This was exactly the way I thought of my spending habits for a long time. Then a few years ago, Netflix prohibited password sharing, a soft feature they had specifically encouraged in the past, with the explicit purpose of desperately generating additional revenue as other growth streams plateaued. When most users just kind of accepted it, the dam broke and all the other services followed suit.

That was the final straw for me, on top of the proliferation of dedicated per-studio services, price hikes, and pricing tiers that created needless feature lock-outs. As a consumer I get dicked around in every sector in which I’m forced to participate, but this is one sector where I have an option to withdraw from the dicking.