Streaming, owned & rented media

As I’ve posted about on Threads, I am keen to get as much out of the streaming ecosystem as possible given its enshittification and, more specifically, my concerns with the streaming model as it pertains to artists. I’d rather give as much of my hard-earned money as possible directly to the artists & their collaborators that I want to support, and minimize how much of my hard-earned money goes to enshittified corporations. (This applies to virtually all forms of art & media.)

I’ve already reflected this ethos with the music I make: when I release new music I only release to Bandcamp and my self-hosted site, Cult of Lightbulbs. I’d rather promote my music as art products that folks can freely experience (without having to pay a corporation to do so), with the option of directly supporting me if they like.

In my personal life, I’m aiming for a similar end state for the art & media I consume. My family is no longer paying for any streaming services outside of Apple’s. Though in transparency, we do share and occasionally use HBO Max and Netflix accounts with extended family members because of a few select shows that are exclusively available on these platforms and/or we haven’t had a chance to purchase our own copies yet (for example, Succession, which I would rewatch but haven’t come around to spending the $50 for the full box set).

Instead we’ve been gradually building a collection of mainstay movies and shows, mostly via secondhand purchases on eBay and taking better advantage of our town library.

• We recently bought a collection of 8 Studio Ghibli films and a set of Tinker Bell movies my daughter loves, both from eBay. I have a shortlist of Disney movies that we’d like to buy secondhand, but honestly Talia hasn’t asked to watch them in a long time so I haven’t seen the point.
• We also have picked up a few digital movies and shows from Apple’s TV (iTunes?) Store, including both seasons of Fleabag (arguably the 1 thing we miss about having Amazon Prime) and all of Party Down (the only reason for us to have ever paid for Starz, a network I forgot existed).

My wife & I also finally decided to downgrade our Apple One bundle to the mid-tier plan, eschewing Apple News+ and Fitness+. We almost never used these services, and I’d rather support a news source or two that I trust directly rather than give Apple half of the fee plus a bunch of news outlets owned by right-wing billionaires. (Our Verizon smartphone plan comes with an extra $6/month discount on this tier, which is nice!)

My ideal end state is to abandon Apple Music (and Arcade) as well, and instead having a large library of music and games we own.

• Truth is I never play Apple Arcade games; I rarely if ever actively seek out new video games, and my favorite games are all ones I’ve already purchased on iOS or other platforms. I also dug up my old Nintendo Switch and 3DS (!) for which I have a ton of old games I’d totally forgotten about.
• Apple Music is a bandaid I am afraid to rip, but I am gradually realizing the sheer number of artists I love whose music is on Bandcamp for sale. Accounting for this and the library of music I already own, there isn’t too much music I’d lose access to (like, fewer than 40 albums), and there are ways of purchasing those artists’ albums if I truly want to.
  • I also recently learned I can (get this) rent albums from the library, including digital copies, via the Hoopla service. I just found Fountains of Wayne’s classic album Welcome Interstate Managers on there, which I listen to once or twice a year.

That would leave us only paying Apple for iCloud+ with 2TB (which I also use for custom email and iCloud private relay) and Apple TV (when there are good shows running). I’m open in the future to moving our big cloud storage somewhere else, though iCloud may continue being useful if only for the cloud photo library.

Instead, I’ve already set up a private Jellyfin server (it’s an open-source alternative to Plex) to host music, movies and TV. This works wonderfully and I’ve been impressed with the 3rd party app options for making a good media-first experience (eg. Infuse on the Apple TV).

We’ve also been listening to the larger-than-I-realized collection of CDs and vinyl I’ve accumulated through inheritance, childhood, thrift shops & occasional Bandcamp purchases. The CDs in particular are doubly useful thanks to a $29 DVD burner/ripper:

If I think about it, the thing we probably miss the most from streaming is a select few playlists that serve a particular purpose. Many of these we can partly (or fully) recreate with music we now own, but there are a few “mood” playlists (like one called Pure Calm that’s all highly ambient piano stuff) that consist of hours of the stuff. But I’m also realizing that suitable replacements exist on Bandcamp, or… hey, I’m a musician, I could always make the stuff I want to hear.

Lastly, we’re all just reading a lot more, taking advantage of the town library, a local used bookstore we like, and my e-book benefit at Buffer. Books are eating up more of our leisure time than staring at screens, which is nice.