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?
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