on TV or be available on VHS or DVD in my country.
- Most music I wanted to consume was on CDs that had 1 or 2 good songs with the rest being filler.
- When video media was broadcast, it was at times I wouldn’t be able to watch.
- When music was broadcast, it was all radio edits and constantly interrupted by annoying radio hosts.
- All this cost 100+ a month for TV, 25-30€ for every movie I wanted to watch, 20-30€ for every CD I wanted to buy totaling several hundred Euro a month.
Then Netflix and Spotify came along and changed all that. All of a sudden, 99% of what I wanted to watch and listen to was available for 25-30€ a month combined.
Now, if I want to watch everything I want to watch, I’d have to pay multiples of what it cost before streaming services came along.
So, yeah, I’m almost completely back to sailing the high seas and while I have no affinity for collecting anything, supplemented my viewing and listening habits buying Merch where I know the merch is handled by the artists and go to conventions where shows I like are represented and buying merch and signatures directly from actors and crew of those shows.
The thing with even legitimately subscribing to all this is that there are some old shows and movies that aren’t even on any of these platforms.
But I’ll be nice and say I want to watch something that’s on one of these platforms, which one is it on? Say I want to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, Rick and Morty, etc. Am I gonna look it up to a site that shows which service it’s on? Then I gotta log into the website, but wait, the ip address needs a verification. I could already be watching the movie or show through a grey streaming site or if it’s on my Jellyfin server in the fraction of the time.
Lately it seems every movie or show that pops into my head and I feel like watching, is on yet another streaming channel or service I don’t have. The content is spread so thin that we barely get any content on any one platform. Netflix out here saying they have new content, as if I give a damn about random Korean soap operas they added.
