1y ago

Are you cancelling streaming services?

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?

277 comments

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!
- I canceled Netflix, but I stayed on their mailing list so I know about new shows I might like to watch. My frigate is now a submarine that goes beep, beep. (it has sonarr, I guess would be the main point I'm trying to make here)
  
  Check out Overseerr if you use Plex, or Jellyseerr if you use Jellyfin.
  It will show you popular and upcoming movies/tv shows, and you can integrate with with the arr suite to have users able to request and download the shows.
  It's fantastic, especially if you're sharing your media server with others
  
  Before ditching Netflix I added all my current shows to a calendar/tracking website, which I check every few days and grab anything new, new new shows, in just rely on word of mouth and/or social media.
- I did the same thing and have the same attitude. I still watch what few Netflix shows are any good. They just aren't getting any of my money any more 🙂
  
  I do have to thank Netflix for motivating my to try Plex and see what my uplink could handle, about 3 1080 streams, so there's that positive.
- Don't use Plex, use Jellyfin. Plex tracks everything you watch and do. Jellyfin is free, open-source and self-hosted.
  
  Are you going come here and setup my system, then install apps on mine and my kids devices and show them how to use it AND then travel to my parents house, install it on their devices and explain to them how to use it?
  No? Guess I'll stick with the free self-hosted Plex.
  
  Jellyfin lacks a lot of features that Plex has. It also is prone to a lot more problems. Once it matures some more it'll be a fine replacement.
  
  Tried Jellyfin and it was a pain to get running on my NAS (the only add on in the Synology store is a random community port that doesn’t work well and the apps for the TV are all janky). Will stay with Plex until they sort it all out.
  
  Jellyfin still has a lot of catching up to do, unfortunately.

Cancelled all subscriptions apart from Usenet and VPN.
Now I just pirate it all and bang it on Plex. All in one place on all devices, easy peasy
- In my experience, Jellyfin is better than Plex in every single way.
  
  I don't disagree but it was hard enough getting my dad and grandma to work plex. I'm not changing now.
  Plex is working really well for me at the moment.
  
  What's specifically so much better about it? We've got years of watchlists and customizations to our Plex and it works flawlessly but if there's a compelling reason beyond "it's the new hotness" I'm all ears.
- I'm not your down vote, but fuck Plex. Resource-intensive code to start, and also fuck their pushy cloud-first posture. I dropped them like a hot potato when they obfuscated requiring a cloud account to watch streaming locally. Shady stuff, especially when you're self-hosting.
  Jellyfin is WAY less intrusive. It just works for local streaming, and for discreet sharing among trusted affiliates. Maybe not as pooshed or feature complete as Plex, bit it's far less obnoxious on my resources, and my affiliates
- Was looking up Plex and I don't understand it. For example I looked up a Netflix show and it asked me to subscribe to Netflix.
  What makes it better? I'm lost
  
  Plex allows you to host your own media and will match filenames to metadata. You point it to the folders for your movies and TV and it'll start searching through and adding them to your Plex server as streamable media.
  There are ways to automate the searching and downloading of your desired movies and TV. Pair it with Plex and you have your own personalized streaming platform with just what you want to see.
  
  Because it's not a streaming service in the sense that it provides the content. The user provides the content; it just provides the streaming functionality.
  
  It's a self hosted Netflix, so you fill it with your own files (however you obtained them) and it handles everything else
  You can also look into Jellyfin, which is a popular open source alternative to it

I have a toddler who doesnt understand the concept of "We cant watch Gabbys Dollhouse anymore because Daddy is sticking it to the man."
Nope, few more years before I can think about shitcanning any of them.
- Yarr Harr?
  
  One day yes but we're only just now learning how to deal with compromises, sometimes "How about Bluey? works sometimes it doesnt.
  
  Kid can operate a tv remote to find streaming shows. Yoohooing is a little out of their capability and would need a parent to constantly start shows.
- Most of us dealing with variations of this theme.
- I'm in the same damn boat 😅
- Do you think your little one could use something like Popcorn time? Those interfaces are as good as netflix, from my experience

There was a point in time where I paid for Netflix because it was simply easier than downloading everything.
That point has long passed, and I no longer pay for streaming.

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.
- Remember we're a very small circle here, and the groups we run with are also pretty close knit, lots more in our groups may mean something but compared to everyone else it's probably less than a blip.
  
  I think it's more common for people to rotate which service they're subscribed to each month.
  But piracy is still increasing in popularity.

I pirate everything like a chad. Fuck paying for shit like Spotify, Hulu etc

I never had subscriptions. Arr!

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.
- Keeping Funimation? Aren't they migrating us all over to Crunchyroll?

qBittorrent

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.
- What ads? Is that something recent?
  
  Amazon announced a couple days ago they're adding ads to all current plans and creating a new, more expensive, plan that will be ad-free.
  It's not really any different from other services simply increasing the price and/or adding a cheaper plan with ads.

I rotate things around, unsubscribe regularly and resubscribe if there’s something there I want to watch.

Already did. Mostly only used Netflix. Then their offering went from shit to "absolutely nothing is ever on there". Then they started pitching a fit over a VPN that I specifically excluded Netflix from. The major streaming services can blow me.

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.
- Try https://justwatch.com
  Select your region in the footer.

I used to pay for Netflix because it was easier to have one service to watch everything, than it was to pirate.
I've obviously stopped.
Piracy really is a service problem for me.
- I have exactly the same story.
- Yeah it used to be it just wasn't worth the effort to pirate stuff. There was always plenty to watch on Netflix and all of the movies got there eventually. Now you'd have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services, then search around for which one has the thing you want to watch on it. It's more effort to get stuff on streaming (which you have to pay for) than to simply pirate it.
- 🙏 PRAISE GABE LORD OF CONSUMERIST WISDOM 🙏
  I'd definitely be interested in a Valve streaming service, not to muddy the waters even further.

Just pirate bro it's not that hard lol
- Speaking as a Linux user who started pirating again last year for the first time since I was a teenager, yes it is very hard. Things have changed a lot. I had to relearn everything.
  The internet is not the same place it was 20, 10, or even five years ago.
  
  Just look up "show 123movies" and you get a free stream. Easy.

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

Can't cancel what you never bought
- I came here to say almost exactly this, tho I take issue with the use of the term "bought" since you don't buy a subscription, even if that's the language they keep pushing.

cant cancel what I never had

yarr
- I'd like to yarr, especially anything no longer available via any streaming, but I'm well past my Napster days and pretty positive I'll screw it up, either privacy wise or safety wise.
  I do know how to avoid keywords after that ISP-reddit court debacle, tho...

Netflix’s crackdown affected me (I was the moocher) and I canned Hulu before some price hikes (I was the provider) and put the money towards a VPN.
I spend the computing power converting some media to play on my PS4 (plus finagling with subtitles) but once it’s done it’s done.

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.

I think this post begs the question: What is everyone's private trackers? Also let me in.

Ive said it before
You dont need all streaming services running all the time
You dont need to pay for netflix 12 times per year
Here, we pay 1 or 2 months in a row, cancel. Then a few months later we get another streaming service for a month or two.
I think we may have a streaming service for about 2 months per year on avg. MOSTLY during the winter months

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 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.

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.
- You can use your prime membership for music too, it's pretty bad compared to Spotify but it will save you some coin.

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.

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 😆
- Honestly I have never paid for cable and found alternate sources for media going back to circa 2000. However, I find my hobbies now keep me busy so that I just don't watch much TV anymore. Like with gaming, I more feel sad I don't have the cultural knowledge than I feel like I am missing anything or really burning to see them. YouTube also keeps me plenty busy, plus podcasts, and I'm getting back into books which I have shelves of to be read to work through.
  I am having more time to do interesting things and hang out with people now that I'm not spending any time on reddit, less time on lemmy, and very little time watching TV. It's like a lot of my day back.

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.
- Yo, can you pm me with info on that modded Spotify? Thanks!
  
  Me too 👀

I never had them. Pirate life for me!

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.
- Spotify is the last one I pay for because my phone has like 1gb of free space and no memory card slot, and I'm too lazy to setup a self-hosted streaming service and constantly pirate new music

🏴‍☠️🫡

I canceled Netflix for what they did to the witcher and I'm canceling HBO max now because I don't want to watch anything on it.
- HBO was my last service but just cancelled too :)
  
  HBO kind of canceled itself. What is it called now? Just "Max" or something ridiculous.

I cancelled Netflix a few months ago, I still pay for Disney+ and my bro pays for Paramount+, and we share those with each other
I ended up also installing Plex on my rapsberry pi and going back to pirating.
- how do you do storage for your rpi Plex server?
  
  A SATA SSD and a usb adaptor cable

Bro wtf... How do you get to 200$ a month without seriously considering cancelling some? Like don't you have to work for your money?
- Daddy made a fortune back in the day and son is spending that on streaming services.
- Some people are loaded?
  
  Not even loaded that's just what middle class is supposed to look like.

Put.io + Plex $120/year, zero isp warnings
- Jellyfin > plex
  
  Is jellyfin that much better? I've seen people throw it around a lot and I've yet to try it. The big thing I like about Plex is Plexamp as a music app and it seems like Jellyfin lacks that for the time being.
- If I'm reading that correctly, you basically have 100gb worth of streaming?
  
  You can use it like that I guess, I just use put.up as a debride service. It downloads everything, I download to my local hardware. I don't torrent anything from my ip. I used to get HBO letters isp letters, all that is gone now.
  For now I like Plex over jellyfin, I don't think that will last, Plex made their money with a lifetime Plex pass. History tells us that lifetime plans NEVER work. So they will be fucking up the service at some point and making users make some terrible decision or something like that.

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’m a pirate, always will be.
Real debrid. Kodi. Fen add on. Nvidia shield. Done.

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.
PS: in case anybody wants to use it... It's open source. https://github.com/Dr-42/offflix
- Good sir you are a gentleman and a scholar
  
  Thank you so much

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
- Stremio and a debrid service is incredible. I feel like something has to go bad for debrid services soon. How they operate seems pretty unclear to me. Is it all in ram or something? I think that would pass the fixed ina tangible medium situation. Still have my audio service too. Because convenience is easier than the yo ho! Although spotube is pretty good! Just no podcasts or audiobooks.

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.

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 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.

The only streaming service I use is my own homeserver running plex, so no.

Haven't had any for like 6 years, and back then it was just Netflix and Crunchyroll.
Embrace the pirate lifestyle out on the seven seas

https://media.tenor.com/18peQO6upVwAAAAM/pirate-laughing.gif

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.
- Beans help with protein

no because the last time I used netflix was five years ago. I never even thought to pay for any of the other ones
- We're the same, although we did just find some dirty audible subscriptions that must have carried on past the experimental trial stage - the cunts have been happily billing us. Must watch the bank statements!!

Just use fmovies.to and up your antivirus. Much cheaper
- https://fmoviesz.to/

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.

277 comments