I’ve been too poor this whole time, so the hat is firmly attached.
I’ve been aware long enough of big gaps in the libraries of streaming services that there was never a reason to give it up.
It took until fucking March of this fucking year for Spotify to have any old De La Soul to stream. Good thing I’ve had a high quality rip of their early discography for fifteen fucking years. Otherwise I would have been shit outta luck on listening to them.
I couldn’t stream a killer album from fucking 1989 in 2022. There continue to be massive gaps in their libraries due to licensing issues and people who just don’t want to get underpaid by Spotify.
At least the De La Soul situation was understandable. Imagine the amount of time it must have taken to track down and relicense every sample.
The fact that visual collage can exist so easily, and yet audio collage is facing an uphill battle, some 40 years later, feels like a big indicator that copyright law in the US still needs a massive overhaul
I’ve been too cheap this whole time.
My man
Me too, but for some damn reason, it seems to cost more per month, overall, than a couple subscriptions.
But I will say, I love my setup…
Also you actually own the files not rent them, which I think is worth the price.
Way too accurate. Netflix, when it was the sole main provider, was super good. Then the other companies realised the big bucks they could get from streaming/peddling their own shit.
Thanks to this meme, I killed my netflix account. Nicotine is fine :D
It sucks when competition spoils a market
The whole idea that competition is good is a total libertarian lie. Cooperation leads to the best results. It’s just impossible under capitalism.
It is good, if the competing products/services are interchangeable and they need to compete on factors such as price, convenience, or reliability. For example, competing grocery stores, all of which offer by and large the same products. Or competing mechanics, all of which can perform service on your car.
Streaming services don’t do this. They have carved up the market and “compete” by making you choose which products you want more.
Imagine two grocery stores, one of which had all the ice cream, and the other had all the chocolate, and neither could carry things that the other stocked. That is what streaming services are doing.
Modern copyright law is essentially a state sanctioned monopoly.
Rights holders should be forced to license the content to anyone that wishes to distribute it. As it stands now, they can lock it in a vault for generations if they wanted.
As it stands now, they can lock it in a vault for generations if they wanted.
Like Disney used to?
You mean like Disney still does… they just purged 500 million dollars worth of content from Disney plus and there is no other legel way to view most of that content now untill Disney decides to wheel it back out again (content that got a physical release is obviously still available)
no other legel way to view
Case law states that if media is no longer available, it’s consumption is considered preservation and is thus completely legal. Nobody can argue lost profits for something that literally isn’t even on the market. Fun fact: this is the reason why Nintendo releases their old games on the E shop for way more than what they’re worth. Once it’s up there they get to do takedown requests of every ROM on the internet.
I was not aware they’re back to vaulting things
Competition on price sounds nice because it prevents excessive prices, but it’s also a root cause of poverty and environmental abuse. Cooperating is much better.
Thank you for giving the much warranted economics lesson.
Pretty sure I read they’re all losing money hand over fist, which is why they’re implementing ads and jacking up prices. Exception being Netflix.
Are ya ready, kids?!?
aye aye captain!
Oooooooh!
Who lives in pineapple under the sea?
Jeff
Can confirm.
Who pirates shows and hate netflix?
I subscribe to a bunch of services but still pirate all the shows because it’s nicer to have them all in one place
I have nutflex but still ended up downloading ld&R because they would not stop fucking up the episode order or playing no more than one at a time before rotating back to a reshuffled episode menu and i JUST WANTED TO WATCH THE FUCKING SHOW
I have nutflex
You should get that checked out.
Why do you subscribe then?
Probably for the convenience of partners/children.
Lots of people who aren’t super deep into computer nerdy shit get outright confused when faced with options they’ve never heard of like “Plex.” Sometimes it’s just more convenient to respect your partner and keep Netflix because it makes sense to them.
Plex doesn’t have easy-to-use parental control options and a lot of parents who might have the time to set up a Plex server for themselves may not have the time to muddle through the parental control options than just accepting that most streaming services have a kid-friendly section already set up and easy to access. Plex’s matching algorithm isn’t perfect, and opening it to your kids means you’ve got to make sure the matching is perfect. I’ve definitely had adult shows be recognized by the matching algorithm as children’s shows. If you don’t catch that, your kid can end up watching something you’d rather them not. It’s just a lot more work to manage your Plex parental controls than just using the off the shelf setup from the streaming services.
Neither of these apply to me, but I know folks who have Plex plus subscribed services for these reasons.
Plex actually has better parental controls than Netflix. You can even limit people to specific libraries so just put all the kid stuff in one and you’re good to go.
Really it’s that having everything in one place is more convenient.
I agree, but better /= easier to use for a lot of folks. For folks like us its a piece of piss, sure, but not everyone sadly.
Plus, like I pointed out, it means you have to be a lot more vigilant about making sure matches are correct. Plex makes mistakes.
Agreed. Sometimes I’ll get a text saying ‘the plex thing wont load’ and it doesn’t really make sense to them when I say ‘yeah, I took my computer today’
‘yeah, I took my computer today’
Kinda a dick move, eh?
I’m sorry I needed it for school?
I did warn anyone who had access that it wasn’t a 24/7 guarantee.
This is why you gotta pay your server admin.
They came free with a bunch of other things so I subscribe until they start charging me, and then they’re like “oh no don’t go here’s a free year” and I’m like “okay.” I’d steal it anyway but at least this way it’s a little ethical.
It’s an unpopular take here I would guess, but because they have the money to do it, and it’s the right thing to do.
The unfortunate thing is the actual actors/writers/producers aren’t getting paid because they’re paid per stream that Disney or whatever won’t count because it’s pirated.
Say the line, Gabe!
To the grand line!!!
We Are!
The eyes in this fucking strip have haunted me for years.
I thought that was hair. I still see it mostly as hair. My brain can only see it as eyes for a fraction of a second at a time.
This, it would be less deep in the uncanny valley without eyes at all.
On second though, it doesn’t seem like a big improvement. Reminds me a bit of limbfeeders without limbs.
Especially with Netflix increasing their prices again here in a couple months…
Ah enshittification, making me not want to pay for your shitty services every god damn time.
Don’t forget the price increase and drop in quality.
The price increase I can deal with. The drop in quality and getting rid of password sharing (after they actively endorsed it) is why they lost me.
Once this happens to the music industry, we need to make sure the kids are all prepared to open Netscape Navigator, go to AltaVista and search for “Napster”. They’ll thank us later.
As someone who watches a lot of non-English stuff, I could never put the hat down.
Yeah, I used to turn to such activities because it was cheaper, now I do it because it’s simpler/easier.
Haha I’m poor
Where $currentYear?
Ooook.
