Nearly 75% of Americans are frustrated that the streaming platform they subscribe to keeps raising their prices. With 40% having cut back their streaming subscriptions in the last three months due to financial concerns and rising costs of living.
These companies continue to raise prices, hoping inertia will prevent most people from switching. This is true not only for streaming sites but also for all these platforms.
We need to move away from businesses that exploit their monopolies and try to get your content or goods directly, where possible.
Some alternatives you can check out…
Media:
- Nebula
- Dropout TV
- Corridor Digital
Music:
- Qobuz (buy directly from artists)
- Soundcloud (artist-driven)
- Bandcamp (buy directly from artists)
The same principle applies to Uber, Amazon and many others.
Mine is reverse proxied too. My wife has seerr with auto approval for her. The barriers are multiple and not well understood by us enthusiasts. There’s perceived complexity of use, unfamiliarity with the platform, choice paralysis (when everything on the world is at your fingertips), a longing for algorithm suggestions, etc etc.
Like I said, I’ve given user accounts to a bunch of people I know. For all these people I’ve installed the apps for them and logged in for them when I’ve been at their houses. They just need to launch the app and watch. I check server logs from time to time…none of them use it.
But my 5year old definitely uses it happily on his child account and has never had a problem. My 7 year old has accidentally uninstalled the Jellyfin app before and he came to me to ask “what does server URL” mean, I told him the login process once and he happily does it himself. Lack of understanding is not the problem for adults. Tech companies really have a grip on the population in making their services addictive.
My wife uses it occasionally bouncing between Disney and mine.
I did warn her that once our credit card benefits expire for Disney plus, I won’t pay for it.
However, I’ve already migrated her to Bitwarden and YubiKeys so mine is receptive of better security and open source alternatives.
Thankfully she’s pretty anti corporate and manages to keep up with the ever shifting target of digital sovereignty.
She also works far from the home during the week and has her own apartment… Which means that Disney does ban her occasionally due to mismatched IP address. Which further the cause of Jellyfin.
The MIL has jellyfin but I hardly see her use it.