I don’t have the money to sustain the “everything is a subscription” simple as that. So adblockers and piracy is the only way to get media content.
I still go to the cinema, but some cinemas over here are already experimenting with subscriptions.
A single ticket to my local movie theater costs $16.50 for an adult ticket to a typical movie. That is already more expensive than a month of unlimited Youtube premium, even at the inflated price.
Video streaming is a consumable product. What model would you prefer. Ad supported is still available. A la carte is reasonable in theory, but doesn’t seem like it would work well for a site like youtube (even though youtube does have some a-la-carte offerings such as movies)
We used to have a movie subscription service around here. It failed because it was essentially sellings dimes for nickels.
From an actual cost perspective, a video streaming on YouTube is not even remotely the same as a movie ticket. The company selling the movie ticket has to price each ticket to ensure that the company can make enough money to cover:
- Rent/lease for the building
- Wages for employees
- Purchase/rental of movies from studios/distributors
- Purchase/rental of equipment to project movies onto screens
Google has its own costs of course, but for essentially the same thing (showing a person a video), Google’s costs are vastly lower per person, because the video they are showing you is a digital file that lives on a server, and the same file is shown to everyone who wants to view it.
Another example: A book printed on paper requires a lot of physical materials - ink, paper, cardboard, glue, etc. Selling a paper book requires machines to print the pages, trucks and trains to transport raw materials to and from factories, and to locations where they book can be sold.
For a paper book to end up in your hands, lumberjacks need to be paid to cut down trees. Miners need to be paid to dig the materials required to make ink out of the ground. Printing press operators need to be paid. Truck drivers need to be paid. Warehouse workers need to be paid. Delivery drivers need to be paid.
A Kindle ebook is a digital file that has been uploaded from the publisher directly to an Amazon server, and Amazon is certainly able to provide itself with server space at far lower than retail cost.
A brand new printed paperback version of the lastest David Baldacci novel costs $19.99 on Amazon. The Kindle version of the same book costs $14.99. Considering that the Kindle version has almost zero of the costs associated with the print version, and is literally the exact same digital file that is sent to every single person who purchases the ebook, the ebook, compared to the paper book, generates almost 100% profit with almost zero additional costs or overhead.
Given this, should an ebook cost almost as much as a real book? Should a YouTube Premium subscription cost as much as a movie ticket?
Or are two of the most profitable companies on the planet simply charging “real” prices for digital products because they have a de-facto monopoly in their respective markets, and they can basically just do whatever they want?
A) Phyical books cost way more to buy than they do to print. You are mostly paying for the writing/editing.
B) Youtube is nor charging anywhere near “real” prices for their subscription. Renting movies on youtube is generally in the $3-$5 range, far cheaper than seeing a movie in a theater. The subscription gives you unlimited access to almost their entire library of videos and music. The only physical analouge is a library, but those only exist due to government funding and a quirk of copyright law that does not apply as well in the digital realm.
I just don’t care 🙌
I seriously couldn’t give two fucks about supporting influencers or tech companies. Uploaders can pay for the infrastructure for all I care. Like people use to host websites out of passion, now everything is about profits, and politics, why would I want to support that? Why should I give two fucks about making someone else rich?
Fuck that shit. You can get cracked copies of the YouTube App that give a much better experience.
I do pay for a couple subscriptions, but in the 2000s I had a subscription service for video games called GameTap and it was great except they could add and remove games on a whim and when you stop paying you lose access to all of it. So you need to remember a subscription service is ephemeral and there’s long term benefits to having the files yourself.
Software subscriptions are what really bums me out. Back in the day you could just buy your software and have it forever. Now Microsoft Office is a subscription, Adobe Photoshop is a subscription, and so much more. Nothing pisses me off more than when I install a basic app on my phone and find out it’s actually a subscription app.
Literally the only major software I can think of right now that isn’t subscription based or insanely expensive is Apple’s Final Cut Pro at $300.
Fortunately Microsoft Office isn’t fully subscription yet, but with how much they’re pushing Office365 it’s not too surprising that people don’t seem to realize this. You can still buy a permanent license from MS directly (with some digging around to get to the correct page) or from 3rd party websites. Only downside is it locks you into the current version of Office, but for the average user (me) that’s not too much of a big deal - I can’t recall them releasing any major must have features over the past 10 years.
Just wait a few more years - Windows 11 will probably be the last “desktop” license you’ll be able to buy. Microsoft really, REALLY wants the next OS to be Windows 365 Cloud OS, run on Azure (of course) and available only via subscription.
“buy your software and have it forever” was not really true other than in the very early days. everything that was in active development like office, photoshop, all the pro music software i used, was updated regularly and had an upgrade cost. my music app had a paid upgrade every year like clockwork for $150. it was essentially a subscription in all but name. yeah i could stop paying and stay with the last version forever but operating system and hardware advances would make it so those versions would stop running on newer machines eventually.
I’d be willing to pay for a few subscriptions if I didn’t feel like subscription services are trying to gouge me left and right. I miss the days when subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify gave me access to 90% of content online.
Contrast this with Steam, which gives me centralized convenience, seamless updates, online sync, achievements… No wonder that’s where I spend almost all of my entertainment money these days.
It’s like what cable networks did back in the day, if you want to view a channel, subscribe to it. We have come full circle.
Good lord they are going to put ads again in streaming services aren’t they
