[crote]

Nonsense. A Spotify Premium or 1080p Netflix subscription costs one hour of work at UK minimum wage. If you're willing to settle for ads you can get Spotify for free, or Netflix for the cost of a single pint of beer. That's incredibly cheap entertainment, if you're not too picky.

I pay for a Spotify Premium subscription. It has 99% of the music I want to listen to, and it works on all my devices - including Linux. I only use it a dozen hours a month or so, but it's too convenient not to get it.

I tried a Netflix subscription early on for a few months - before the streaming service explosion. It had a horrible UX, didn't work on half my devices, and only had a small fraction of the content I wanted to watch. In other words, it was literally impossible to legally get a Spotify-like streaming experience.

The solution? I spent hundreds on a movie/tv download server instead. A single torrent tracker provides everything I could possibly want, with an extremely easy user experience, and the content is guaranteed to work on all my devices. It would be cheaper for me to subscribe to a streaming service, but a decent one does not exist.

In the years since then the streaming landscape has only gotten worse, with content now distributed among a dozen different streaming services. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that?

[phantompeace]

Then you’re limited to Netflix’s country specific availability which is subject to change constantly.

With piracy, you download it, you keep it. Job done.

[adamm255]

The subject to change bit is what’s getting me.

After paying probably over £1400 for Netflix in 11 years, you’re rewarded with the films you want leaving, having half of a box set starting half way through. That said, in purchasing media, you’d only get 1 film a month, maybe 2, for the cost of a Netflix sub…

I’ve only seen one album get removed from Spotify since I started using it, so the landscape there is a bit more universal. You want music, it’s on Apple, Spotify, etc.

You want a movie… well. Might be on Netflix, or moved to Disney+. Oh yay, it’s on Prime Video, but on no, it’s for bloody rent.

This is why piracy will continue. If we had a Spotify of Movies, which is what Netflix was, people would pay.

I’ve seen a lot of folks on other forums say that a lot of their classic favourites aren’t on any service (people wanting to watch over the holidays), so resorted to the DVD.

[ktallett]

TV being bough/rented by different license holders per region whilst music being owned by license holders worldwide is a key issue.

[jdietrich]

>Nonsense. A Spotify Premium or 1080p Netflix subscription costs one hour of work at UK minimum wage. If you're willing to settle for ads you can get Spotify for free, or Netflix for the cost of a single pint of beer. That's incredibly cheap entertainment, if you're not too picky.

The problem is the proliferation of different streaming services. Your friend recommends Slow Horses, which is on Apple TV+. Another recommends The Day of the Jackal, which is on Now TV. You want to watch Premier League football, so you need both Sky Sports and TNT Sports to see all the matches. Before you know it, you're spending £80 a month on subscriptions and you're still missing out on things that are on Disney+ or some American streaming service you've never heard of.

If your mates have all got hookey Fire Sticks and get to watch whatever they want with no ads and no subscription fee, you're going to feel like a complete mug for doing things legally.

[benbristow]

Don't forget the 3PM Saturday blackout in the UK where you can't watch any football matches on TV, even if you pay for Sky Sports/TNT/Amazon Prime...

... unless you have an IPTV subscription where you can stream all the games from a foreign TV channel with English commentary.

The idea with the blackout being that it encourages you go to physical games but Premiership games good luck getting tickets for those (even if you do they're extortionate) or go to local games which you might not be as interested in.

[tonyedgecombe]

>Nonsense. A Spotify Premium or 1080p Netflix subscription costs one hour of work at UK minimum wage.

And yet the only growing sector in UK retail at the moment is discount shops.