LG to offer subscriptions for already purchased appliances and televisions, evolving into a provider for “Home as a Service”::Subscription fatigue is a thing and regulators are circling, but Korean giant reckons you’re ready to cough up after buying hardware
Home as a Service
This has triggered a Fight AND Flight response in my brain. I want to smash everything with a mallet then run to the mountains.
I hate “as a Service” so much!Soon we’ll have breathing “as a service”.
Please don’t give them more ideas
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You know my story isn’t very different from yours.
As a teenager I massively pirated everything, became an adult with a paying job streaming was sensible so I paid for Netflix/Spotify eventually adding in Prime video + the occasional thing like P+/disney+ or whatever flavour of the month I wanted to watch.
Then earlier this year I realised I was paying for 6 different movie/tv streaming subs and when I went on holiday none of the services I had worked properly and I couldn’t continue watching the show I had been watching at night before bed and I just went nah fuck this. Blew about 2 grand on a Mac Mini m2 and a ton of hard drives and just went full on Arr stack + usenet + plex lifetime.
It isn’t even about the fucking money anymore it’s just how inconvenient they make everything, I’ve had enough and I don’t think I’m ever going back.
Disney Plus straight up refusing to run anything while we were on vacation just made me really mad. Here I am setting up the tablet for the kid, and then - nah wrong region mate. Even VPN didn’t help somehow.
Yeah Disney+ legitimately made me mad also. Fuck the streaming services.
I think they use the tablet location info to block you.
5 TV Streaming services? More like 25 at this point.
Curious, what’s wrong with Spotify?
They pay artists the least, fund the US war machine, inundate you with podcasts when you just want music, etc.
Just curious why the hate for spotify?
Did you start with Jellyfin or go there from Plex? I’ve been thinking about setting it just as a backup in case Plex gets shitty.
what’s the problem with spotify, i never used it, but it isn’t the first time i read about someone complaining about them
What’s your issue with Spotify?
My biggest issue is how they took Podcasts, which have always been open RSS feeds for audio (and Apple, the largest player, kept open and public for decades) and started making exclusivity deals that only work through their app, with invasive analytics and monetization.
My second issue is how Spotify wants me to manage my library the way they believe I should: emphasize playlists, kinda add songs to a library, ignore albums. For instance, on Apple Music if I add 3 songs from an album to my library, I can go to the Albums menu and the album will show up there - even though I only have 3 songs. On Spotify, I either add an entire album, or if I only add the songs, the album won’t show up in the albums view. In fact, the whole “liked songs” section feels like an afterthought they added after impementing playlists, while on Apple Music and most oldschool music library software the song library was the main view and the songs added there populated all other fields such as artists or albums. Ironically, Apple Music is got intelligent playlists that work way better than Spotify’s, with the downside being they can only be created via iTunes which is ancient software.
My third issue is what are the value adds to the subscription as the years go by: Spotify added short videos, QR codes, inconsistent lyrics and digital stores that aren’t even converted to my local currency… While Apple Music added karaoke lyrics, lossless audio, spatial audio (even on my Android), remasters straight from the studio, and more. It’s totally subjective, but Spotify’s gimmicks aren’t worth it to me.
My fourth issue is just the number of tracks that are no longer available on Spotify from my library. Apple Music lost a few, YouTube Music slightly less, and Spotify quite a lot which surprised me.
As you can see, it’s not like Spotify killed my cat and replaced my audio library with a 10 hour loop of fart sounds… But I have deep concerns over their treatment of podcasts, I really dislike their philosophy on how to organize a music library (and they offer less customization than an Apple product, how crazy is that?), they’re becoming increasingly more popular yet their catalogue is actually shrinking for my music taste, and I don’t see real improvements in the service while their competitors keep adding actual value as time goes on.
Either way, don’t mind me - I’m actually now using a huge library of FLAC files on my PC that get converted to MP3 and sent to my phone. Free, no songs vanish, no internet connection, no issues 😄
Good explanation. Apple Music is still solid for me and I greatly prefer it over Spotify since I prefer listening to and collecting albums over playlists. Am also not a fan of what they’ve done with podcasts, the overall sound quality or the integration with the products I use.
While not ideal, I’ve found that most of the songs or music removed is due to some weird licensing issue and is still there. For example Wolfmother’s first album needing to be re-added as the 10th anniversary edition. Kind of annoying still but manageable.
I also have no interest in the Spotify “value adds”: they add no value for me. Last year I did try to leave, with their focus on podcasts that seem actively harmful to society, but their play lists are just the way I like to listen to music. Apple Music kept annoying me with focus on albums, and iverly targeted play lists, so I did come back
The podcast thing is not Spotify’s fault, it’s an industry-wide thing.
As podcasting took off, the most popular podcast hosts wanted to be fairly paid for their stardom. An exclusive distribution deal is the easiest way for the podcaster, who otherwise would have to grind their audience with paid subscriptions or intrusive sponsorships.
in 2022 it revealed a scheme called “Evolving Appliances For You" that promised software upgrades to home appliances. The company offered the example of a family that moves to a different home, and different climate, and upgrades its clothes drier with routines suited to local conditions.
This is fucking hilarious. Nobody, and I really do mean nobody, actually wants a dryer that you need to pay a subscription fee for just in case one day you move house so it can try to reconfigure itself.
This and this article might be a little more concise.
It sounds like more ads for smart tvs, and a subscription service for extra features for smart appliances - like a chatbot for your fridge or dishwasher or something.
It doesn’t necessarily sound evil to me it just sounds completely retarded. I’m all about tech making life easier but it’s genuinely hard to imagine why I would want a smart dishwasher. I want a dumbass dishwasher who’s actions are solely determined by the 3 buttons on it.
It will be interesting to see how the market responds to this. It’s hard to imagine that really anyone will be seduced by the idea of a “smart” home with these sorts of intangible benefits.
Well, as someone who moves between Africa and Finland with my tumble dryer twice a month this will be a godsend.
Until they region-lock your dryer.
Wait until they program the devices to lock down until you pay a fee to turn them on.
It’s a solution in search of a problem. May as well start selling home appliance NFTs while they’re at it.
I used to like LG products they were often really good quality and lasted a long time.
That’s pretty much over now, not touching new LG products anymore. That’s for sure!
I had an LG CRT and it was as old as me. Never died. It’s a real shame the planet is suffering because of greedy business practices. They put climate change on the consumer but more needs to be done to big corporations to punish this kind of behaviour.
This is why I like dumb products. The smarter they are the more they tac on this kind of crap to them.
LG can go fuck off.
Love how these corporate executives these days can only use tricks to increase their profits rather than building better, more reliable products which gain more customers through hard work.
But more reliable products means existing customers will buy again less frequently.
There are nearly 8 billion people in the world and never in our history has there been as many people with disposable income. There are new customers out there. They don’t have to simply fuck over their existing customers and continually fleece us.
But what about their poor shareholders that want to see maximum profits :(
And don’t forget about executive bonuses too!
Who asked for that?
Shareholders?
They likely didn’t even ask, but by law publicly traded companies must pursue profits above all else, on behalf of shareholders.
this change will solidify that I will never buy an LG product if they all have that shit
There’s only one way I’d be OK with “subscribing” to use a LG fridge: I don’t pay anything upfront and I don’t need to pay for any repairs. If I don’t even get to own it, then I shouldn’t be responsible for fixing it when it dies and spoils all my food after a year or two, nor should I need to pay for a new fridge when I give up on it after those repairs inevitably fail again. Same with their TVs when the cheap capacitors die early.
If I subscribe to rent your product, the onus is on you to make it reliable enough that it lasts until the subscription turns a profit.
Since that won’t be their business model, I’m better off buying a half decent brand and then flushing $1000 down the toilet. Fuck LG appliances. (And fuck Samsung appliances while we’re here.)
Very much fuck Samsung. LG actually produces a decent product, even if this subscription bullshit exists. Samsung are just planned obsolescence trashboxes.
Their gadgets built their fame because they just worked and were built like a tank. My grandparents had their stuff (from Goldstar era) and they still keep chugging.
None of this “as a service” bs will please the lifetime customers.
For just a low low price of $15.99/month you can use the freezer functionality to keep things really cold! Or, you can use our free ad tier where the freezer only unlocks after you watch a 60 second ad.
Right! If you don’t upgrade service periodically the freezer temperature goes up by one degree a month. It’s for your convenience!
Nice a free simulation of the global warming.
This little tidbit is left out:
In order to use LG’s smart appliance features you must agree to allow the company to track your precise location 100% of the time via phone app.
I have 2 wifi enabled LG appliances, a refrigerator and a washer. A couple of the smart features are useful such as the end of cycle notification on the washer and a high temperature / door open warning on the fridge. Unfortunately those features don’t work very well and there can be very long delays between an event (such as an end of cycle) and the app notification.
So not only is LG’s implementation poorly done and not very functional, customers are expected to give up any semblance of privacy to even use them.
Fuck that. I disconnected my appliances from wifi and deleted the app.
Paying a monthly charge for the extremely limited smart features on appliances is nuts, even if you didn’t have to allow LG to constantly track your whereabouts. I hope the general public is smart enough to make LG’s subscription service a complete failure.
My fridge drops its wifi setting constantly. Luckily it’s the dumbest thing ever so I don’t miss it. I only set it up because I was curious wtf a fridge would need to be connect to wifi for
Turns out it loves watching The Bear. Gues it makes sense
Just vote with your wallets people. There are others that don’t do this and nothing will turn them around after huge drop in sales. Remember when HP wanted to prevent people from recycling their toner. They had to reverse that decision. Or when Canon decided that your printer must be always online and then they had to teach people how to break their own printers. Lessons learned.
*devolving
“They’re evolving! - just backwards.” - LG probably
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You don’t get any dumb TVs in my country anymore. I’d assume its the same everywhere else unless you’re going back a minimum 5 years of tech evolution, which might not be all too bad.
Nah, smart TV with media box. You get the ad adjusted price, you merely don’t hook it up to the Internet.
I’m never buying a “smart” anything, aside from phones. I put up with Android and it already feels like too much.
By all means. But “smart” TVs come at a discount because they believe they’ll have opportunities to make revenue off of those features. However, if you prevent the thing from connecting to the Internet then you get the best of both worlds. Cheaper and ad free.
What is “media box”?
Chromecast, Kodi, Roku, Apple TV, Nvidia shield, fire TV, etc.
I have a Fire Stick and a newer Vizio TV. For a while I could tell Alexa to turn in the TV: the Fire Stick would turn on, then use HDMI-CEC to turn on the TV and select its input. Worked great and I didn’t have to deal with Vizio
Then at some point Alexa started controlling the TV itself instead. Now I have to choose whether to deal with Vizio or to do more clicks to get to my streaming device. I really need to figure out how to get the original configuration back
Fire TV firmware also just gets worse and worse with each new version. Netflix app also follows suit.
Does it? I’ve never had one. I have a Kodi box and a Chromecast. I’ll be sure to avoid the fire brand, then.
The one saving grace is that it’s cheap and you can install Kodi on it.
