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Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Between this (which happened to me on both Google play and Amazon) and audible audio books not being "mine" unless of course I log in to Amazon etc to get my DRM key, I am starting to reconsider how I obtain my stuff.
This whole techno serfdom thing ain't for me.
This is a good thing. I don't know why modern business models for these companies seem to be intentionally anti-consumer, but people will find other ways to get what they are looking for. And if that means spending money with a more ethical company, or simply pirating, they'll find the path of least resistance.
I used to spend hundreds on the Google Play Store, buying apps and music all the time. Then they started playing stupid games, and I haven't spent a dollar on the Play Store in years. My money goes to someone else.
At this point I've spent $12/mo for 4 years on Amazon music. That's $576 dollars I could have spent on buying songs or CDs and that's probably 576+ songs.
I regret that I've streamed all of these years. And let's be honestly, I rarely branch out to far afield from my favorite songs and artists. Who have probably received less money from me than if I just bought their cd and ripped it like we did 15 years ago. I also have way more storage on my phone than I ever did 15 years ago. I could keep quite a bit of my music synced and enjoy it whenever I want without worrying about data limits or if I'm on WiFi.
Same goes with half the video streaming services. I watch a handful of shows and movies. I could have bought the ones I watch and never have to worry about "oh man, did they take x off of Netflix? What service is it on now? Ew Hulu, I have to watch ads with that even though I pay".
The 0% interest is drying up so these companies are trying to claw as much revenue and profit out of their services as they can and I wonder how many people it's just going to drive away from it completely?
I'll stop watching prime video when they add ads.
I don't mind paying for services. I mind feeling like I'm getting shafted and duped every time I turn around. Raising the prices, making the experience worse, removing content, removing features, and then having the nerve to increase the prices by 50% in some cases. Get bent!
I lucked out last year and ended up scoring something like 1000 DVDs for cheeeeaap. Like $100 or something. I ripped them all (minus any duplicates I already owned) and put them on my NAS. No more worrying about ads, data mining, or even internet/service outages ruining my evening.
I did the same for all my CDs, and while we still do purchase CDs, they are way overpriced.
But purchasing digital music and movies has become harder since Google Play Music went away. It's almost too much effort to try to buy digital content these days, and it makes no sense. I want to pay for content, but making it impossible just doesn't work for anyone.
Amazon played their first ad for us on Prime Movies today... during a kid show no less. Just disgusting where things have ended up.
My father in law has thousands of CDs he's collected over the years that he'd probably let me have.
And I just found out my local library sells old DVDs and Blu-rays for $.50 each. I should go drop $50 and buy em out. There were some great movies in there and a few that I've always wanted to watch.
This thread just made me realize that I've hit my limit of bs with these services. Over lunch, I wrote a script to download yt videos and put them in my Plex library.
Holy crap, I need to see if our local library offers something like that. I used to go to their book sales, but never considered that they would be selling movies.