Investors are the scum of the earth and nobody can convince me otherwise.
Thank god I only use Spotify for discovery then buy downloads of music for those that I can.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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I never again want to read the phrase "investor pressure". I'll pay the buck, but fuck shareholders.
Oof, figures. I guess everybody is going to jump on this train. Like they have the mentality of my HS teachers... It's not that much... Sure 8 other teachers also assigned me "not that much", and now it's very much much. A double positively you're getting fucked.
Well, assuming other inflation is pushing prices higher, you'll see it with anything trying to keep "real income" constant. That said, I've never seen the point of using spotify at all so...
No doubt. What gets me is something another person pointed out. You can get almost any premium streaming service for around that price that offers a lot more content than a single music streaming service.
They'll probably be the next to jack up their prices though.
I pay a lot for youtube ad free, but at least I get more than just music with that. For a little more than what I'm paying for that you could subscribe to more than a few movie streaming services.
I'm paying $20/month for Disney+/Hulu/ESPN ad free for my entire family. I'm paying about that for youtube family plan.
My yearly wage increase sure as shit isn't coming close to matching inflation, but that won't stop companies from extracting more and more money from me while paying their employees less because "the state of the economy"... And then they make as much or more while we make less, and pay more.
Well, I think they do risk costing too much. I felt this with the recent Netflix changes. Spotify at least (to my understanding) has far closer to "all music" than any streaming service has "all shows / movies" so there's that too, you probably should compare to several streaming services.
But you're right - at a certain price people just have to go without. At a lower price people might still choose to go without. I don't know where those prices are for these services. The closest I've ever come is Satallite Radio. I was fine paying ~$100 a year when I drove every day. But they keep trying to charge like $260 if I don't watch it at renewal. I could call and get them down to about half, so it had crept up to $120 or so. But now I don't drive much with WFH. So even $120 wasn't worth it. For my once a month or so long trip, I have a smartphone that I can stream, preload with audio, and do podcasts from. So I cancelled. Eventually I got a letter "please come back" - we'll give you a year for $60. Well, I'm assuming they're not losing money on this - it would be kind of stupid to IMO, so it means they could probably offer it for $60ish a year but try and get 4 times that amount if you don't pay attention. IDK, I never would have wasted their reps time yearly or cancelled if it was just $60 a year. But in the aggregate I bet the people who just don't pay attention make them more money than the cost of dealing with someone like me.
What was my point? Oh yea - it's not just "can I afford this", but do I think it gives me $x in value? I might suggest keeping your eyes open for alternate sources or alternate entertainment and you might save a lot of money.
I grew up poor(ish), have been close to homelessness in my life more than once. So I'm not stranger to going without. Fortunately for me I can afford price hikes like this without even taking notice. I feel I am privileged. It doesn't make me any less angry though. I don't mind the price hikes on services due to inflation, but those same companies will lay you off and refuse pay raises. Last company I worked for told me I was lucky to get anything at all. But they increased their prices, didn't suffer a single loss, and they still used it as an excuse to fuck their employees, and their customers. At the end of the day they made more because of it, not less. I don't care about pay raises for myself, but the people under me absolutely deserve more.
I feel you, dude.
I am lucky to work for a place that takes really good care of me, so a dollar a month is basically nothing, but I still save and invest every dollar I can because in America, your life can go from privileged to impoverished in the blink of an eye if you don't have a backup plan.
who the fuck is still paying for netflix/youtube/spotify/etc
Probably no one, as you can pirate anything Netflix produces, use Freetube or Brave to watch youtube ad-free, and spotify is free with ads.
I would sooner get a tattoo of Ronald Reagan on my ball sack than listen to music with ads. I'm not a barbarian.
No fucking way I'm ever listening to music with ads...
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