LG to offer subscriptions for already purchased appliances and televisions, evolving into a provider for “Home as a Service”::Subscription fatigue is a thing and regulators are circling, but Korean giant reckons you’re ready to cough up after buying hardware
You know my story isn’t very different from yours.
As a teenager I massively pirated everything, became an adult with a paying job streaming was sensible so I paid for Netflix/Spotify eventually adding in Prime video + the occasional thing like P+/disney+ or whatever flavour of the month I wanted to watch.
Then earlier this year I realised I was paying for 6 different movie/tv streaming subs and when I went on holiday none of the services I had worked properly and I couldn’t continue watching the show I had been watching at night before bed and I just went nah fuck this. Blew about 2 grand on a Mac Mini m2 and a ton of hard drives and just went full on Arr stack + usenet + plex lifetime.
It isn’t even about the fucking money anymore it’s just how inconvenient they make everything, I’ve had enough and I don’t think I’m ever going back.
Disney Plus straight up refusing to run anything while we were on vacation just made me really mad. Here I am setting up the tablet for the kid, and then - nah wrong region mate. Even VPN didn’t help somehow.
My biggest issue is how they took Podcasts, which have always been open RSS feeds for audio (and Apple, the largest player, kept open and public for decades) and started making exclusivity deals that only work through their app, with invasive analytics and monetization.
My second issue is how Spotify wants me to manage my library the way they believe I should: emphasize playlists, kinda add songs to a library, ignore albums. For instance, on Apple Music if I add 3 songs from an album to my library, I can go to the Albums menu and the album will show up there - even though I only have 3 songs. On Spotify, I either add an entire album, or if I only add the songs, the album won’t show up in the albums view. In fact, the whole “liked songs” section feels like an afterthought they added after impementing playlists, while on Apple Music and most oldschool music library software the song library was the main view and the songs added there populated all other fields such as artists or albums. Ironically, Apple Music is got intelligent playlists that work way better than Spotify’s, with the downside being they can only be created via iTunes which is ancient software.
My third issue is what are the value adds to the subscription as the years go by: Spotify added short videos, QR codes, inconsistent lyrics and digital stores that aren’t even converted to my local currency… While Apple Music added karaoke lyrics, lossless audio, spatial audio (even on my Android), remasters straight from the studio, and more. It’s totally subjective, but Spotify’s gimmicks aren’t worth it to me.
My fourth issue is just the number of tracks that are no longer available on Spotify from my library. Apple Music lost a few, YouTube Music slightly less, and Spotify quite a lot which surprised me.
As you can see, it’s not like Spotify killed my cat and replaced my audio library with a 10 hour loop of fart sounds… But I have deep concerns over their treatment of podcasts, I really dislike their philosophy on how to organize a music library (and they offer less customization than an Apple product, how crazy is that?), they’re becoming increasingly more popular yet their catalogue is actually shrinking for my music taste, and I don’t see real improvements in the service while their competitors keep adding actual value as time goes on.
Either way, don’t mind me - I’m actually now using a huge library of FLAC files on my PC that get converted to MP3 and sent to my phone. Free, no songs vanish, no internet connection, no issues 😄
Good explanation. Apple Music is still solid for me and I greatly prefer it over Spotify since I prefer listening to and collecting albums over playlists. Am also not a fan of what they’ve done with podcasts, the overall sound quality or the integration with the products I use.
While not ideal, I’ve found that most of the songs or music removed is due to some weird licensing issue and is still there. For example Wolfmother’s first album needing to be re-added as the 10th anniversary edition. Kind of annoying still but manageable.
I also have no interest in the Spotify “value adds”: they add no value for me. Last year I did try to leave, with their focus on podcasts that seem actively harmful to society, but their play lists are just the way I like to listen to music. Apple Music kept annoying me with focus on albums, and iverly targeted play lists, so I did come back
I get the podcast thing. I never use it, and I don’t think most others do. I’m hoping they just kill the idea at some point but who knows.
The library used to be more straightforward, but in the most recent updates or at least since I’ve started using it again it’s seemed much more playlist focused. To me, this actually makes more sense - with iTunes the “universe” of music is what I have downloaded, with Spotify it doesn’t really matter what’s in my library, everything is already accessible. Rarely do I just browse by artist in my library when using Spotify.
That being said, I do like to add music to iTunes still and sync it to my iPod as I have no faith that Spotify will be around for my entire lifespan.
The podcast thing is not Spotify’s fault, it’s an industry-wide thing.
As podcasting took off, the most popular podcast hosts wanted to be fairly paid for their stardom. An exclusive distribution deal is the easiest way for the podcaster, who otherwise would have to grind their audience with paid subscriptions or intrusive sponsorships.
For the same price, Apple Music provides lossless audio quality, Dolby Atmos, 4K music videos (you can’t even get those on YouTube), karaoke (Apple Music Sing), and a personalized radio station that doesn’t feed you the exact same stuff every week. Plus you can use third-party apps like Marvis Pro with your AM subscription, so you’re not locked to one app’s GUI.
Even the OS (like MS Windows) will be subscription. I don’t give a flying fuck, as I use Linux. And I have 0 (zero) subscriptions. I feel free, without vices (other than smoking).
There’s only one way I’d be OK with “subscribing” to use a LG fridge: I don’t pay anything upfront and I don’t need to pay for any repairs. If I don’t even get to own it, then I shouldn’t be responsible for fixing it when it dies and spoils all my food after a year or two, nor should I need to pay for a new fridge when I give up on it after those repairs inevitably fail again. Same with their TVs when the cheap capacitors die early.
If I subscribe to rent your product, the onus is on you to make it reliable enough that it lasts until the subscription turns a profit.
Since that won’t be their business model, I’m better off buying a half decent brand and then flushing $1000 down the toilet. Fuck LG appliances. (And fuck Samsung appliances while we’re here.)
LG can go fuck off.
Love how these corporate executives these days can only use tricks to increase their profits rather than building better, more reliable products which gain more customers through hard work.
But more reliable products means existing customers will buy again less frequently.
There are nearly 8 billion people in the world and never in our history has there been as many people with disposable income. There are new customers out there. They don’t have to simply fuck over their existing customers and continually fleece us.
But what about their poor shareholders that want to see maximum profits :(
I bought a $3k+ LG OLED. I intentionally never agreed to any TOS so that it would act as a dumb TV. I wanted it on the network so that I could control it through Home Assistant and Apple HomeKit so I put it in my IoT VLAN. Within a day it was trying to port scan my network! It is now fully isolated with no outgoing connections allowed.
I have a 2017 era Samsung TV. I use it to connect to a media server that my router runs if I plug in a USB drive. This just worked so I assumed it was an open unauthenticated service.
Then I tried to use VLC running on my phone to connect and found myself presented with a login screen. When I investigated further I found the router’s media server defaulted to using the the router’s admin credentials.
So it looks like the TV had been programmed to try common default router creds before showing a login prompt to the user as a “convenience”.
That’s good UX, the real fuckup is using default admin credentials om your router.
The “smart” LGTV experience is utter trash. I was very pissed off to see adverts on my Home Screen when I put it online. It’s since been taken off and an Apple TV now provides the streaming services.
This thing with subscriptions has become insane. You can easily spend several hundred a month getting roped into all the subscriptions companies are pushing. It’s the latest way to squeeze as much money as possible out of the consumer.
I’ve gone into subscription boycott at this point. I had too many and said screw that. I still have Amazon Prime where I think I get my money’s worth. I shop there a lot and use their streaming so it’s worth it to me. Subscriptions for appliances? No way in hell.
Yep. I built a fully automated piracy machine that I can stream straight to any device with no hassle. Fuck subscriptions.
Can you expand a bit on how you did that? Sounds enticing and I do have a virtual server and a RasPi to play around with.
Definitely! Don’t listen to the folks behind me - Jellyfin can only be viewed outside of your network if you build your own website and host it there, and that’s way more trouble than you need to go through. Use Plex instead. You can just download the app and login and view your media from anywhere in the world without having to be a web designer/programmer.
Jellyfin is cool and all, but the functionality is severely lacking compared to Plex. Plex is getting pretty commercial, so I get it, but it just fucking works haha. Jellyfin will hopefully be there someday, but trust me, save yourself that headache. It sucks in it’s current form. It’s mostly just hardcore nerds that use Jellyfin, and if you’re trying to share it with others, it’s very complex. With Plex, I can just have my elderly mother or whoever download the Plex app on their phone, smart TV, game console, or anything else with internet and you can cast it just like Netflix.
I use unRAID as my OS, which is a Docker-based Linux kernel. I use Plex, Prowlarr/Radarr/Sonarr for indexing and organizing my library, sabNZBD and qBittorrent to download the files, and Overseerr as a search engine and request system for movies and TV. Basically I’ve got Overseerr reverse proxied and myself and all of the folks I share my Plex with can access it and request stuff from any web browser.
Yeah, it’s bad enough that an LG TV makes you agree to have all of your data sent to them, but now they want you to pay for the privilege as well. Screw that!
I mean, i think all smart TVs do that now. Don’t know what I’ll do when my dumb one breaks.
Just don’t connect smart TVs to the internet. Get something cheap like a raspberry pi + wireless mouse/keyboard or an android TV box for the same functionality. (More functionality, actually)
It’s one of those things that was a shock at how prevalent it is on the Apple app store after so much talk of how much better the apps are compared to Android. There’s not even proper filter options to filter out apps that are subscription only. It was ridiculous how you could buy an app then get pop ups to get the subscription plan. It’s why I wish a foss app store like F-droid becomes available once slide loading becomes possible so I can avoid the appstore as much as possible when I need a basic app. Like a calculator.
Yeah phone apps are horrible, don’t know about iOS since I’ve always used Android, but they’re mostly bad. The apps geared to a company service are usually fine, but the rest are just ad support systems.
I actually don’t use third party phone apps that much, but the times I have it’s like an assault. You get a tenth of the screen for the actual function of the app with the rest of the screen gyrating ads. It’s especially a problem for me because I’m old and can’t see the screen that well. I don’t know how people put up with it. I can’t.
Good thing about at least paid apps on play store is that they usually don’t have subscriptions, and there are tags warning if it Contains Ads before you even install the app.
I don’t think Apple appstore even has ad warnings. Only in-app purchase warning. So using appstore was when I found out talking video ads exist.
