On buying books, paying for TV and other things

A while back, I used to be like a lot of people, always looking for free ebooks or sites where I could download free movies and series. I mean, who could imagine having to pay for these things when we could just get them with the aid of the internet. The thought of paying for something you could get free was preposterous in itself. That changed over a year ago.

It started out when I was still on Spotify’s free tier. I used to have this nagging feeling that I was depriving artists of funds they would have otherwise earned had I been paying for it, so I decided to try out the paid tier. I mean, I could sacrifice $9.99 a month and not miss a beat. It sounded really crazy then though and its still surprising I went through with it. I could have just been like everyone else, hoping that someone somewhere else is paying for it, which would be enough to compensate for any impact that me not paying for it would. Anyways, the paid tier was so so refreshing. I had access to a whole lot of songs that I might have issues knowing about if I’d stuck to just downloading them on my phone. Also got introduced to indie music that’s just as refreshing.

I might be waxing all lyrical about how awesome the paid tier of Spotify is, but there’s that possibility that the free tier drove me crazy with ads, but it’s been a year and my memory could be fuzzy.

That said, the next revolution came with movies and series. I think I dreaded this more than I did with music. It meant having to forfeit a whole lot of content that was either not available on Netflix or that I could not rent on Amazon. That translated to a lot of content. But with moving to paying for content, I felt a bit more relaxed. I didn’t have to worry about losing content if something happened to any of my devices. I also got introduced to content I might not have come across if I’d stuck to looking for where I could get them for free.

Also seem to be waxing lyrical about paying for TV here but Netflix did introduce me to The Expanse, Altered Carbon and The 100 so imma wax lyrical all I want.

Now, on to books. It felt nice paying for books that I wanted to read even though I was only probably buying one a month. I always have access to them though so I have no regrets.

I usually don’t get why people don’t want to pay for content they consume and prefer getting them for free. It’s not like all these content creators don’t have stomachs to feed or something. Oh, wait, nevermind. It feels weird to me if you read a lot of ebooks and have never paid for a single one. I mean, the authors actually pay a lot of money to get those book published. Denying them payment and opting to get their books for free doesn’t sound like something nice people do. I’ve heard arguments about how books are expensive and all, but the max amount of money I’ve ever spent on any work of fiction is about $10. Pretty sure some people who opt to get books for free can spend more than this in a single sitting on something else. Let's try to stop depriving authors of money and encourage them to write more by actually paying for their works.

The same thing applies to both music and television content, but I currently have a pet peeve on the book front so I lingered more on it. Paying for these things is hard, like really hard and definitely not a bed of roses. I know it. It just requires a whole lot of effort and dedication before you get used to it.