I have neither and my life is better for it. I might pay for a decent streaming service but we've past the point where that is the case. I will never pay again for classic TV, it's a scam since you pay for more ads than actual content.
I don't know where you're based but I would offer the BBC
TV - take your pick of classic shows.
Radio - 6 music for me. Education - provides resources for all school key stages in line with the UK curriculum.
Sports - a bit sporadic but you can get everything except baseball at some point in the year.
Arts - broadcasts the Glastonbury festival.
Live shows you can attend and be in the audience.
only £170 because of the scale, it has 30 million subscribers paying £15 a month. Reduce those numbers and it’s a death spiral.
It won’t last much longer, the fee itself has collapsed in real terms - 15 years ago it was 40% higher than today, the political pressure to remove it has never been higher, I’m expecting Musk to start attacking it more overtly soon.
Ah, so a slow replacement of human created culture by AI feel-alikes, all while almost nobody who creates anything gets paid.
Not precisely what I had in mind from the term "decent".
ps. I know that for most users of Spotify, the above description of the service doesn't correspond to their reality. But it is an accurate description of the service, nevertheless.
I feel like this is a bad-faith response, no offense. A person explained why cable TV is a bad deal and wished there was a “decent” alternative. Clearly, “decent” is being used from the user perspective, not the effect it has on society.
From the user perspective Spotify is indeed “decent”.
On-demand, unlimited access to essentially all music for a flat fee.
But switching the definition of “decent” to what its effects on society are seems unfair. It’s not like the price gouging cable business model has avoided race to the bottom reality TV either.
The streaming services my wife and I subscribe to cost somewhere between $8 and $19 per month.
If both of us pay to see a film in a movie theater, we're almost certainly talking an amount in excess of $20, potentially higher than $30 and not inconceivably over $40.
From my POV, a streaming service has to provide us with 1 film's worth of "decent" entertainment per month to be "worthwhile". Although all of them occasionally fail to do that in a given month, I don't think any of them fail to hit the "12 film's worth" over the course of a year.
even though movie pass is dead it created some pretty savory monthly plans from the theater. there are dead months sure but on aggregate you can easily beat their guess at the median user and come out quite ahead if you are into seeing new movies.
Wouldn't you want to be loyal to the productions themselves rather than whatever streaming service is exhibiting them? Do you have that much faith in the creative talent at the streaming services?
Looks at cable TV
Looks at streaming services