A while back I realized my phone has 256GB of internal storage and since I don't take pictures or put anything else on it, I was running around with 256GB of free storage wherever I went.

And that's pretty much when it clicked for me that I was paying Spotify for access to music I already have from the pre-spotify days for a convenience that no longer is valid.

I dove into my box of CD's and DVDs and put the 30 something gigs of music I collected since the mid 90's on my phone and haven't used spotify since.

EDIT: and, yeah, I've re-instanced my music, movie and series downloaders and went back to sailing the high seas.

I switched to Netflix/Spotify, because of the convenience and timing of release they provided, they were also more reliable in terms of quality ("free" versions labeled ass 1080p often aren't actually 1080p, etc).

But the sheer cost of Spotify, Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, etc, etc, etc to listen to and watch what I want, has made the convenience/cost calculation move from being acceptable to being even more than what it used to be buying CD's and DVD's.

On top of that the audio and video quality have deteriorated over the years, availability has become spotty, at best (like certain services removing movies and shows, even some removing movies and shows you paid extra for), we're also dealing with these services pushing ads on top of us already paying subscriptions and fragmenting their market to the extent everything has become entirely unaffordable.

I used to buy maybe 2-3 CD's in a year and a boxset of a show and a movie once a year.

Now simply subscribing to every service that has something I want for just 1 month costs more than what I spent per year previously.

Gabe Newels words are still right on the money.

Piracy is a service problem and the service provided these days makes Piracy the better option, again.