After having a conversation with my wife we’ve decided to start cancelling most of our subscriptions. With the rising cost of most of them we come to the conclusion that we want to cut back. So out of Qobuz, Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple Music and various others that we’ve subscribed to and forgotten. Apple Music (mainly for family sharing and the daughters) and Prime (postage savings) all the others are going.
With over a thousand vinyl albums and the same with CDs I’ve enough music to last my life time so definitely not going to be short of something to listen to.
Airplay to the Node is good enough for exploring new music and background playlists.All my CDs are loaded on NAS for streaming. My wife runs a charity shop and brings home more CDs weekly and has more DVDs in the shop then she can sell.
I thought my youngest was going to be against this and was waiting for the argument. Never came she’s in full agreement as long as she can finish a series she’s watching.
She’s come to the same conclusion as us. To much to choose from and not enough quality.
Most weekends we have movie night on a Saturday but tend to flick around all the sites to find something we all want to watch and that kills about half an hour in its self.
So from this weekend it will be listening to a couple of the many albums we haven’t listened to yet, reading some of the many books we haven’t got round reading or watching one of the many DVDs that my wife brought home.
You need to be a bit careful with Prime because it is also an aggregator service. If you select one of the shows to watch from an affiliate service provider, it automatically signs you up until you put password locks in place before hand.
My kids watched all sorts of cartoons on Prime and I thought all the Prime premium content was all I had to worry about and that it being locked away I was golden. Then when I was pouring over the credit card bills I found all these $5 monthly payments for subscriptions to all these kids cartoon channels. To say I was non plussed was an understatement.
BTW, If you cancel Disney+ but then sign up to Hulu, you get both Hulu and Disney+ .
I have Prime for the free delivery and have watched very little TV on it, I think one series, so 6 episodes.
I recently after much prompting from friends signed up for Qobuz. I think I will keep it but it could cause me to buy more LPs than I already do as I hear a track from a new release on R6 and then go listen to the album on Qobuz and if I like it will buy the vinyl.
Other than that I have never subscribed to anything. I get more TV channels than I can watch on Freesat and internet radio gives me loads of choice for when R6 has shows on I don’t enjoy.
Not just entertainment, the subscription model is so lucrative that everyone wants in on it. Sodastream cylinders for fizzy water, food bags for sous vide, even car manufacturers are starting on it.
Good idea.
We dont have a TV but have Prime for the postage and I watch the odd thing commuting, on the iPad.
Qobuz is great IMHO - I’ve subscribed for more than 10 years. If I really like something I buy it on Vinyl as well, but Vinyl collection is much smaller (250). My ripped CD collection has remained frozen in time as I don’t add to it.
Yup. Hardware in your car you paid for outright but if you want the heated seat warmers in your Merc to work, you’ll have to pay monthly anyway. Bonkers. They just turn them off remotely. My father in law’s Lexus is the same. He paid for it in cash. But half the features are dead because he won’t pay to keep them activated.
I hate subscriptions. The argument that it saves you money is an outright lie and only true in edge cases. Companies did not band together and say, “let’s devise a new payment model that makes us less money.” They have a model that saves money for 5% of customers which are the ones they cite to make their bogus “it saves you money” case, while bleeding the other 95% dry.
Sadly they’ve got most of us by the proverbial balls. Stopping all subscriptions generally means unplugging from the world. As appealing as that seems in my head, I know it’s not a feasible way to exist.
I liked subscriptions early on as a way to avoid advertising which, as time goes on, is becoming increasingly intrusive. Anyone watching F1 or ice hockey lately will agree. But netflix and advertising just brings us back to cable tv.
@Jamiewednesday I think most of the content on the subscription services has gone down hill recently. Just look at Disney and the overload of Marvel and Star Wars series that are subpar.
Everyone wants excessive series now to keep people on there platform.
My monthly fees are for mobile phone and Tidal and that’s it. Never had any reason to subscribe Netflix or anything similar. I was tempted when Let it Be series was announced but managed to resist.
