With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
I cancelled Netflix the day they blocked my elderly parents from accessing my account.
I was paying for 4 streams, it shouldn't matter 1 stream was at my parents house, they were still getting their money.
Don't worry Netflix, we still get to enjoy your content via torrents and my parents still get a convenient streaming app full media via Plex, so you can eat shit Netflix!
200$ / month is insane, wow. From what I can tell, lots of people seem to start pirating way more. It looks like it’s common to be subbed to your favorite streaming service and put the rest on Plex.
I cancelled my Netflix account. I keep Disney Plus around for my stepkid, and Prime Video because it comes with Prime, although I'll probably cancel that soon too. I'm keeping Funimation.
Streaming is becoming worse than cable. At least if I got cable (which I won't) I could PVR shit and skip the ads. The idea of paying a monthly fee to get advertised at anyway is nauseating.
Cancelled Prime after about a month because fuck ads in a paid service. Other than that I still have all of them*, though considering cancelling Netflix and Disney+.
* I'm in Europe, so "all of them" means like 5 services, not the 50,000 US folks seem to have.
At this point its easier to find new movies through pirating platforms. So many different streaming services and they only allow searching through their own platform, and obviously push all their newest and shittiest shows. I just go to a neutral platform that has everything and no agenda and find great movies in a matter of minutes.
When Netflix was the only service that mattered, i paid for the convenience. As soon as i had to check 3 places for something I wanted, i cancelled and started pirating again
Already did ages ago, no value to me. I farm and do many other things, mostly outdoors. I watch TV and movies during snowstorms or heat waves. Often I'll be gaming, programming, designing systems, soldering etc. instead when stuck inside.
As such I don't need a steady stream of entertainment and I can wait for everyone else to point out the exceptional content. And once I know what I'm looking for it's ⛵☠️ time
Netflix was the only one I ever really had, since the aughts. I am using Jellyfin now 🏴☠️ There are easier platforms, though, like popcorn time.
A good VPN is a much better investment than some random streaming platform that maybe has 1 or 3 shows I actually care about watching.
Nothing left. It's not even out of protest or anything, I'm just greedy. Netflix was ok when it was 7$ and had a lot of stuff but not anymore. I just pirate everything, it's centralised, I can watch it how I want. And when my Internet went down a few weeks ago I could still watch shit since it's self hosted.
Edit: Forgot I still have Amazon prime for delivery but I don't really use prime video. Oh and Spotify for discovering new music and creating "together" playlists with friends. This one I would only replace with another platform.
I'd been going halfsies with my best friend for years on Netflix. Now, instead of going halfsies, we both go nonesies and Netflix eats crow.
My wife and I currently use HBO, Disney, and prime, but prime is just a bonus we don't care about that comes with the free shipping, and her parents pay for Disney and we have one profile for us. I care most about HBO, but significantly less now than when The Last of Us was fresh. I'm trying some of the big shows and they're pretty good, but if money were tight I wouldn't hesitate to cut it. Millennials and Gen Z just don't worship TV like older generations do. I personally love movies, but I'll use my library card or sail the seas before I bend knee to ridiculous price hikes.
On the off chance that some streaming executive is in here trying to see where the line is, it's already been crossed for many. Your shit needs to be cheap, intuitive, and reliable, all while offering a library that people give a shit about. People are paying for convenience. Pirating isn't convenient. Going to the library isn't convenient. Buying what we wanna see and risking owning something we don't like isn't convenient. And your shit no longer being cheap, no longer being intuitive, or no longer being reliable ceases to feel convenient. And your library that you offer is the lions share of what matters to most people because your competitors probably have a platform that's largely intuitive and reliable. You need to beat them on price or on content, and you'll be the next Steve Jobs if you can consistently beat them on both. But you need to do that before pirating becomes good enough at reliability and with an intuitive UI and makes it so easy to get good content that your bubble fucking bursts. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
I quit them a long time ago. Once we got to the point where I had to think about which service a show was on, I was done and cancelled Netflix. I guess I technically have Prime Video, but I almost never use it. Since then the services have only gotten worse.
The only streaming service I've kept and don't mind paying for is Spotify since you can still get just about everything in one place.
My wife and I decided we'll only have one streaming service at a time. Currently it's Disney Plus. We recently stopped Disney Plus in favor of Netflix due to the One Piece live action series. After it was done, we stopped Netflix and took Disney Plus again.
We don't have that much time to watch stuff anyway, so we figured we might be focusing on just a single library.
I rotate one subscription at a time and binge everything I want to watch and then cancel. Only subscription I have full time is Paramount+ because of their soccer.
i never had them, i just pirate everything. frankly it's less hassle most of the time, i just download what i wanna watch to my laptop and plug it into the tv, saves me the headache of using their apps too. Also found out recently that there's a modded version of spotify for android that gives the premium features without a subscription and have been really enjoying that.
I'm keeping Spotify because I already split a family account (£18.99 per month I think) between 6 people. I pay for a few other subscription services like something for D&D and my phone bill but they are things that I feel I require.
I haven't paid for any streaming, gaming or other services for at least a year or two. As soon as I started sailing the high seas for specific content not on the big services, I realised that it's so little extra work for infinite free content.
Funnily enough, my partner and I have been considering picking up a £10 Photoshop subscription that's currently about, just because she uses an up to date Photoshop at work and swapping between the 2023 and 2020 versions is a small pain.
When the sharing crackdown on Netflix was announced I decided to cancel it and set up a recurring donation in the same amount to a charity I believe in. It felt pretty great. I'm about to cancel Prime, but I need to switch credit cards, which is kind of a pain. Prime isn't really worth it to me anymore. Otherwise I only pay for the ones that have active shows I'm watching. Haven't sailed the high seas in decades, and probably won't start. Missing TV has been great for my hobby productivity 😆
I really want to cancel Youtube, and I watch a LOT of it. But Lemmy users have got me on that NewPipe / Piped / Invidious train. So... Maybe soon I will be able to watch youtube for free and without ads on all of my devices.
I also have local TV for the Sunday news, and Netflix for like one show a month. So much for a la carte, the value for my money has gone down the drain compared to live TV and those early cord cutting years.
I almost never watch stuff outside of YouTube and the like. If I really did wanted to watch something, its likely an older show that I can just torrent.
I've not had any subscriptions for 3 years now. Turning point for me was when I found it easier to sail the high seas rather than to figure out which service the show I had already paid for was on.
Not only have I cancelled them almost a decade ago - I don't even watch series or movies anymore, and barely listen to music outside of the radio. I'm disgusted with the many crimes committed by Big Media and want to have as little as possible to do with it.
I'm cancelling mine because my job lied and never gave me a raise and my other debts are also piling up. Pirating and eating rice for the next few months maybe longer.
When I start a free trial I immediately set a reminder in Google calendar.
And when I am looking for a specific movie I buy it used online. That way I have all my favorite movies on my NAS and can cancel my subscriptions when there is nothing especially interesting.
If the ads come to Prime, then I might cancel that. It’s already our least watched service and it’s been getting a free pass because of the next day delivery.
I don’t want to watch ads, I don’t want to pay an extra £30 per year to not see ads and I don’t need next day delivery often enough to keep it for that.
I got tired of all this B's long time ago and just resorted to torrenting. I missed the series management and resume feature so I coded a app to do it.
Already did earlier this month, specifically because of password issues. Canceled everything except our family music plan. Stremio with debrid works just fine for us
My husband and I canceled them all 3 days ago. We had Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Max, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, and Disney+. We're moving back to Europe in November, so they all had to go. But even if we were to stay in the US, I'd probably just keep Prime, so I could just rent what I wanted to see and nothing else. Instead, I've stocked up with a few classic sci-fi Blu-rays to take with us in Europe, and we will have 2 US-coded BD players to keep us playing them until old age.
I've reduced as much as I can. I really just keep Spotify for entertainment. I watch YouTube with my AdBlock most of the time. Haven't been kicked off of my parent's Netflix yet but I barely use it in the first place unless a popular show drops. The rest I just pirate.
For the main streaming services, I had Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+.
I cancelled Netflix back when they announced a price hike in early 2021? I'd been a customer since 2006.
Disney+ I cancelled a few months ago, but the plan goes through November, so we still have it technically. Not planning to renew.
Prime will get renewed, but I don't subscribe to it specifically for streaming, it's just included in the package.
For non-traditional streaming services, I still have a number of subscriptions on Twitch and with Subtember, I've gotten a bunch of 6 month subs to my favorite creators. Also given out gift subs to my favorite creators.
I also subscribe to Dropout and while my subscription is expiring in the next few months, I'll certainly renew it for another year when I have time to binge Dimension 20 again.
I really don't have any interest in streaming services that give traditional options anymore. Even before I cancelled Netflix, I could look in my recent connection history where it shows the five most recent logins and see timestamps going back 2+ years. I transitioned away from that kind of content a long time ago.
Old Tom here has a Plex server connected to sonarr, radarr, my torrent client, etc. This allows me to more or less search for something I want to watch and with a button click have it downloaded anywhere from a few minutes and up depending on the title's popularity. Ultimately it's actually a better experience than any streaming service.
I just have Spotify and, if it counts, YT Premium. Spotify is on the family plan where my dad has his own account tied to mine, and he can just pull up basically any music he feels like listening to instead of asking me to find it for him.
As for YT, I'm just too lazy to set up blocking the ads on my TV.
I cancelled all of my streaming subscriptions years ago to save money. I figured I'd subscribe again when there was anything I wanted to watch that I couldn't find and it turns out there wasn't really anything I wanted to watch.
We are down to Netflix in my household. That was from having prime, crave and Disney at one point. Even Netflix is close to getting the chop, but my wife enjoys it enough. That said, I'm an audiophile and listen to more Spotify and traditional radio (I know I'm a loser, listening to a.m. talk radio and public broadcasting). I just rather listen to stuff while also getting stuff done than sitting on a couch these days.
I've noticed all my British shows have gone missing over the last couple years from the usual torrent sites. I'm kind of surprised because (I'm going to get my head bitten off for this take) the BBC is making better content than anything America has put out in the last few years.
Still on prime because I save more than I spend using it.
I have prime until they bring in ads, and I'm using Apple TV+ but I have near enough a year of free trials through a credit card, buying an LG TV and my phone network provider. I use my cousin's Disney+, my partner pays for crunchy roll but I don't know how much that gets used.
Apple TV+ is definitely worth it, even paying the subscription. I use Amazon enough that the free delivery is sort of worth it, but I can usually get things cheaper elsewhere now.
I use Plex and sail the seven seas for everything I currently can't get on one of the services available to me, and I expect to go more this way in future as streaming services start taking the piss
I had someone recently canceled everything except for Amazon prime since I am still shop there but I don't pay for any other services other than my seedbox and emby
Canceled Netflix because they finally kicked my friends off, might get it again for 1 month at a time, here and there.
I get Disney for a few months for my brother's bday, we catch up on whatever came out in the past year. My mom shares her Peacock with me. I got a year sub to Dropout, and share it with 2-3 friends. We stay subbed to Hulu and HBO pretty much all the time, and we get Paramount a couple months a year. We have Prime, but I'm probably going to cancel it soon.
I cancelled netflix cause i was barely watching and the only reason i kept it was because we were 3 friends sharing it. We pay for 4 screens so we expect that to keep working which it didn't. So we cancelled cause we spoke about it and nobody really watched a lot.
In the end unfortunately for Netflix it is worth it, just look at their stock which is going up again, which means more people bought the extra subscription rather than cancelling.
Sad times but if the majority of people don't go against enshittification they will keep squeezing as much money out of everyone as long as it is profitable
Cancelled Netflix today, Hulu comes with my internet plan so I guess that stays. Might keep prime since I have an Amazon credits card but that’s really not worth it anymore. Disney plus probably getting cancelled after Ahsoka ends
I have only Spotify and Youtube Premium. Spotify because YTMusic sucks (and I have two other family members on it) and Youtube because I spend more than 12 hours/day streaming Youtube. Both of those are super justified.
Rest is high seas with Jellyfin, with some exceptions. Right now I'm on a 3Euro Prime Video tier, which I will cancel after Star Trek Lower Decks is over.
I've never subscribed to more than two - Netflix and Prime. Whenever exclusive stuff is somewhere else, I get it on Bluray or sth and add it to my Jellyfin. Since the first two get shittier every day, I'm thinking about cancelling them, but haven't done yet
Only ever had two services, Netflix and Hulu. It worked out that a VPN's yearly subscription was cheaper than the base plan of Netflix so I just canceled that and what I can't find on Hulu.
The only time I got a streaming service for Netflix to watch Waltuh and Friends. Never got it again. My family has prime for Amazon so Amazon Prime Video is complimentary and worth it because it's very cheap in India.
Built a small NAS for contingency since they remove shit but with a family and wanting to support the artists, it's hard to pull the plug. I know they only get fractions off a penny.. give me a better idea.
I dont watch too many series/movies. Never payed for streaming, planning on never doing so because of all that bullshit. I prefer my media on stamped and metallized plastic discs that work offline, or plain DRM-free video/audio files on my HDD.
I cancelled Netflix a few months ago and that was my only subscription out of the main ones (I currently have a subscription to Nextup which is a comedy streaming platform but that's it). I haven't missed it much as there's not been anything on there that I've been keen to watch. If there ever is I'm sure I can find another way to watch it. I find I am using my free channel streaming apps more though (BBC iPlayer/Channel4, etc).
It's pisseasy to download the highest quality movies imaginable at any point in time, anywhere, totally free of charge. Makes no sense to ever even think about paying for any of the "streaming services".
I’ve been cutting down and only keep the ones I actually watch. I had a constant Netflix subscription since 2014 but a month ago I cancelled it. Will resubscribe temporary once enough shows pile up that I’m interested in (which might take a while).
Since Futurama is done, I’ll probably cancel Disney now.
Youtube Premium is the one I will keep for longer because I watch it all the time and I’m splitting the costs with family.
We have a budget for streaming services. ATM Netflix, HBO max and Showtime. About 20€ a month. Me and my wife like a good classic flick every now and then, so the two latter stay. The kids eat up crap Netflix series like candy. Everytime they ask to get prime or Disney they have the choice to give up Netflix to change.. but they don't.
If ads come, or the price goes up too much will consider canceling. Until then, it suits our wants.
Yes, the lionsgate+ and paramount+ existing was the tipping point for me. I paid for Netflix when it had good stuff. I still try to watch on official platforms where its available but sometimes it's literally impossible to get
I already canceled Netflix. They rarely have anything good anymore. If there's something that I want to watch, I'll get it for a month and then cancel it.
Yes, I cancelled Netflix and Max this month. I'll probably cancel Paramount+ once I'm done rewatching Star Trek. That will leave me with Hulu with ads and I only have it because it's part of my Spotify subscription.
Cancelled netflix when they started the restrictions and switched to Disney+, have prime as well but don't use the movie stuff much, so I won't upgrade to the add free version.
Otherwise Spotify and Xbox gamepass. Spotify is a family shared account that makes it much cheaper and gamepass is such a money saver for me, cause I stopped buying games I couldn't play (motion sickness) or didn't like in the end.
Don't know how, but my shared Netflix account is still working without issues. That said, once it stops working, I probably won't subscribe again any time soon. I'm currently only using it to watch TNG a couple times a week anyway. I also have Spotify, found no reason to cancel that so far.
I have never got into Netflix, or any other subscription services. KissAnime, and pirating is what I use to watch shows, even then I don't watch much shows
We cancelled Netflix recently. With the quality ever going down there was nothing new left to watch and just rewatching old series out of habit can be replaced with browsing random youtube videos or so. And those end up often having some curiosity or educational value.
Eventually Netflix will kick me off the family account but there's no way I'm paying for that garbage. I might pay for Hulu as they have a much better selection for my tastes.
I have tidal for music and I really want to drop it since their price hike. The only thing still blocking me is that I don't have a decent way to listen to music in my car without a subscription service. It sucks.
Canceled everything but my Youtube premium. The beauty of streaming, and why it killed piracy for a time imo, was that it made it so easy to access everything there was no need to bother with anything else. I was happy to pay for a media subscription when it was one subscription. I was even happy to do it when it was two, then three. By the fourth, fifth, sixth, so on and so forth forever, I'd had more than enough. They've done away with the ease of access for consumers and made it painfully obnoxious again, so... back to piracy.
I was going to cancel my Max and Peacock account but my niece was still using it. I pay for Nebula, YouTube, and Spotify but I use them enough to feel that it's worth it.
I support the services that have what I'm interested in. I want more It's Always Sunny, so I subscribed to Hulu to watch it. Bonus of finding a couple other shows that made it worth it. I want more Star Wars and Marvel content (and my parents use it), so I pay for D+ yearly, and the same for formerly HBO where I want DC content.
That doesn't mean I don't keep these shows for myself as well, because at any given time something will happen or a server will be down or the internet will have an issue and I want to watch what I've rightfully paid for.
However with the recent direction of HBO I may cancel when the year lapses. It's the struggle between Zaslav and Gunn there lol
We'll be keeping Spotify, and Prime AFAIK hasn't announced anything crazy so that will stay as well. We'll most likely - if we get the "don't share accounts" screen - will subscribe to Disney+ as we enjoy the Star Wars content and regularly watch movies using this together (Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar are our go tos). Netflix may be on the chopping block but my wife enjoys it more than I do so we'll have to see.
We don't subscribe to anything else, partly because the content isn't appealing and partly because - as Canadians - they don't even have it up here anyway!
I cancelled Netflix about 8 months ago after realising that my wife and I weren’t enjoying it and my kids were just watching the same 2-3 shows on repeat. Cancelled Netflix and bought the shows my kids like via AppleTV.
I stopped subscribing in my own country and started subbing in other countries to take advantage of regional pricing. Now for the cost of less than a month of Crunchyroll in my country, I'm getting a full year. For Netflix, what would normally cost a month in my country, I get about 3 months worth of service.
I get a lot of value out of Netflix, I watch tons of their shows every month.
I use Prime quite a bit also obviously for Amazon shopping and try to watch Prime Video a few times each month, and now they've expanded the music I'll try that too.
I will be canceling Disney and just pirate what I want to see, which isn't much, literally just one show.
E: I canceled Spotify ages ago and use their free version but for my favorite bands I downloaded their MP3 discographies. I buy their music on CD because it pays them better than streaming their songs thousands of times, plus I buy merch and go to the concerts so I'm OK with that.
E2: someone mentioned Patreon, I cancelled most of those as well because my gaming group broke up and all my patreons are for gaming 3D files. I have years worth of stuff to print and will never reach the end.
Only service I have is prime video, but its because I order frequently from Amazon. I use YouTube primarily and only my Plex server on movie nights with family
The only subscription that I have left is Spotify. I used to have Netflix as well before the explosion of streaming services started, when it made sense because it was convenient to have immediate access to almost all content. Now that every show is in a different service, I decided to go back to torrents with Stremio.
All I have is Spotify and Netflix and Netflix is going after next month. The quality is shit and the suggestions are worse. I don't want to big actors in big budget bad movies on Netflix. Give me decent thrillers, dramas and comedies. I'll go to the movies for blockbusters.
I'm trying to get better about canceling services we don't actively watch and only having two at a time. We already have Prime so I don't count it but we have Max and Hulu right now. We swapped Disney+ for Hulu when What We Do In The Shadows released and my wife is an Our Flag Means Death stan so we will probably permanently have Max (but the new season comes out soon anyways).
Cancelled my Netflix account when they announced the password sharing crackdown (even though I wasn't password sharing), and recently cancelled my Spotify family account when they increased the price.
Pretty much just have Spotify+Hulu, YouTube premium (should cancel Spotify maybe but I like seeing what songs get removed from my playlists rather than them just disappearing), Amazon prime, and Disney+. Thinking about cancelling Disney+ soon but I want to see Loki s2 still.
I wish we had HBO+ or Max or whatever the fuck it is now in the UK.
The only legal way to get their stuff is via NowTV, which is fucking dreadful and think 1080p should be behind an extra paywall. Also, they carried on charging me after I cancelled, because apparently fuck me for thinking that a cancel option in an app they made would work.
The error message "this account cannot be used in this location," finally hit my account after I've been subscribed to Netflix for over 10 years. I've cancelled permanently and will be emailing their privacy dept for immediate account deletion as I will never subscribe to them again. I don't need 10 months. I've described some of my experience in another recent comment on an older Netflix crackdown in Australia post. My account was North American however.
Netflix was the only streaming service I kept up consistently month to month. I did fall into the same trap you did after allegedly "cord cutting" several years ago. Too many "Gos" and "Nows" and a "Sling." Stupidity really. I realized my mistake and corrected it then, only subscribing to streaming services when there was a season I wanted to binge and then cancel after a month.
But Netflix was flexible in that I could travel and use it unlike a Hulu or HBO Now etc. It was annoying when movies and series disappeared but there was always something else to watch.
Now I'm done. Companies like Netflix and Reddit (and other social media sites), and even Playstation with their insane Playstation Plus hike, count on and thrive off of the addict mentalities of their customers. Just like McDonald's and credit card companies. Recognizing that allows people to stop feeding these greedy corporations if they have the willpower to do so (some people would rather be addicts and serve as money cows).
Any program I haven't finished watching on Netflix, I have the means to do so without subscription and once that's done, I won't know or be aware of what programming they have because I'm not a subscriber any longer.
Netflix is heading for a death spiral if they aren't already there. Their revenues are dropping. It's just a matter of watching the fall until they hit 0% and then negative. They are intent on this change regardless of if it will destroy the very thing they're trying to maximize. Money. They really have the wrong of it by increasing subscription price and taking away the features that made them attractive as a service to begin with. They've waved subscription numbers around for the ignorant as a smokescreen while they continue to lose money and the subscribers who were paying $16 - $20 versus markets where they sell Netflix subscriptions for as low as $10 or lower.
I'm only on Crunchyroll since other services are through family accounts, I am considering dropping some of my Patreon subs because of belt tightening I might have to do though.
I've been meaning to. It's just that I got my current Netflix subscription as part of a bundle with my ISP. I have to phone them to cancel it. I don't really have the energy to do so.
Though, I'm in the process of being kicked out of my home. If I'm able to find somewhere to go, I'll likely cancel it once I change my address with the ISP.
Other than that. I use YouTube with an adblock on both my PC and FireStick.
So far I've only cancelled Hulu, because they and Disney+ decided to raise rates at the same time. Really dumb move Disney.
My family watches to much to cancel everything, but I have a Plex share and Torrentday and both get a workout.
BTW, will trade a Torrentday invite for an invite to BTN (BroadcasTheNet), FileList, or HDBits.
I just have one or two at any given time. At the moment I just have Disney+ (which over in the UK is more than enough cause we get the hulu/fox stuff) and Amazon because I pay for prime.
When Scott pilgrim comes out, we'll either cancel Disney+ while we get Netflix for that, or just get Netflix for a month without renewal.
I cancelled my Planetside 2 subscription earlier this year after like 7yrs of being a member. But that's the only one so far. I still pay for Eve Online and FFXIV, along with all my other media subscriptions. I have Spotify (+ Hulu for free as some kinda bundle), Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, and Netflix.
The only other one I've considered cancelling is Netflix. But I share my account for free with a co-worker. I know Netflix is supposed to be cracking down on password sharing, but so far, I haven't heard anything from Netflix chiding me. Interestingly, she used Netflix way more than me; I rarely use it, So it almost makes sense for me to cancel it and have her get her own account. But I like having Netflix available for when I do want to watch something. And WTH is $15/mo? If neither of us were using it, I'd be more likely to cancel. When Netflix comes knocking, then maybe I'll cancel it. But for now, it's NBD.
I cancelled my Netflix and Spotify subscriptions long ago after content would get taken down for whatever reason. This reminded me that I'm only renting the content from these services; I don't actually own them.
Fast forward to now, I selfhost a Jellyfin server and pirate all the content I want. Feels good to have total control and ownership over my music and movie collection.
I'm a Criterion early subscriber and am still on their early subscriber yearly pricing. Get gift certificates a few times a year for their physical disk web store.
I knew about the Disney+ price hike and plan to add ads last year.
I was able to get Hulu (with ads) for $1.99/month for 12 months (then $7.99 per month) then add on Disney+ for $2.99/month during last year's Blacks Friday discount. Which was cheaper than just Disney+ by itself with ads.
Not sure what I'll do once I hit my head mark with Hulu.
I've cancelled them all and started sailing the high seas since the beginning of the year. I'm considering picking up Crunchyroll, though. It's just easier to pay for One Piece than pirate it.
Yeah it's insane how expensive everything gets. I'm subscribed to a bunch of streaming services (like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, etc) and sometimes I use them a lot but HBO, for instance, I've only used a few times and it's just sitting there on our smart TV taking up space and draining our bank account. But I got it when there was a really good deal and if I cancel and resubscribe I have to pay the full amount. Then again, I'm probably wasting more money with it now than I would've if I'd just cancelled and then resubscribed when I actually used it. Oops.
But yeah, I'm definitely not going to pay more for those services than I am now, so if the pricing gets even more ridiculous I'm out.
I cancelled Netflix because I kept realizing I hadn't used it since the last time I had my kid. Disney is cheaper and has a huge library, and I keep Prime because I like the shipping and music perks as well.
I still use my family plan for Spotify but Netflix isn't even worth it these days.
There's a bunch of services I feel I would have happily paid for years ago, but most "features" they offer nowadays are just fixes for problems they introduced (looking at you Youtube).
My parents use Netflix and I'm in the same house as them so the whole account sharing crackdown is moot. I wouldn't want to share my account with them otherwise.
Spotify I'm keeping for lack of a better service. It has improved by leaps and bounds.
I really don't like this argument that the TV streaming market is too pricey, too complicated and is starting to turn back into cable. Maybe if you're too fucking lazy to go through a cycle of cancelling and reinstating subscriptions based on what new shows are on or whatever old show you feel like watching.
Cable is multitudes more expensive than your typical streaming service, while giving you little to no video-on-demand catalog. Streaming is nowhere near as bad.
Oh and another thing, have you ever tried to cancel a cable service and spent hours on the phone to reps whose job it is to ensure you don't cancel and waste your time upselling you shit you don't want? You don't get that with a streaming service, and cancelling is as easy as going to a menu, disabling auto-renew and waiting for expiry, so not setting yourself a reminder to cancel the service is honestly on you.
It's like everybody is fucking entitled and think it's their God given right to steal TV shows when it's not available on a singular $9.99/month service.
Account sharing is theft. Sorry, but you agreed to a ToS rider and they're clear about that. "B-b-but it's my mom's who lives in another state" isn't a valid objection. The services have real costs for licensing they need to protect.
Now, before you down vote I agree with pretty much the rest. Introducing ads into paid tiers is utter bullshit, and capping quality for paid subscribers amounts to theft the other way. I'm paying for a product and I agreed to Terms.
We just carry Hulu here. We don't use the free Netflix we get though perks programs because They Suck, and I am canceling Huiu upon seeing the first ad I'm forced to sit through. We also have free AppleTV, bit haven't activated because its Apple and we are an Android household.
Does any of this contribute to the discussion? No, probably not but I feel better for having ranted about it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Honestly I laugh at the people whining about password sharing getting shut down. It was never really intended to be used that way, everyone just saw an easy loophole and just thought they were the coolest shit.
Really surprised that people got used to a cheap loophole and when it got shut down, instead of the expected "it was fun while it lasted", people got really butthurt about it.
It was always going to happen, it took way longer than I ever expected.
The ones who had it for family and not being able to include college kids I understand. But in my experience almost everyone seems like they knew at least one person with access to each and a massive group would share the cost that way.
If it's not a family group issue, stop whining about having to pay a fair share.
Yes, the amount of them that are all separate costs is totally obscene now. There really should be some kind of "build your own" combination for a lower cost than the total of the parts thing happening.
But being mad about an unintended hack no longer working is dumb.
But to the actual question being posed here, I've only ever had one at a time. I don't watch much of what's out there anyway. I had Netflix while it was free with phone bill (who I worked for, so I got it included along with half off the bill. But these days I just have Paramount, but all I really use it for is Star Trek.
Although I'm still mad about Prodigy. Everything I wanted was in one door and now I'm gonna have to figure out how to get that.