Streaming prices are out of hand. What are cheaper alternatives?
Piracy.
Your public library.
Consume less media in general.
Buy stuff once (eg: DVDs, drm free music)
Just steal everything. The powers that be rob you blind every day in a death by a thousand cuts kinda way.
They don’t give a fuck about you, don’t pay them any courtesies in return.
Yarr!
Harr
🏴☠️
Fiddle dee dee
Do what you want, 'cause a Pirate is Free!
👉 Your local public library. You can borrow movies and books. Return them so someone else can use them too. Not run afoul of the law. Libraries are great!
Your library probably even has digital access to thousands of movies, books, and songs, so you don’t even have to leave the house!
That’s definitely true for books. I have an ereader and I often use my library account to add books on loan to the reader over the Internet. I don’t think there’s video available like that, but they do have physical media like CDs, DVDs, and BluRays.
Kanopy (video only) and Hoopla (multimedia) are two papers widely used in Canada and the US. There are other and international providers, but I don’t remember them off the top of my head.
Ofcourse, they don’t have the same content as the big streaming companies, licenses and all, but there’s plenty to be enjoyed if you’re not keeping up with the latest streaming shows anyway. (I watch TV shows on the broadcaster website the day after they air on TV.)
Some do have streaming services. In Germany there is filmfriend.de for movies and the NAXOS Music Library. For big productions and everything else than classical music they still loan physical media, but it’s a good start.
Alternatively:
Give your former Netflix and Spotify subscription fees to the Internet Archive.
They are essentially a gigantic, global, public library.
Take what you can. Give nothing back!
But all jokes aside, do give back by seeding your torrents. Some stuff is hard to get complete copies because of leechers.
I never stopped. Welcome back, the waters fine.
fmhy.net is a constantly updated directory of streaming piracy sites. Make sure you have an ad blocker and enjoy any show from any service instantly with no sign up.
Beat me to it, love fmhy
How is this a surprise to anyone? They came to replace cable.
No, you still don’t get it.
THEY CAME TO REPLACE CABLE.
At this point I’d think a good number of folks either don’t remember or simply never experienced cable/satellite TV.
Hard to compare against something you’ve never experienced.
a basic cable package in my city costs $100. A high end one costs $200.
Netflix basic is 8 bucks, netflix premium is 25.
For now. And that’s Netflix only. Many many users have multiple subs.
That’s exactly my point. Cable didn’t start off costing $100-$200. In the beginning it was a few bucks as an ad-free alternative to antenna TV. Then they raised prices, just a little at a time, over many years, as well as introduced ads. Sound familiar?
I promise you, some day streaming will cost $100-$200, too. And people will pay it, just like your grandparents do today.
I say again: streaming is here to REPLACE cable. You’re living in the golden age of low-cost entertainment and you don’t even know it.
Plus the internet connection, which I get it, it’s currently a necessity, but at the time of cable TV, it didn’t represent an expense.
Here I was giving them training wheels, and you said, “Nah, here’s how you take a hairpin turn with a stick shift.” 😅
Don’t make me tell them about them about the *arrs, usenet and jellyfin. Minds will be blown :)
The *arrs + JF + sabnzdb + torrents = complete and total replacement.
That exact stack has been the ruin of many a poor boy.
Just a hop, step and a leap from there to Proxmox and complete ungovernablity (host ALL your own replacements - Immich, Syncthing, Lemmy instance, Pi Hole, Paperless, Calibre, Navidrome…all the black magics)
DANGER. HERE THERE BE DRAGONS. (Expensive ones)
Good sir, Tim Curry would greet you as a member of Flint’s own crew.
yo ho, all hands, hoist the colors high
heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die
🏴☠️
This. This has always been the better alternative and this always will be the better alternative!
And piracy is still free, just as it has been my whole life.
Spotify specific:
Use the free service to listen to new stuff in order to find groups you like. For the sub cost you can buy an album per month and have it forever. I work in areas that don’t have great data connections, so having a local copy keeps the jams going without interruption or ads.
Soma.fm and radio.garden are two streaming music service replacers. I have not used Soma, but Radio Garden is interesting because it gives you a map of every single participating radio station on the planet and lets you just scroll around the entire globe and pick a radio station.
You deserve all the upvotes today, but I can only give you one.
Thank you
I also recommend Qobuz. They’re European and have high quality streaming + the option to buy and album and download it.
If you don’t mind the less legal way, you can easily use a program like streamrip and download whatever you want from the service.
And if you don’t have the money to spend, they have a trial for a month. Just rip whatever you need and have a nice offline collection. And if you need more, you can just make a start trial with a disposable e-mail.
There’s also lucida.to if you don’t want to be bothered with any of that.
Jump aboard, matey! The seas are always open and full of joyous plunder.
I know this isn’t the point, but has Spotify ever been good, as in a well designed UI? I feel like every time I’ve used it, there’s been some bizarre design choice.
The sea awaits you.
Streaming is not frugal by definition since you don’t own anything.
- Buy from Bandcamp, own and stream forever for a cheap price
- Torrent movies
- Torrent or Soulseek music
- Listen to podcasts, there are billions of those, it will last forever
- Free music on SomaFM, ByteFM, Radio Paradise, Shoutcast, etc.
- YouTube client like NewPipe if you have Android to listen to music
Buy from Bandcamp, own and stream forever for a cheap price
It’s also important to emphasize that artists make more from a Bandcamp purchase than if you had just streamed a few times on Shitify.
You would need to listen to a song 400+ times on Spotify to earn the artist $1. Or you could throw them a buck on Bandcamp Friday and get to download it forever. Plus the artist gets paid immediately from the Bandcamp purchase instead of quarterly streaming royalties.
Then my favourite artist has earned more from me streaming her music on tidal than if I’d bought her entire discography.
Good!
Care to share the artist name?
Eivør, there’s one person on tidal who listened to her more than me. I can only assume it’s a Faroese coma patient who’s relatives have put her on repeat in the hospital room in the hopes they’ll be brought back stranger things style.
Turns out I know of her from seeing a short of her (or a fan?) belting the intro to Enn in a parking garage. Never knew the artist name til now, but I never forgot that melody. Thanks for reintroducing me!
Soulseek is love, Soulseek is life.
