Private Internet Access. Been using it for probably 10 years at this point, never had a single issue. Their “no logging” claim has been tested successfully in court.

Stargate was 4:3, so there’s that…

I deleted my near 15 year old account and left, dumbarse 😂.

By 90% you mean 90% of the 15 people that saw the post and were using a client that could see and vote in the poll in the 8 minutes that they had it open, because that’s seemingly what most subs I was on that did a poll did. The comments were always 90% filled with people saying they wanted the subs to be open, they don’t care about the API changes, etc, yet the crybaby mods would say “YOU ALL VOTED FOR THIS!” while everyone is screaming “No we didn’t, we weren’t even asked!”.

Does it count as tracking though? What private or personal data is it? I’d also say that it’s at the very least grey area since all they’re doing is trying to prevent people from using their service in unintended ways, ie without ads.

Their obvious solution to this is make you consent to it or you can’t use YouTube.

So do you want to support the artist or not?

Obviously it’s different for unsigned artists who have self published, thought that was pretty self explanatory since they don’t have a record label/publisher/etc that takes the bulk of the money.

Also important to know that Spotify is a net positive for artists, even though they pay not much. The music industry is one of the very few where being “paid in exposure” actually is a valid thing. Spotify gets your music out there in front of tens/hundreds of millions of people that would usually never ever hear your music, and you’ll convert some of them to fans that will see you live in shows and buy merch. Artists make no money on cd sales either, that all goes to the labels/publishers/producers/etc.

That’s your right, but by not being on Spotify you’re likely worse off. I’ve discovered many bands on Spotify that I’ve then seen live and bought merch that I’d never have heard of otherwise. It’s one of the rare times where being paid in exposure actually works.

You should still support services that you use though. Pirate music if you want, but if you use Spotify you should pay for it.

Even buying the cd only puts a few bucks at best in the artists pockets. 80%+ goes to the publisher/producer/marketing/etc.

If you want to support an artist go see them live and/or buy merch from them directly. Anything what is just supporting publishers.

Artists don’t generally make money from music sales unless they self publish. Spotify gets the music out there and heard so people discover bands and go see them in concert and buy merch, which is where bands make their money.

It’s crazy that it’s 2023 and people still don’t understand this.

Those aren’t this only things that cause you to be demonetised though. Having the wrong opinion is enough.

What do you mean? You can connect it to network shares “by default”.

Granted, Plex sucks nowadays

In what way(s)?

One of the things that really put me off Kodi (as a long time user as well, I also had an XBMC xbox) was the mentality of “it shouldn’t be easy, there shouldn’t be any setup wizards. It needs to be difficult to configure and get working because we’re l33t haxors!” in so many kodi forums and affiliated people. They wanted it to be hard to set up and use because it made them feel smart, it was absolutely ridiculous.

As soon as Plex got their UI to a design I liked I jumped ship and haven’t looked back.

In what way? Curious because I’ve never had any issues with plex on my local network.

Because some people prefer plex and being a (optionally) paid product it will very likely receive more and better updates.

No it’s just a streaming host. Even as xbmc you could mount a network share library, you didn’t need it all stored on-device.