• Polar
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    478 months ago

    I don’t hate subscription based services if they’re priced fairly and make sense.

    Paying monthly for a service that then starts giving you less, adds more premium plans, introduces ads, etc. is garbage.

    Paying for a game, then having to pay a monthly fee to play (WoW, for example), is garbage.

    Paying for software, but then having to pay monthly to use the software, is garbage.

    Paying for software, but then having to pay monthly to be allowed to contact support (Blue Iris), is garbage.

    But paying for things like Spotify, where you get access to pretty much all songs as they release, have no limit on how much you listen to, and it has a fair student pricing or family pricing, that’s fine. Way better than paying per song.

    I mean shit, if I paid for every song I have in my library on Spotify, I’d owe $1430. My Spotify is $17 per month, spit between 4 people, so I pay $4.25. I can either pay for every song in my library and not add any more, or pay for Spotify for 28 years and continue growing my library…

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      78 months ago

      WoW and other MMOs are not just games with slapped on subscription costs. It is a very specific subtype of games which have much higher maintenance cost than an arena shooter. There is a reason these games get shutdown when certain financial thresholds get passed beyond let’s do something more profitable.

    • @[email protected]
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      68 months ago

      Honestly, this.

      The economics of the world are such that people need to be paid for the content they produce. Having a direct relationship between me as the consumer and them as the producer is the way we don’t get shit like all of the ad-based spyware that surrounds shit like Facebook. It won’t completely prevent it, but it gives a good business plan for it not to happen.

      I’d vastly prefer something that didn’t require some megacorp as evil as Amazon. But… this could actually make as much sense as is possible with our current economic system.

    • @[email protected]
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      38 months ago

      Nah, fuck subscriptions. If I can’t buy it once and own it, then it’s a scam on consumers. Change my view.

      • Polar
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        78 months ago

        I did. Look at my Spotify example. It’s literally more expensive to own the songs than to pay for Spotify.

        Unless you only want like 30 songs.

          • Polar
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            18 months ago

            Still cheaper, though.

            I’d rather have access to pretty much every song on demand for $4 per month and not own it, than pay per song.

            I pay $4.25 per month for Spotify. That’s $51 per year. I have access to pretty much every song, or I could buy 39 songs to own instead.

            I save more than 39 songs per month. Financially it makes no sense to buy them. Especially if you consider I get bored of some songs, and never listen to them again.

            • @[email protected]
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              38 months ago

              The way I look at it, is I don’t pay to listen to the music, I pay for the convenience.

              Most music I listen to is on YouTube, where if I wanted to, I could just download it and “own” the song for free. However, in the interest of saving time, letting Spotify create playlists based on what I listen to, I just pay a monthly fee. Not to mention that I can share my playlists on multiple devices, whereas if I download music, I can’t.

              I also have a family plan with all spots filled up, so that’s 6 people listening to all their music for $20/mo CAD. Far superior to buying an album or individual songs.