One thing that bothers me personally is that nowadays everything is a membership, but what bothers me most about the subscription model is the fact that the price goes up and up indefinitely and many people really don't mind paying $2 or more a month.

I mean, let's take for example the case of Netflix (I know the image is old, but I couldn't find anything better), where it went from costing $7.99 in 2014 a month to $15.99 in 2019, literally double, and it will surely keep going up and up, if this trend continues and it surely will soon people will be paying $30 a month without any problem.

I understand that a market like Netflix (to follow the initial example) is an expensive market to maintain, both for equipment, staff and licenses and it is obvious that the economy is not the same in 2014 as it was in 2019, but how are people ok knowing that the price doubled in 5 years? If that continues in 2024 the price would be $30, and if it was people would still be fine paying it.

I don't use Netflix but I understand why people use it, both because of the recommendation algorithm and the simplicity, but damn, if in a year they say they are going to raise the price $5 a month people would be happy to pay it and I don't understand it, much less those who pay several memberships of the same type (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, etc).

  • Sushi_Desires
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yeah same, the pendulum is really swinging back right now... youtube got so goddamned annoying about adverts (boiled the frog too fast trying to push the ridiculously priced subscription) that I just stopped watching for like two months, then finally set up OSMC/Kodi on a raspberry pi and followed a guide to make an API key to watch completely ad-free. I finally started paying for a VPN after avoiding it for a decade because it feels like it is time to spool up the ol torrent program for the forseeable future

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I haven't seen YouTube ads in years tho. uBlock Origin extension has never failed me.

        They just found a way around uBlock Origin in the past couple weeks or so. They finally got me with their bullshit today.