100% still have to keep your seed ratio up. It works out for me, though, because I use it for my home media server, so it’s mostly files I’m holding on to anyway.
I’m Gen-X, but I don’t play games at all, and I pirate everything I watch (which isn’t much)
When I hear about people buying a game, and then having to pay for some subscription, or to fully utilise the features, I can totally understand people refusing to buy into the bullshit
Ha, my first reaction to this title was “What, is the other half sailing the seven seas for shows?”
Hell I’m a millennial, and I bounce around music streaming services all the time. They all offer more or less the same thing, and overcharge like hell for it. Spotify will send me a trial for like $5 for 3 months or something, I’ll sign up and set a reminder to cancel in 3 months, Amazon music will send me something similar, I’ll do that, YouTube premium will send me an offer and I’ll go there. Worst case I’ll have to deal with shitty ads for a while in between offers, but I’d say 10/12 months a year I’ve got some kind of premium service going for a fraction of the advertised cost. I know that their goal is to get me hooked and paying monthly for their shit, but I’m on top of it enough to not ever let them. Fuck the shareholders. I’m looking out for me.
The stock market was a mistake. There’s only so much that a single company can grow without resorting to screwing over their own customers, yet these public company CEOs need to deliver constant growth if they wanna keep their jobs. At the same time, so much of the economy is invested in these
I rotate them every 3 months or so. By that time I’ve pretty much exhausted any interesting content they have anyway.
Won’t, or can’t afford to?
insert small mexican girl
“Why not both?”
Uses AI to insert small Mexican gril… what could go wrong?
I can’t tell if this is a madtv skit, or linustechtips cosplaying as a madtv skit.
Must resist temptation to ask wHy NoT bOtH… (for mutually exclusive possibilities)
Especially video games. Honestly as a casual gamer I get it. Games are expensive and they are a gamble. I’ve bought games in the past and played them for half hour and realized I hate it lol. I rarely buy games now, especially if it’s not a franchise I already know and like, because I can’t afford the gamble. If I do I buy a physical copy so I can sell it on.
At least with streaming services you can check and know there’s a few hours of shows you will definitely watch. It’s still tol expensive and I’m cancelling mine but it is less of a gamble than video games.
I know many people are against this logic but you can pirate things as a demo and buy them if you find them good.
Thankfully demos are coming back. At least that’s the trend I see with indie titles
Thinking about it a bit more, some AAA publishers also are bringing demos back too
Yeah indies usually have pretty decent demos! I actually haven’t even looked at the switch store lately but I don’t remember the bigger titles having demos?
And idk where everyone else is but the big games here (Australia) are still what I consider expensive (USD$45 minimum without a sale). Typical price is around USD$60. Even on sale they don’t get much below that for the big stuff - zelda, pokemon, Mario, animal crossing, etc. Curious how comparable that is to elsewhere.
Oh I’m just referring to Steam games. I’m a PC gamer just because I don’t buy consoles (because they’re expensive lol) and Steam just have great discounts compared to PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
For full priced games, which used to be only $60 USD, now somehow $80-$90 — thanks Nintendo — is far too expensive for me. $45 too. $30 is starting to be okay. Oh and pardon me for not saying where I’m from but my country got cheaper regional pricing on Steam so I just use USD prices like tiers of pricing.
Ah okay yeah, I barely use steam these days. Can’t remember the last time I bought anything there, I just occasionally play very old games I already have on there haha.
Yeah i love a few Nintendo classic titles but $$$ 😭 kinda a good thing that I don’t like the direction they’re taking pokemon because it removes the temptation to upgrade to the switch 2. Not sure I’ll bother unless I somehow get free money to throw around haha.
I’m playing them preemtively, once they come down to a couple of dollars I’ll totally pay for them for all the time I spent playing them when they were expensive.
True. Just depends on device and how committed people are to doing that lol. As a casual gamer (PC barely ever anymore and Nintendo switch, then I have emulators with a bunch of Nintendo classics) I wouldn’t bother. I don’t even know how to do that for a Nintendo switch.
So yeah it’s an option but in terms of the discussion about Gen z people not shelling out for video games, I think part of the decline has been from casual users who aren’t either shelling out $ and aren’t interested in enough to pirate 😅 I’m a millennial.
I assume to pirate and transfer to a Nintendo switch (I don’t have 2, just the original) there’s an initial set up cost?
I tend to stick to the emulator my brother got me with all our 90s(ish) childhood games lol. I don’t know if those exist yet for more modern games - or at least not at the cost of the classics!
My steam family polycule has one person that streams games and gets given many, many steam keys. Highly recommend, I have access to a wide selection of mostly queer cozy games.
I mostly buy multiplayer games so we can all play them together. I also buy the dlc for things I really like. Shout-out to Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, which tbh is more of a soundtrack than a game.
Millenial here, I have zero subscriptions, the only thing close to that is that I manually pay for a gift card for Geoguessr once a year.
I do it this way so I don’t forget the cost of the service and should I come onto bad times, it is not something that will automatically renew and keep charging.
I am considering getting a lifetime subscription to Nebula, it is very expensive, but just a single payment that can be budgeted for, and once paid I’ll keep access even through bad times.
I wouldn’t buy a “lifetime” subscription for anything. It’s been proven many times that they carry no legal obligation.
Or in the case of Plex, the product becomes so shitty that I never want to use it again anyway.
Fellow millennial here. I’m in the same boat. Zero subscriptions except for Curiosity Stream, which is like Netflix for educational documentaries, and it’s dirt cheap.
I bought the lifetime subscription to Nebula. It’s been worth it; I have a few channels I follow and I appreciate the extra content and freedom of video producers to say/do whatever they want without platform censorship. YouTube has so many restrictions, no one can post content without bowing to Google censorship.
Parody laws should allow people to actually review or poke fun at other media, but Google will demonetize or block any content that they arbitrarily decide is copyright infringement. Most film review channels I follow have to be extremely creative in how they show clips of movies. Most of them mute music scenes, and some will insert their own public domain (or homemade) music over scenes to avoid a ban. It’s ridiculous how far the MPAA and RIAA have gone in locking down media from public consumption.
Often your public library will have access to Kanopy for free. Also full of educational documentaries.
You do have a limit on number of “items” (a series, a seaon, or a single movie count as an item), but I’ve never reached it
Also millennial. The only thing I pay for is Tidal. Music streams, at least for now, are operating as they should. You pay one a month, get all the content and no ads. I’m using it everyday and it costs almost nothing.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that lifetime subscription. Companies already started changing the terms of use while subscribed. Sony’s has been removing movies that have been purchased from people’s librarys.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that lifetime subscription. Companies already started changing the terms of use while subscribed. Sony’s has been removing movies that have been purchased from people’s librarys.
I understand why you’d be worried but comparing a multi-billion multi-national corporation like Sony to Nebula is like comparing CNN or Fox News to 4ZZZ Community Radio, they are worlds apart
The founder and CEO posts on reddit responding to peoples questions
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nebula/comments/1qicazx/comment/o0swr01/
At the risk of sounding cynical. I also wouldn’t trust any company to stay fair forever.
No, that’s completely fair. And Dave’s well-publicised admiration for Jimmy Donaldson certainly doesn’t help in that respect. (They also seem like they may have previously had a professional relationship, though the details and extent are unclear.)
But everything he or the other founders have said about Nebula makes it sound like they’re doing the right thing, and they are very deliberately avoiding the number one cause of companies that were once fair ceasing to be fair: venture capital. There’s no outside source that could turn around and demand to get a greater return on their investment against the wishes of those operating the company.
A lifetime subscription ($
500$300*) is roughly the price of1710 yearly subscriptions ($30). How many years do you think Nebula will remain as good as it is now? You should probably think of some of that money as being a donation and not a guaranteed product.For some people, that’s probably fine. The service might have given them $300 worth of value already, so buying it’s a no-brainer.
* with any(?) referral link, see comments below
you see $500? says 300 to me:
https://files.ikt.id.au/r5f04y.webp
but yeah would need to really love nebula to get value out of the lifetime subscription and their mission is a good one so i think saying you’re half subscribing half donating would be accurate
Double checked, and now it looks like I’ve got a referral cookie somehow. $300 is probably easy to get if you click through from anyone promoting it.
But if I open the join page in an incognito session, the price is $500.
I buy the music I want to have track by track on iTunes, I have 800 songs in my library, my thinking is that if I get on hard times, I will at least be able to keep access to my music without any added cost.
I do this and download it to local storage. It’s all DRM free and I can stream it myself with Jellyfin or throw it on a USB stick to play in my car. Even if Apple goes belly-up or something they can’t revoke that access.
I also have 300+ CDs though.
That was my plan, but I haven’t got to it yet.
I’ll have to spin up a VM with Windows, install iTunes and start downloading
Wouldn’t be surprised if you had a few CD players to go along with them?
Gen Z here, also do not have any subscriptions except for a library card which is only 12 € a year (and also my server and domains and rent and electricity and internet). There are just so many movies and games to be watched and played I don’t see myself running empty anytime soon. Often times I visit there without a specific thing to rent and go out with 5 movies to watch, they actually curate the shelf fairly well and have more interesting/new things out for display. For newer releases I do go to the movies but my library does get a copy once there is a physical copy you just have to wait a bit until its your turn.
Wow love libraries
Edit - & quality curation by those who care!
Nice, I also tried nebula and considered a one time pay subscription. I tried it once’s, found some cool videos but then I had to focus on other things.
GenX here, I have a streaming service (Paramount+) for exactly one reason: It comes for free with my Walmart+ account, which I use frequently. Every 6 months I switch between that and Peacock, since both are free and I can change my choice twice a year. So I watch what I want on Paramount+ for 6 months, then switch to Peacock for 6 months, rinse and repeat.
As far as a lifetime subscription to Nebula, I’ve watched way too many sites fail/die to consider a lifetime subscription to anything on the internet. They could shut the site down tomorrow, and now I’m out $500 ($300 if I happen to get a discount from a creator code).
As far as a lifetime subscription to Nebula, I’ve watched way too many sites fail/die to consider a lifetime subscription to anything on the internet. They could shut the site down tomorrow, and now I’m out $500 ($300 if I happen to get a discount from a creator code).
There’s no “happen to”. It’s the default expectation. You can go through literally any creator on the site to get that, it’s not a time-limited thing or anything like that.
As for the rest of it, it’s certainly a possibility. But it will only take 10 years before that lifetime membership becomes strictly better than paying yearly. And the reason they’re doing it is to avoid one of the biggest sources of companies with fundamentally-sound businesses going bankrupt: investors deciding they want to squeeze. They use the lifetime memberships as an alternative to seeking outside investment from venture capital. And from what we’ve seen, it certainly does appear to be a fundamentally sound business. It has seemed to be growing in both the amount and the range of content it offers at a pretty steady rate, and all indications are that their subscriber count is growing along with that.
It certainly is a risk, without a doubt. There’s a reason Nebula themselves say that the objectively best option is the yearly membership. Lifetime membership is directly presented by them as an investment you can make in the company; something to do because you believe in what they’re doing and want to help them, with the potential for some payoff down the line (but honestly not very much).
I’m doing that and I’m not even short of money.
Just sick of nothing being available when I want it, on another app, and having to scan several services to confirm that.
With Jellyfin it’s just there. There’s no ads. There’s no “oh hey you looked away from the credits for five seconds I’ll just play something else”.
I still don’t get how to get Jellyfin to work with the streaming part. If I have media, fine. But getting the streaming of all those or sports, ain’t happening.
Use an LLM. That might help you.
Or Plex. Or Emby.
Valid, of course. Although,
I’m doing that and I’m not even short of money.
Among all the other reasons, I’m not short of money, but I can still use that money for other things. And honestly, even just throwing the savings down a drain at least means it doesn’t go to these companies.
The other day my Mum was locked out of her Apple TV account for some reason, by some miracle she managed to get back on and all I could think of was how much easier this’d be if we just torrented everything and just used some Jellyfin client.
Or Plex. Or Emby.
Only with Usenet.
yup, I do my part by pirating and sharing 🫡
So you’re saying people without money don’t act like they have disposable income? Fucking science!
Is this because they don’t know how to torrent? Or did the “you wouldn’t download a car” ads get into the water supply?
99% of internet users don’t know what a torrent is.
Which is probably a good thing for torrent users
torrent is useless, who wants to connect to a million people who are only sharing the arch iso?
woah now; I also share the debian iso! ✌🏼
You’re doing the Lord’s work.
Kinda the opposite given that’s kinda the whole point of torrenting. The more people there are the faster the download speeds and longer the seed will stay up.
If copyright laws weren’t draconian, maybe
Swim sideways to not get caught in a torrent.
Someone who isn’t me sideways
Yeah I feel like millennials got lucky because both the older and the younger know nothing about how the internet works.
Torrenting isn’t difficult but it’s also not very user friendly.
I don’t really know what a magnet link is, I just know it’s what I want. There’s also a bunch of stats and settings in my torrenting app that I don’t understand but apparently it’s ok to just ignore them. I’m fine with that, but that level of confusion is very off-putting to most people.
I know people who have some app, I forget its name, on their smart television which is very accessible. It looks like a regular streaming service dashboard. Torrenting doesn’t have to be difficult and technical - but I wouldn’t have seen this if I didn’t go to that friend’s place.
I think anyone comfortable with managing files on a computer would be fine with torrents. Especially anything like qbitorrent which has integrated search. But the majority are ipad kinda users.
And I guess you get into torrents because you don’t know what usenet is.
Or don’t want to have to pay for Usenet access.
But will pay for a VPN to run torrents or just risk the exposure?
I’ve been using a private tracker and no vpn for the last 15 years.
I forgot about private trackers. Yeah, if you can get into those they can be pretty good. You normally have to worry about your seed ratio for those private sites though. At least the one I was a member of wayyy back in the day.
Buying a Usenet plan is like buying a cell phone plan in the 90’s; there’s limits and download caps and is my Usenet group restricted and all sorts of things to figure out.
Buying a VPN doesn’t have download caps and restrictions on specific websites. It just works.
And, yes, buying access to a VPN is not only radically easier but can also be used on my phone / laptop / etc to prevent advertisement/ISP snooping. Can I do that with a Usenet subscription?
What are you talking about? My usenet subscription is unlimited less than $10/month and it even comes with a VPN subscription. Nothing hard to figure out at all. Certainly nothing harder than figuring out which VPN to subscribe to.
Which one?
Usenet Server
Typically, people stay on the torrents because they are free, while all usenet costs money. Which is the point. Maybe genz can’t even afford Usenet access.
Using torrents without a VPN is crazy to me.
Doesn’t that mostly come down to where you live and what enforcement looks like there?
Ya i dont use a vpn, never had any issues. Once in a while ill get an automated email saying ive been naughty but I just ignore it.
I suppose that could be true.
Both in use.
Why be exclusive with it if you can get the best of both worldsWord
Turns out saddling a generation with debt, and then telling them the AI is gonna take all the jobs doesn’t do a lot for moral, or our finances.
Nevermind that there’s a middle East forever war 2.0 going on that’s jacking up the cost of everything right now.
Being an elder Gen Z (1998) adds a special layer to this cuz I’m pushing 30, running an open-source OS everywhere I can and I’m indirectly being called an iPad baby lmao
I used to renew and binge for a single show.
Now I’ve got effectively 0 services. I’m subscribed to like 8 patreons. But I’m just straight downloading what I feel like. I dgaf.
We are all victims of asymmetrical class warfare. Download what you want without guilt, everyone (safely). It’s one very small clapback to the constant attacks and damage done to us and the planet.
I’ll pay you to create content, like its always been. I’m not gonna pay a third party to put up barriers. If you don’t want an idea or information to be shared freely, keep it to yourself.
Please freely and openly share the following thought. It is important that everyone hear it
Butts
One money please
Subscribe
Are you sure? All of our back issues are exactly the same except that one time we had a guest editor. That time it was
Titties
I’ll be honest, that issue was kind of a bust, but you managed to return the other cheek on the next issue so I’m willing to put it in the rearview.
One money, as requested.
Thank you. Finally my dream can come true!
Save your money for the independent creators that actually deserve it. The big corporations don’t deserve a single cent.
Exaaaactly. We force the subsidization of smaller artists/creators with their money by redirecting our spending. Just like they force us to subsidize their insatiable greed.
eightreons
Funny way of saying “half of Gen Z are not falling for the typical consumer spend spend spend trap”. And as a millennial I say good for them. About time large chunks of people see the consumption driven economy game for what it is.
deleted by creator
Millennial here.
I grew up with sneakernet through irc-napster-kazaa-limewire-directconnect-bittorrent-oneswarm. I gave all that up when netflix and spotify.
Those subscriptions have been ended a couple of years back and the eye patch is back on.
Netflix’ catalogue has just diminished, as everyone who owns rights to the good stuff want to do their own streaming service.
I wasn’t really listening that much ro spotify, but when they started injecting ads into podcasts I bid adieu. (Yes, injected - I’d listen to an English podcast and get very local ads between segments).
Injected ads in RSS podcasts are common too - they’ll look at the IP address and serve a location-specific episode.
Tragic to hear. I didn’t even think of RSS as vulnerable to advertising, but of course it is.
Got any recommendations for where to download music these days?
Well, spotify. I did a run with spot-dl before ending my subscription.
I self-host with navidrome and stream/sync to my phone with Tempus.
But 97% of my listening nowadays is just streaming HYPR demoscene radio.
spot-dl is Youtube (yt-dlp).
Take a look at soul seek or nicotine. Plus of course a VPN.
Thanks!
Bandcamp or rip CDs at the library. Ytdlp if you want to rip audio from YouTube. Picard to fingerprint and tag the files.
Thank you, Picard looks useful!
Soulseek
I don’t mind injected podcast ads so much, especially for smaller podcasts that need some financial support. What I tend to do is use a VPN, that way the podcast is in my local language, but the ads are in another that I don’t understand. I get my podcast, podcasters get paid, and I avoid tracking and brainwashing. win-win-win
I wouldn’t it mind it if I was on a free tier. I’d think some of my subscription moneys would go to the creators.
Still paying for Spotify. At least Spotify is not shit from consumer prospective. Stremio/Kodi + a debrid service are better then any subscription and cheaper.
Not downvoting because your opinions are your own, but Spotify has been trying to worsen your experience. Lately they’ve been allowing AI-generated content on their platform, and before that they were hiring “ghost bands” to keep royalty money away from legitimate artists.
It is not about my opinion, it is about my experience as customer. While I agree that Spotify is bad regarding some practices, as a person that listen to music I am not as negatively affected by those policies as with others video streaming platforms. Same with steam: while there are some questionable practices linked with steam as monopoly, from a consumer prospective it is still not “shitty”.
A better phrase probably would have been “your experience.” If you don’t use playlists that Spotify wants you to listen to, you might not notice these issues. I used to prefer Spotify for exploratory reasons, so this is a massive disappointment to me.
If media companies want a consistent user base, media companies can politically lobby for their users to receive wages high enough to include disposable income. If media companies won’t go to bat for their subscribers, why should their subscribers give them anything more than short shrift? (there’s your phrase for the day)
Sorry, best they can do is lobby for year-long contracts only.
Fordism is dead. Sorry. Try again next Industrial Revolution.
