We're definitely getting to the point where piracy is getting more convenient than paying again. At one point I was paying for Netflix, prime, disney+, and videoland (a Dutch VOD service). There was a show my wife wanted to watch so I check it on the well-marketed "don't steal, get a subscription - everything is available :)" service film.nl. Not available.

I do some googling and it's available on Prime, for $20 a season. Fine. Whatever. Go to checkout but can't pay because I need a US bank account?

Next weekend I spent a bit of time setting up the arrs and life has been great. Open Overseerr on my phone, request a TV show or movie, arrs do their magic, and within ~10-60 minutes I can watch it on any of my devices through Plex. The ecosystem of Overseerr, Sonarr/Radarr, Prowlarr, Bazarr, Plex.. and whatever *downloadclient+vpn) is just super well integrated. This all being a bunch of simple docker-compose files makes it accessible for anyone who has a little bit of technical skills and a free afternoon.

I still have spotify but honestly also thinking of cancelling it, I'm stuck in my bubble anyway. Paying 10 euros a month for the same few albums just isn't worth it.

Ditch Spotify and start contributing to open source personal library streaming apps — I’ve been using Jellyfin+Finamp+Sonixd for streaming my music library for a couple of months now, and I’m so glad I made the switch from Spotify. As a bonus, my money now goes to artists I choose on Bandcamp to buy physical + digital album files… instead of to the army of UI redesigners, podcast-pushers, and VC firms associated with Spotify.

This is what I have done but now that Bandcamp has been purchased by Epic I have nothing left because I refuse to use it now. It might be the same now but how do I know what's changing behind the scenes or if it's something I want to support?

I know how you feel. I suspect for now it’s fine to use Bandcamp, though I don’t like the feel that I’m contributing to Epic’s bottom line. Right now, I have to assume it’s just as good for artists as it was before, except with someone new signing the checks. I’ll be on the lookout for news about Epic changing things, abusing artists, or funnelling egregious amounts of money into podcasts, though…

Do you have any recommendations for a complete beginner on how to have the same setup?

I wonder if there’s an opportunity here, for someone to put a frontend on torrents, charge $0.xx per show, and pass it along to the rights owner after taking y%.

With all the people saying they pirate for convenience, not for cost, maybe enough of them would pay to be “legal” to make it worthwhile for rights owners to collect that money.

You could be Netflix minus the distribution issues.

This is legally quite simply not an option. You must make deals with every publisher separately and those deals will involve geofencing and folks saying "no".

> and folks saying "no".

It's going to be a cold day in hell when any of Apple, Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon, etc. license their own produced content for anything else then their own streaming service.

Maybe we need a compulsory license for all kinds of streaming just like we have for radio in US.

I use put.io.

It works amazingly. They download everything for you, you can stream directly and even on your tv via their app or chrome cast or you download on your computer or phone. Seriously, the experience is as good as Netflix. It’s 10USD a month and you have access to everything you can think of.

Put is the best. Their secret sauce is they cache all popular torrents so they appear in your locker instantly.

It is especially good combined with Chill Institute. I can get nearly anything on my television from idea to streaming in < 15 seconds. I can’t program, but I’d like to figure out how to turn this into a Siri shortcut…

I went on the website and I seriously can't figure out what they do? I'm not joking, if people on here are recommended I'm genuinely interested, what does it do?

Online torrent services like seedr.cc and sonicseedbox / sonicbit.net are great too.

This used to exist! It was called joker.tk I think.

It would allow you to paste a magnet / torrent link and it would start streaming the file to you. Ironically I found it cause it was posted on hacker news. As you can guess it was shut down immediately

This is why I never stopped using torrents. Even though I have subscriptions to nearly every streaming service in my region (creators are getting their cut, right?). They're super convenient. I can search what I want in a giffy, even very obscure titles I can't find anywhere else. And I don't need to deal with variable bit rate or streaming interruptions or learning to deal with a dozen different UIs.

All media companies need to do is setup a subscription based private tracker and host their content there. It's cheaper for them, more convenient for users, but no, can't let users consume content on their own terms now, can we? Psychological control is the only means to growth.