this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I never had them. Pirate life for me!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

When the sharing crackdown on Netflix was announced I decided to cancel it and set up a recurring donation in the same amount to a charity I believe in. It felt pretty great. I'm about to cancel Prime, but I need to switch credit cards, which is kind of a pain. Prime isn't really worth it to me anymore. Otherwise I only pay for the ones that have active shows I'm watching. Haven't sailed the high seas in decades, and probably won't start. Missing TV has been great for my hobby productivity πŸ˜†

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

πŸ΄β€β˜ οΈπŸ«‘

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I canceled Netflix for what they did to the witcher and I'm canceling HBO max now because I don't want to watch anything on it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm keeping Spotify because I already split a family account (Β£18.99 per month I think) between 6 people. I pay for a few other subscription services like something for D&D and my phone bill but they are things that I feel I require.

I haven't paid for any streaming, gaming or other services for at least a year or two. As soon as I started sailing the high seas for specific content not on the big services, I realised that it's so little extra work for infinite free content.

Funnily enough, my partner and I have been considering picking up a Β£10 Photoshop subscription that's currently about, just because she uses an up to date Photoshop at work and swapping between the 2023 and 2020 versions is a small pain.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I cancelled Netflix a few months ago, I still pay for Disney+ and my bro pays for Paramount+, and we share those with each other

I ended up also installing Plex on my rapsberry pi and going back to pirating.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Bro wtf... How do you get to 200$ a month without seriously considering cancelling some? Like don't you have to work for your money?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm cancelling mine because my job lied and never gave me a raise and my other debts are also piling up. Pirating and eating rice for the next few months maybe longer.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Not only have I cancelled them almost a decade ago - I don't even watch series or movies anymore, and barely listen to music outside of the radio. I'm disgusted with the many crimes committed by Big Media and want to have as little as possible to do with it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’m a pirate, always will be.

Real debrid. Kodi. Fen add on. Nvidia shield. Done.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Put.io + Plex $120/year, zero isp warnings

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I really want to cancel Youtube, and I watch a LOT of it. But Lemmy users have got me on that NewPipe / Piped / Invidious train. So... Maybe soon I will be able to watch youtube for free and without ads on all of my devices.

I also have local TV for the Sunday news, and Netflix for like one show a month. So much for a la carte, the value for my money has gone down the drain compared to live TV and those early cord cutting years.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

I almost never watch stuff outside of YouTube and the like. If I really did wanted to watch something, its likely an older show that I can just torrent.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Hoist the black flag!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

When I start a free trial I immediately set a reminder in Google calendar. And when I am looking for a specific movie I buy it used online. That way I have all my favorite movies on my NAS and can cancel my subscriptions when there is nothing especially interesting.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Haven't had any for like 6 years, and back then it was just Netflix and Crunchyroll.

Embrace the pirate lifestyle out on the seven seas

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Already did earlier this month, specifically because of password issues. Canceled everything except our family music plan. Stremio with debrid works just fine for us

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

The only streaming service I use is my own homeserver running plex, so no.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

If the ads come to Prime, then I might cancel that. It’s already our least watched service and it’s been getting a free pass because of the next day delivery.

I don’t want to watch ads, I don’t want to pay an extra Β£30 per year to not see ads and I don’t need next day delivery often enough to keep it for that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Old Tom here has a Plex server connected to sonarr, radarr, my torrent client, etc. This allows me to more or less search for something I want to watch and with a button click have it downloaded anywhere from a few minutes and up depending on the title's popularity. Ultimately it's actually a better experience than any streaming service.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I just have Spotify and, if it counts, YT Premium. Spotify is on the family plan where my dad has his own account tied to mine, and he can just pull up basically any music he feels like listening to instead of asking me to find it for him.

As for YT, I'm just too lazy to set up blocking the ads on my TV.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

no because the last time I used netflix was five years ago. I never even thought to pay for any of the other ones

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I cancelled all of my streaming subscriptions years ago to save money. I figured I'd subscribe again when there was anything I wanted to watch that I couldn't find and it turns out there wasn't really anything I wanted to watch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just use fmovies.to and up your antivirus. Much cheaper

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