Get Your Hand Out of My Pocket

Every time you turn around, it seems like everyone's trying to get their hand in your pocket, and no, not for anything good. Everybody's trying to get a nickel out of your pocket. We're going to talk about how companies and organizations are trying to get more of your heart earned money, but are they really providing value for that? Let's talk about it this time on Why's Thoughts. The following is a Terry Weiss production. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the program. Welcome to White's Thoughts. I am Terry Weiss, you're a humble host, and I'm glad you decided to join me for our virtual campfires. Sit down. Well, let's get the house cleaning duties out of the way right away, shall We got a website Weissthoughts dot com. Wycee, just make sure you spell my name right Weis's Thoughts dot Com. There you can listen to each and every episode of the podcast. Check out the video channel on YouTube called Weis's Thoughts there as well. And hey, while you stop by, would you leave us a rating and a review, Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about Wis's Thoughts. It's all at Weis's thoughts dot com. And if you want to reach out to me, I am on social media. You can look for me on X. I used to say tweet on Twitter, but look for me on X and it is at Terry Weiss. A little late coming in there, mister producer extraordinaire with the with the intro. Got a lot on my mind this week. A lot's been going on. And by the way, how are you. I hope you're well, and I'm glad you've decided to join me for this episode of the podcast. I truly appreciate each and every one of my listeners from wherever in the world you are listening, and you know it never fails. You get in the studio, you want to record something, your nose itches, your ear itches, your nose starts running. I'm gonna you know, your throat gets a little froggy. I'm gonna take a little sip of a carbonated beverage here water, sparkling water. M yum me and sparkling water. That's it. Nothing else. No other adult type additives do that. But welcome to the program, Welcome to White's Thoughts, and again I shall reiterate, I am so glad that you are here to join me for our virtual campfire sit down. Now. As I talked to out in the opener, I've come across this and it's it's just something that really is irritating me, and I wanted to talk to you about it today on the on the podcast. And the reason the reason this has come to the forefront for me and it's been sticking in my mind as of late, is because it's that time of the year where I have to renew certain subscriptions to things I use here in the Waste Thoughts podcast and my voiceover business, also at the Purple Pit Studios and at the Production and Media Company, And when I see the amount of money that I am shelling out for these services, I really I am starting to really do a value cost analysis. I guess that would be the easiest way to say it. I'm really trying to give it a value cost analysis and saying is this really worth it? Do I really need these things? Do I need that service? And what I'm finding is they got you. You know, maybe part of it is just because I'm lazy. I hope that's not the case. I mean, I'm really trying to say do I really need these things? And what I'm mainly talking about, and I'm sure a lot of you can relate out there, is these subscription models. Remember when you used to buy a software program and that was it, and you got maybe a year or two worth of updates and then they say, hey, we got version blah blah blah coming out, and then you would decide to pay a small fee to upgrade. Well, now every other company on the planet wants you to pay a subscription. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Now here's one of the major problems I see with subscription models. And before I give you that, let me let me back up a little bit. These companies and organizations say, well, you know, if we get a monthly fee from each user, then we can put that towards innovation and making sure the product's up to date with the latest updates and compatibility for your computer system and your laptop, and your camera and your microphone and your you know, your mixing board and blah blah blah blah bla blah bla blah bah blahlah blah bah blah blah blah blah. To a point, I can maybe see that, But if you're in a business for software, shouldn't you be working on these things anyway, irregardless of how much revenue stream is coming in. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but on the flip side of that, okay, my thought process, and please leave in the comments section of the podcast or email me at Terry atweis'sthoughts dot com. You can reach me at Terry atwois thoughts dot com if you have a comment or even give me a show out out on an x about this particular episode of the podcast. You used to buy the software, You got your one or two years worth of updates, and you own it. And here's where I take umbrage with subscription models. If you stop paying that subscription, you're done. Your your shit doesn't work. Okay, excuse me that frog again. It's not like in the olden days where if you bought version five of x y Z Digital Audio Workstation for recording on your computer audio in that if you bought version x y Z, you know, version five point zero of xyz dog Digital Audio Workstation, and then you know, you got your updates for a couple of years, and then all of a sudden they come out with version six and you could decide, well, you know what, nah, I don't. I'll wait for version seven. Version five does everything I needed to do, and you don't upgrade, well, version five still works on your computer. Version five was still working with all your stuff, all your current equipment. You have your current operating system and things of that nature. Where on a subscription model, if you don't pay that monthly or yearly or semi yearly fee, your stuff just stops working and you got nothing only the past projects you did with it. You got nothing else to show for that except the money you invested to keep that software air quotes active and up to date on your system. And that really just it doesn't sit that well with me. How about you now? I know some of you are gonna and one of the first software programs I thought of with regards to digital audio workstations was Reaper. Reaper has a great program, and I'm actually exploring Reaper right now now, and that you get to use it for a couple months, fully featured, no restrictions whatsoever. There's just a little they call it a nag screen. It pops up for about five seconds. Hey, would you like to purchase just you know this is paid, you know you pay for this, et cetera. And then it goes away and it still allows you. It doesn't put any kind of watermark on anything, whether digitally audio visual wise. You get the full features of the software. Now. I have heard rumors and I don't know if this is the case, and I do not condone this. But after that free trial period is up, if you don't purchase it, you can still use it with the NAG screen. It just goes away now and then. And again, I am not telling you to do that, because that's wrong. There's people that you know, put their sweat equity into development of this software, which is really functional, by the way. It's really nice from my initial dealings with it, and it's very powerful, and there's a lot of customizability. You can customize Reaper the digital audio workstation. It works on Apple products, mac os, it works on Windows, it works on Linux. It basically works on any everything but a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from what I can say. So that's a good thing as well. And their pricing seems very very fair. I mean, if you're an individual or a small business that's not you know, running a lot of machines and high dollar value, you can pay like sixty bucks and you own it for I believe it's two full complete updates, mister producer. Is that correct? Two versions of the software or all the way to the next one, but still sixty bucks, And if you decide you don't want to upgrade, you can keep the other version and keep going, like we talked about in the opening of the program, which is great now if you're a bigger business and you have you know, higher volume income in that I believe it's like two hundred and thirty or forty dollars, but still very very very very reasonable in today's market for a full featured digital audio workstation with very powerful capabilities and the ability to customize it and make it operate just the way you want and look the way you want. It reminds me of pro tools light per se and there's nothing really light about Reaper. And again, I'm not a show for Reaper. I'm not getting paid by them or anything. I'm just I'm trying their software out. I take another quick step here. I don't know why I'm so I think it's allergies, why I'm so dry, and I sound a little kneasily, but I don't like taking all kinds of medication when I come into record for you folks, because then I I don't know. Sometimes I just feel like oooh, AnyWho. So you know with Reaper, you're you're we're almost back to that where how things I think should be and should have remained. Now I use other more powerful digital audio workstations. I use Adobe Audition, and we all know what Adobe did with their privacy policy and things of that, how they kind of stepped on their genitals over the summer here, and maybe they'll clean up their act. I mean, here's the thing, my friends, with regards to your privacy and the Internet, you know, and be able to say, wow, you know your stuff's getting sold left and right. I mean, even if you opt out and that it's still okay. You can press a little button that says no, please don't do that. They're doing it. So I would say, whatever you're producing and making, as long as it's not illegal, you know, and you know in that nature you know it is what it is. You know. Just just like when when you take photos and you put them in the cloud, whether it's Apple or Dropbox or the Google Cloud system, guess what, all your shit can be seen by everybody anywhere if they want to hack into it or you know, the government. Everybody can get into it, all right, no matter what they tell you, Oh, we're strong and we're encrypted and beloney, I don't believe it for a minute. You know what's strong and encrypted. The photographs you take on an old type of camera that you have in your home and you only show to people you want to show them to. That's encrypted. Okay. This other stuff about digital security, I don't know. I don't ascribe to that. Maybe I'm wrong, And again, please let me know in the comment section if you think I am oops, hit the microphone there. Let me know in the comment section if you think I am wrong. If there is truly a secure platform out there, but honestly, when you're putting it out there, it's the wild West still. I mean, there's the dark Web, and there's hackers, and there's you know, people that just stumble across stuff. Then you got government entities that want to get in and know everything about you. There's advertisers out there and corporations that want to know everything about you. And I know I'm coming off sounding up very crass and negative right now. It's just some thing, like I said over the past week or so. Actually it's been in a few weeks. It's been on my mind here and there, and I just wanted to talk about it on this episode of Voice Thoughts, the podcast here today with you so, and there's video software that does the same thing. Now, Now, I am a Mac user mostly. I do use Windows here and there in some very light Linux programs, but primarily I do use the Mac operating system because I have found it with audio and video production to be very stable, you know, less less likely to have issues with viruses and trojan horses and things of that nature. Knock on some wood here on the desk. However, that being said, I do use video production software from them that I had purchased called Final cut Pro. I do own also Logic Pro. Now, those are two programs that I paid each consecutively three hundred dollars for a few years back and have continued to apples, you know, good graces, continue to receive updates for and they haven't asked for another nickel out of my pocket on either one of those. And those are very powerful tools. Okay, Logic Pro is and so is Final cut pro. Very. A lot of stuff has made with both those software programs for audio and video, and there's a lot of other programs Apples offers that you can pay one price and then if you want certain add ons. They haven't fully gone that subscription model yet with their software. With that, thank goodness, and Apple, don't do it. Please don't, because I think you would alienate yourself with a lot of your customer base if you do. There's a lot of us loyal Apple people out here that like the fact that we can pay one price for those programs and get continual innovation and updates as they come along. So you know, it's just like it just gets aggravating, I guess to me sometimes, how about you, what do you think does it get aggravating to you that anytime you want to buy something, someone wants to just stick their hand in their pocket and get every last nickel. Another thing, the streaming services. Okay, I know those have to be subscription based because of the type of media delivery, but holy crap. You used to get a price increase maybe once every couple years with streaming service providers. Now it went to yearly, and now sometimes it's twice a year. Some of these streaming providers, are they even worth it anymore, or should we all go back to cable. Honestly, you know, the masses went and left Cable because Cable kept every year raising and raising and raising and really weren't providing any more value added services for that money. You know, they said, well, infrastructure cost, overhead, overba you know, we got to pay hey, pay, Well, that's the cost of doing business. Okay, you companies out there, that's the cost of doing freaking business. If you want to be in business, it's not all money raining down from the sky on you. You have to spend money to make money, not going to be blowing it out of the water every quarter in your profits. It's just this is the life. It's just life. But the streaming services, now, the streaming services have caught on because everyone flocked to the streaming services and said, oh and then the streaming services put out a couple original programs which are you know, successful, and there's a lot of them out there that are and a lot of them were they you know, they managed to snag some programs that network television gave up on. Longmire on Netflix is one, you know, there was that other program there. You know, there's many shows that have the networks, the regular television networks gave up on that went to streaming platforms and were pretty darren successful, and again some original programming on there as well. That being said, these streaming platforms then started wanted to do movies and became production houses and hired you know, production teams and form production companies and that under their name of their streaming platform. And they've produced some real good content, but they've produced some real shit too, okay. And the main crux of this is what I'm saying, is like every time you turn around, they're raising their prices. Now, so what's the real value. You know, I've been an Amazon Prime subscriber for over got to be well over a decade now. I remember when Amazon Prime was just getting the two day free shipping and they had very limited video content. Well, they kept up upgoing, you know, up selling and not upselling, but upgrading their video content more and more, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the latest little thing that Amazon did Jeff Bezos and company was now, if you do not want to see commercials in Amazon Prime, you got to pay an extra five bucks a month, you know, to hell with your loyalty for ten years Terry, screw your loyalty if you want, you know, if you don't want to sit through, you know, fifteen drug commercials before every program you want to watch, give us more money. And they kept raising the price, which I understand. I understand. I am not some spinster out in you know, the woods, living in a cave thinking I'm just going to pay five dollars a month for the next thirty five years. I understand costs change technologies developed in morph and you you need sometimes to raise your prices a little bit because your costs to you as a business to operate increase. I get that. But it wasn't like Amazon wasn't raising prices here and there over the years, which they did. But now to ask I think the public to pay an extra five bucks to just not see commercials to watch that. And you know, while we're on Amazon, what the hell happened to two days shipping on a lot of their you know, almost all their products used to be two days shipping. Now you're lucky if you get your stuff in a week. Sometimes you get every excuse under the sun from my dog ate it to we think we shot it into orbit with Elon Musk on the SpaceX. You know. So there used to be, you know, an expectation, you know, paying for the service and the goods that they would get there in two days. But now they just come along, slappy in the face and say, shut the hell up, sit down and take it. If you don't like it, oh well, tough crap. I don't know. And where's the oversight? Where's the oversight? Our government loves to get into our lives upside down and sideways and know everything we're doing. Where's the oversighte by you know, the authorities on these pricing increases. In some case, I would dare say price gouging. I'm talking from YouTube TV, Fubio, okay, Sling all of them, direct TV, direct TV Stream all of them, right on down the line, Netflix, all these places that are just seem to be gouging the consumer. Maybe what we need, maybe I could start the cry and the call. Maybe we just need a one month blackout of all these services. Just cancel your service and for one month don't watch them. Maybe put their feet to the fire a little bit. I don't know, you know, maybe maybe it is time for a little bit of a public backlash against the constant, you know, price increases on things, maybe learn to live without them, and you know, call their bluff, you know. I mean I've cut a couple services and called their bluff and said, you know what, I don't need you, and I've walked away. I have. I've walked away from a couple of things and said better off for it, honestly. But it's like, you know, and I understand, believe me. Don't get me wrong. I'm a businessman myself. I understand you have to look for new revenue streams, new ways to you know, keep your business afloat, especially in an ever changing economy and economic situations that arrive, and especially in the digital economy. I get it. You've got to innovator, your your butt's going to be left behind. I totally get that. I do marketing almost on a daily basis here, So it's not for my lack of you know, just being the average person out here in the public. I can just imagine what you out there think, average folks out there. I mean, we're paying more for everything. Groceries, gas, utilities, insurances, clothing, you name it, we're paying more for it now with this record inflation that we've been having and saying that well, you know, our costs have gone up. Only only can go so far? Only can go you know, instead of paying instead of paying you know twelve, you know, one million dollars or one hundred million dollars, I should say, instead of paying one hundred million dollars to produce a little Netflix series, how about you tell these people, well, you know what, we can afford fifty and that's it and this is how we're going to do it. If not, oh well, you know, I mean some of these people at these corporations got to hold themselves accountable, to hold their feet to the fire, and you know, be a little more responsible. But who knows. I mean, we're in an excess world. I mean, it's not just here in the United States, it's all around the planet that we want it. We want it, and we want it right now, and we want more of it, and we want it delivered quicker. So maybe maybe in retrospect, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the economic abuse were being pummeled with. I don't know, I don't know, but it just seems like, you know, in the software world and in the entertainment world and such certain things, we are just they're looking. They're looking for more ways to get their hands in our pockets. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there, and remember to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Weis's Thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right Wyse Wis's Thoughts, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about White's Thoughts and I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care.