The Weight Of Money Podcast
The Weight of Money Podcast is about breaking down the principles of being productive individuals. We will be discussing various topic of different areas pertaining to financial lifestyle, building Foundations & more. The overall goal is to become better than you were previously so provoking the thought of that is my gift to the world.
The Weight Of Money Podcast
Are Subscriptions Robbing Us?
Unlock the secret to reclaiming control over your finances amidst the ever-increasing costs of subscription services. Ever wondered why your streaming bills keep going up while the quality of content remains stagnant? We're diving right into this complex issue, examining how the COVID-19 pandemic has tethered us to platforms like Netflix, only for them to hike prices and restrict usage with tactics like password sharing crackdowns. We'll dissect the frustrating lack of rewards for loyal subscribers, the recycling of content, and the industry's struggle to provide fresh, original offerings. There are bright spots, like standout shows such as "Stranger Things" and "Abbott Elementary," but they are few and far between. We'll reflect on the golden days of HBO Max's simultaneous movie releases, pondering what it takes to make a subscription truly worth every penny.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Weighted Money Podcast, and I'm your host, duntese, and today the topic that we'll be weighing on are subscriptions, taking out money. I've been asking that question to a lot of people and you want to know something? They agree, they feel the same way that I do, and if you want to know why, just stay tuned for the episode. So, basically, they have taken an uprise since COVID, because we had nothing to do. We were basically in the house all the time and we took in a lot of Netflix and all that. We had something to watch. We had to have TV somewhere. I feel like it's though the companies have used it against us the reason why I say that, not throwing in the shade or anything.
Speaker 1:Netflix you can't even share your password anymore. Why is that? It used to be we paying 9.99 for netflix. You remember when you used to? Just you can get mail to cd. I missed that. It was so easy. Netflix was like Redbox. They made an app, then it was $9.99 till it wasn't. Then it was $14.99. Now it's $22.99. Even to have it on multiple TVs. So let's just say, if you wanted to have somebody else watching your stuff, you will have to literally pay 30 dollars and 91 cents exactly just to watch netflix. Now you can't share your password with your cousin that don't have it. Oh, we don't want you to be nice. We want you to give us more money. Though, if you, you know, just saying, if you're gonna do that, we, we can always, you know, tell them to join netflix too, like they want you to be an ambassador, and I'm not like. I don't understand that.
Speaker 1:And subscription services have gotten ridiculously high. It's to the point to where now look at what they're doing just on black friday. So let me tell you this if we're doing promotional services, yeah, they're doing it only for a limited time. If they throwing our promotions like that, why they can't do that until the people that are long time subscribers? Why aren't they implementing this beforehand? Because you shouldn't be making life decisions, wondering if you're gonna pay for a subscription service or not, normally, and like you'll just see an increase from them. But it look like why are y'all going up, y'all got 4k hd on everything that's there, when they don't really need it? You're not really. If you don't even have a 4k tv, you don't really need it. You're not really. If you don't even have a 4k tv, you don't really see the difference. If you already have a flat screen tv or ultra high definition tv, you have. You really don't see the difference. It literally looks the exact same. The only thing you're paying for, I guess, is no ads. You don't get exclusive movies. It's nothing on netflix that will even do this.
Speaker 1:The first person I would like to say they even started that does premiere and they had to stop doing it was hbo max, the reason why people love hbo max. They brought the movie theater to you. They premiered the movie the same day as it would in the movie theaters, so you didn't have to go to the movies or you didn't have to take that chance to end up getting sick to leave. Everything was right there in home. You had your own home entertainment system. But this didn't even last for a year. Literally the next year they had to stop it. The reason people were complaining about it they said the movie felt like it was taken away from their sales their first day sales and it knocked them down 25% and this is coming from the head director over HBO Max. This when it was HBO Max. Now it's called Max. I don't know why they changed, but anyway, you see, it was way better because now you don't have to go and pay money to go see a bad movie. It's a lot of bad movies that came out this year Not going to hold you. Only one movie that I seen that really just took me by storm. That was just good all the way around and I'm going to give them a shout out Deadpool and Wolverine, fantastic movie. And if you have any other regards you can fight me on it, because I swear there's no other movie.
Speaker 1:But back to the topic. Subscription services are literally like taxing, to the point to where they are taxing for everything. They're taxing for ads, they don't want you sharing your paperwork, so they charge you more money depending on the screen. If they're not in your household, they are charging you for it, and if they start implementing like premiere movies and stuff like that, they're going to end up taxing more money. And this is the thing I hate about some of these subscription services. They literally have the same thing. It literally the same shows.
Speaker 1:You are literally paying to watch throwbacks that probably still come on tv living single, burning bag show, martin, etc. Etc. You know the rest of the sitcom, don't get me wrong. I still love Living Singles like one of my favorite sitcoms, but when are we going to get something that actually people want to watch? Not the remakes of these cartoons that are terrible. That's something that's worth paying for, not these older movies that we done seen a hundred times. Put something else on that can literally get our attention.
Speaker 1:The only thing I feel like Netflix is good for right now is Stranger Things. That's what I feel like people waiting on and I feel like the reason why they holding their back because they want to keep the audience so bad, because they know after Stranger Things, people are literally going to cancel their memberships because there's nothing to watch. Hulu has abbott elementary and they are on max too. That's a fantastic show fire all the way through, if you like the office and stuff like that, and I know I'm cosigning shows and stuff, but this is something that I watch. Do I feel like it's worth the money that I pay a subscription for? No, not really. I don't, because it makes no sense to where I have to pay really 20. That's literally money I use to go get gas just to watch a couple shows that y'all end up taking away anyway. So what would be even the purpose of even doing that, when whole time I could have just been watching something else. I could have been just using my time. I could have just been watching something else. I could have been just using my time. I could have just bought a movie, though.
Speaker 1:Another thing too I would like to say subscriptions have literally took over TV. Television is a whole nother place now. Cartoons are different. They're letting different animators and stuff like they're walking in. People are losing money. They're running out of ideas. They're trying to copy and paste old shows or doing reruns of them. Please stop running these reruns of these shows. It's getting tiring. People see the same episode every single day and it's like they don't try. At least the only thing you can say about subscription services hell, they at least have a lot of different stuff that you can watch. But some people have peculiar tastes in the movies and content they watch.
Speaker 1:Honestly, do you feel like having a cable is even worth it in this day and age? Because we used to praise like back then? Back in the early 80s, 90s, 2000s, tv was at its most high. We had the hottest TV show, the hottest movies coming out. Now TV don't even get depicted the same. The only time I've seen people really even talking about TV is if they're really watching a basketball game, and now NFL has an app for that too. So they're outsourcing TV.
Speaker 1:Television will soon become obsolete, even though you might have oh seinfeld and everybody love raymond, but it's not too many people watching them shows. We don't have enough shows that be being even broadcasted on tv. The first thing they go towards is the screaming station nobody, nobody putting their shows on TV anymore. And it's just like it used to hit different when you used to see the BET Awards or the different festivities going on. Or you see an episode of your favorite cartoon. You see like the little new episode banner like coming up next. Or you know these streaming apps can kind of took a hold of people for so long at a pivotal time because they capitalized off of COVID-19. If it wasn't for that that's why Netflix is so high Even Netflix stock was even nowhere near what it was back in 2015 or 2016.
Speaker 1:That's when you can still go order a netflix cd offline and get it mailed to you. That's how old I am. I don't know a lot of y'all. Maybe you know younger or maybe older, but I'm dead old to where you used to get the netflix cds in a slot, we had blockbuster, all this type of stuff where you can go get movies, watch them, take them back and be cool. You didn't have to pay that much. Now you pretty much have to pay a full tank of gas just to watch a bunch of tv shows and movies that you don't really care about.
Speaker 1:So I ask you again, people, is having a subscription worth it? I just don't understand how, like, how do we look at this and not say, okay, this is a little crazy. Oh, why am I paying for this? I only watch it because of only this show and this show. I know people may have a little show that come up, like people they've been talking about the penguin and all these other shows and I'm not knocking it and that's cool, that's fine. But then when they take ages to come out with another show, then what you're doing you're just paying for something and having a background while you sleep.
Speaker 1:And I'm gonna be honest and real with you. I have done the same thing. I ain't even gonna lie to you. I have put it on a show just to even go to sleep on. I don't really be watching it. It's really nothing on there that I haven't seen.
Speaker 1:A lot of shows that I don't even care to watch. It's some that I do, but like it. When I do get into it, like, uh, it's all right, but it's it's like I don't care about it enough. It's not gravitating my attention to where I have to watch it. The big titles that Netflix and all these other apps have. They screen them alone for so long and they get their fans riled up to the point to where, when it's over everything, it's like people just don't care anymore. So that's why they save them for last. They put out all the filler movies, which is the weird movies that you be seeing in home films, or they'll just saturate you with some old TV shows.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is coming back Wednesday. This is coming back Thursday. I already watched the show like five times already. How many times you going to keep taking it off and bringing it back? Leave the shows on there. Stop taking the shows off. Y'all take the shows off and then y'all put something in the place of it. It is not in the same category. They have to stop doing it. And another thing I would like to ask y'all, too, why I got y'all attention. Do y'all ever feel like we'll go back to regular television? Do you feel like it's done financially? We'll go back to watching standard television?
Speaker 1:After screaming, ephraim pretty much took over and made a space for themselves. I don't feel like they would, and that's just me being a consumer of both, because tv is like now. Shows are getting canceled, left and right, people are quitting. It's more protested People, the writers and stuff are not being a favorite in a sense, to the point to where now it looks like people are just feel like they working for free and no one wants to feel like that. People have to live. The riotous protests and everything has caused a lot of projects and cost a lot of money. It set the whole acting world back. They expect people to work 12, 13 hours a day and not get paid that much money, and it's like you put these people in unfavorable work conditions and you give them, you know opinions on the chrome. How you expect them to actually be able to want to come to work, to actually film and produce and be able to give you what you need from them when they're not getting paid nothing? That's my question I ask to you people, and I know, aside from what I'm saying about the subscription thing.
Speaker 1:But, people, we got to look more deeply into what we're doing with this. You shouldn't have 1,000 subscription apps Like. One or two is fine, and we're talking about video subscription, music subscription, too Like, because I have, let me see, I have manga music, netflix and Crunchyroll. That's it. I only have four subscriptions that I can manage and it's no more than like 40 a month. A lot of people have every app in the book and don't watch it. Because I even added up the numbers, you know how much every single app will cost with no ads. That's almost $200 by itself, or I think right at 200.
Speaker 1:People, you do not need all them apps with these subscription services. They have the same show. Please look in the detail to see what you're buying. Don't be wasting your money and time trying to well, I don't know why this show, so let me hold on to it just to see what's going to come next. And then you end up having 50 more subscription services and then you wonder why your money keep getting snatched by apple every month and your mind and you feel like, oh, I ain't worried about it, your mind not being on it, then you're gonna be looking crazy and thinking people. You robbed yourself because you paying literally for the same content. Imagine you buying the same thing 50 times.
Speaker 1:Most subscription services, like I even said before, they have the same mainframe to show. They'll show you martin. They'll show you mostly a lot of black sitcoms. Why they try to appeal to a certain group of people and this is what they watch comedy, action, adventure. All of it looks the same people. It's no different. So if you're looking at tours or having this and having it, and if you can use other people's power, get peacock or disney plus. They don't have the only one tv can watch this at a time, like netflix does.
Speaker 1:So use somebody else password, save the money. I'm pretty sure you can find somebody nice enough in your life. I can ask John for his password. It might be cool enough to let me use it, and that's fine and ain't nothing wrong with it, because I do it. You want to save money. There's nothing wrong with it. It's better off than you having to pay extra money when you don't need it, when you don't even want it. So why not use somebody else's account? It's not going to stop them from watching or doing nothing to their account, and then you can determine whether you want to watch it or not. It's not coming out of your pocket. It's a win-win for everybody and, with that being said, people.
Speaker 1:This is the end of the episode and I would like to thank you so much for tuning in. This is the end of the episode and I would like to thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever you're tuning in with your podcast, wherever you get them, make sure you follow us on Facebook, spotify, google Podcasts, amazon Music and Apple Podcasts. People, it's been fun, but, as I said again, we got to start by taking our money. They've been listening to me, so I got to whisper to you all. They've been taking our money for too long. It's time for us to scrape back. See y'all in the next episode.
