I’ve given up on most subscriptions and replaced them with torrenting + Jellyfin.

I’m keeping to my policy of only subscribing to two things at one time, and rotating so that I get to see the seasons of the things that I really want to see.

I’ve never been much of a pirate, mainly because I do believe in supporting those that produce the art that I love. That said, I am a big user of the library. And when there’s some FOSS product that I like, I support it. And while I could and can buy commercially now, I remember the days when I couldn’t and I survived on FOSS and the library.

With that said, let me say that I think that the content industry shoots itself in the foot when it creates these higher prices, obscene length of copyright terms, polluting their own products with commercial ads ,and fake scarcity. They deserve all the piracy that their own behavior generates!

I think Mike Masnick has it right. The best defense against piracy is to compete against it with superior offerings.

My one video subscription is to a VPN, Mullvad. I can find most anything in qbittorrent’s built-in file search, and the really weird stuff on rutracker. Jellyfin is like a self-hosted Netflix, it’s way easier to use than Kodi. I splurged on a Synology NAS so I’ve got 800 movies and 50,000 songs. I rip FLAC music from deezer and qobuz trials using deemix and qobuzdl. I import playlists to rip into Qobuz and Deezer using soundiiz, the one audio subscription I paid for. This way I can get flacs for radio playlists, any text playlist, although XSPF format works best.

I barely watch movies and TV shows nowadays. Summaries from YouTube and wiki are good enough for me to stay in the loop.

In a way, I’m not just saving costs, but I’m also saving time too.

Subscriptions are generally a bad idea if themake you dependent. I’d say these ones aren’t too bad since you can cancel any time and just lose access.

If something you depend on starts to get shitty, jump ship as soon as you can. I’m considering writing a spotify ripper because the app keeps getting worse and worse to a point where it’s almost unusable.

I’ve kicked both to the curb end of July, back to piracy. Fuck 'em with a cactus.

Aside from the ongoing Crunchyroll subscription that my whole family uses, I only ever subscribe to one streaming service at a time. Been that way just based on general principle ever since streaming became a thing. I wait till one or more must-watch shows have finished airing a full season, subscribe for a month, binge watch everything, and unsubscribe.

As soon as the latest season of Bleach is done, I’ll drop them like a hot potato and possibly never return.

Cord cutting 2.0 is upon us.

I re-upped my NZB membership for the first time in 15 years a couple of nights ago.

No because I never had them in the first place. But they make me less willing to subscribe.

I’m curious how Disney calculates since they keep claiming they’re losing a lot of money on Disney+ even though they barely make any exclusive content for it. The bulk of the content was made for theaters and tv anyway and was simply put in a library to be streamed. That’s like printing money.

I haven’t had them in the first place, but were considering a Netflix subscription years ago. Had I purchased a sub, I’d probably kept it until now. On other streaming services… I’d probably have pirated the shows outside Netflix, if I had an urge to watch them.

I’m wary of paying for more than two companies for one single service I seldom use.

I won’t get a new subscription to a streaming site except through the Play Store, since I can cancel any time.

Then again, I also have YouTube Premium because I watch that amount of YouTube and don’t want to see the ads.

Well I just discovered how much I enjoy The Diplomat so I think Netflix is safe for now. I have kids so Disney+ is staying. Paramount+ has me locked in for Star Trek (per their evil plan). I got a Hulu trial to watch Futurama - but that feels like at least one subscription too many so Hulu is likely to get the axe.