Read more.Increases vary by market. In the UK Student, Duo and Family accounts are all affected.
Read more.Increases vary by market. In the UK Student, Duo and Family accounts are all affected.
Well this was all the excuse I needed to dump my Spotify premium family plan. I'm not financing $30 million to Harry and Meghan for premium podcasts I won't listen too, or a takeover of Arsenal football club. All while Spotify pay some of the lowest royalty rates to the artists that provide the backbone of the service. I think Spotify have seriously lost their way.
Spotify's problem is that the music is readily available on other platforms, I'm not bothered about all the expensive podcasts they're subsidising. When Netflix, Spotify et all were £7-10 a month I was happy to pay that, now it's £15-17 each and I'm starting to question the value.
I appreciate prices go up, but the rate of increase far outstrips inflation. I've just downgraded from Family (£16.99) to Duo (£13.99) as there's only myself and the wife on it anyway. I assume Duo wasn't available when I was originally looking.
Think I'm going to downgrade Netflix from Premium (£14.99) to Standard (£9.99) as well, 2 concurrent programs is never more than we're watching, and 1080p is fine with me.
Iota (28-04-2021)
Still pretty cheap for what you get tbh. I don't personally use it so not affected (Prefer Google, given that you get Youtube premium essentially included..), but really doesn't seem an unreasonable increase to me.
As a one off subscription £16.99 doesn't sound too bad. But if all the services are creeping upto £20 a month in the next couple of years, then to have Dropbox, Google Photos backup extended storage, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify....it's going to add up to somewhere close to £70 a month - then I'm going to be seriously considering which of these services I need.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (27-04-2021),Iota (28-04-2021),Sumanji (04-05-2021)
Gave up Spotify a while back and got Tidal. Better sound quality overall, although less content. Prices slowly creeping up on everything but salaries stay the same. Oh well, being poor is a state of mind
Some Old Skool people still BUY their music, own it, hold onto it and listen to it without paying a subscription.
This is the thing... drip your money away and wonder why you never have any?!? Even Paypal Credit has just raised the percentage rate. It seems that the rich keep on getting richer.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (27-04-2021),Saracen999 (27-04-2021)
Was inevitable, pricing has a way to go yet. 4K Netflix will be £30+ within the next 2-3 years.
I'm pretty chilled about it (to be fair I can afford the rise) but I compare to my CD buying in the 80s and 90s - a single album was £12-13 back then, with inflation that's over £30 now. For one album that you couldn't preview online so might have only been played once.
Which in itself isn't too bad, the problem is that it's not just netflix that you'll likely need, you'll likely need 2 or 3 other services to get to everything you might want to watch. You can already see it now with the way Disney have basically bought up so many studio's and restricted access to other companies. While we can currently do the 1month dance, I can see that being removed in the future as well and streaming becoming more like a 'year long' subscription.
When you start needing to need more than one option the cost soon starts to add up which in turn will lead to people going back to using alternative sources...something the studios are actively trying to stop by trying to block/sue sites/users etc (the wrong approach imo).
Buying random albums one or twice a month was 'my treat' as a skint student while I as at uni... thinking back how much I wasted on albums I played just once is shocking, mind you I did find some good ones in the mix from time to time too.
I'm a bit weird with spotify, I like the idea of it but for whatever reason just never really got into it.... I've got most of my music on my nas these days and the amount of new music I actually like these days is pretty low lol
All currency has the Inflation attached to them... it sure as hell does not go down, but the wrong way.
Old Skooler here.
The crunch issue, I guess, is what you want, what quality you want it at, and how badly you want it.
Personally, most of the music I want is either sorta '60's to maybe early '80s, in which case they aren't making it any more and I already have a high proportion of what I really want on CD or, shock-horror, LP.
Or, it's classical, in which case they still aren't making new stuff by my favourites, on account of how they've been dead for between about 100 and 400 years, which has adversely affected their creativity, and output. And again, I have most of what I want on CD, etc.
While I don't go so far as to say (like my ol' Dad used to) "modern music is crap", and indeed some I do like, those bits that I like enough to want on-demand are so small as to not justify paying Spotify.
The short-form version of that is that I already have probably 95%+, maybe 99%+ of what I listen to, so I have a "roll your own" collection I can listen to, on PC and (mostly) phone. And it costs me about £0/month.
But for anyone into current music, with new stuff coming out all the time, that strategy don't work.
I've paid my musical dues, buying a crap-ton of music on CD/LP and now I'm getting my money's worth by listening to it. I used the same logic with my house. I can pay mortgage for a few years and buy it, or rent every month for ever, and never own it. I did the former, and haven't paid a penny in rent or mortgage for about a decade. Great, huh? Until you need a new boiler (check, a few years back), double-glazing (check, years back), roof repairs (fairly minor but still nearly £4, roofers back here tomorrow), new kitchen (£20k), bathroom (modest size, about £6k), driveway (£4k), back garden overhaul (£4k), and so on.
I'm not sure I could afford to pay for Spotify.
P.S. Yes, tongue-in-cheek. The house might be costing a lot but it's gone up in value by way, way, WAY more than it's cost. If I want to live on a park bench, I can sell and be a cash-rich homeless person.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
CAT-THE-FIFTH (27-04-2021)
The only music streaming service I seem to subscribe to,is the one which comes as part of Amazon Prime. For me,if a song or album is not good enough for me to buy a copy or buy a download off,it doesn't matter how many songs a streaming service has,and the number of albums I want to have each year is far less than the cost of a streaming service.
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