engifineer

Its not electronic music formats that bother me. I havent bought a physical CD in I do not know how long (probably 15-20 years) but I still buy my music and download it to my device. If said service goes away, I still have my music. I have a friend more into the boots n pants type of stuff, and he had a particular DJ that he followed that was his favorite. Had tons of material saved by him on his playlists. Said streaming service went away, so all of his tracks did. Then he had to wait and eventually find it somewhere else, pay for that service, etc. So some of it is for that reason. But in the end, stuff I care a lot about using I want to have a copy of that is mine forever. Not tied to some subscription service. And since music has a huge impact on how I feel, I cant imagine if I lost my job, had to drop all non-necessary expenses and end up losing all the music that makes me feel good each day!

But anyhow... seems like this car subscription thing will just keep getting more common. Hopefully it is more limited to infotainment type stuff and not stuff that literally everyone uses on a daily basis. Add some of this to the high and ever growing TCOO of some cars, especially BMW. Would not surprise me if they made their wheel bolts (cause they are too hard headed to use studs lol) so proprietary you have to rent the tool in the trunk to change a flat some day It will be like a minibar. "We detected you removed the lug wrench from the tool kit and charged you $10/hr for every hour it was removed"

mosesbotbol

So, I take it you would not buy a house with a land lease either, lol? If you buy a condo, you kind of need a condo fee unless it's just two units and there is an agreement in place for ad hoc bills.

engifineer

WTF is going on with this thread? Shows new posts, shows a 3rd page, but you cant get to the third page. Posting this just to see where it ends up

engifineer

Interesting that once I posted that I could see this page ... odd!

I would not buy a house with a land lease either. Not even a slight consideration in my mind. I am not going to make the largest purchase of my life and have it on land someone else actually owns. That just seems .... dumb to me. Not trying to offend anyone, but it is bad enough to have to pay property tax forever, but actually having another private party own the land your house (that you own) is on seems like a very short sided decision. But I am one of those that is looking to move a bit further from the city (close to it but not in it), build or buy a smaller house than I live in now, have 3-5 acres (hopefully wooded), build a shop larger than the house (literally .. and my wife is more on board than this than I am!) and live a bit further from neighbors. I am not in the least impressed by huge new developments with 100 houses built on one of 3 floor plans, literally 20 feet from a neighbor on each side. Condos are even less impressive, even if it is sitting on the sand on a beach. I like to mow my lawn. I can deal with shoveling/plowing my own driveway. I have never hired anyone to work on a car or my house and worked in construction long enough pre and through college to damned near build an entire house on my own short of a few trades so I like doing all of that work myself. And half of that larger shop will by my wood shop, since other than pay, custom cabinetry was one of my favorite jobs ever. I like sitting outside and listening to the animals in my yard, not the neighbors chatting about their day at work, fighting, etc. We currently live in a suburb and at least have a fenced 1/3 acre lot, but still want to be a bit further out.

I realize I have been blessed with a father that is a mechanic to teach me that, and he also taught me basic construction before I went to votech for electrical. I also was able to learn from a professional building cabinets when I needed other work. So not everyone has those opportunities, and many simply would rather pay for all of that than do it themselves, so we each have our own priorities in life. I just prefer to not pay for literally every single thing for the rest of my life. Again, taxes are enough of that!

rwheelz

I side with you guys on land ownership, taxes, and particularly having great disdain for HOA's. But streaming music does kind of make sense to me. I could pay for a spotify subscription for the rest of my life with a tiny fraction of what I have spent actually purchasing music. Can I resell and cash out all of my iTunes? I would do it if I could. Do I really own them at all? I kept all of my CD's and DVD's, but don't plan on buying more. (Ok, one guilty indulgence I have is when I pass by the $3 DVD bin at walmart, I quickly look and grab an old classic if I see one).

I can't imagine paying a subscription fee for my vehicle, or not being able to work on it myself or have work done via an independent mechanic. It all sounds a little tooooo protectionist for my liking. I also hate adding recurring monthly expenses, no matter how small. Netflix just jacked my rate from $6.99 to $8.99 without so much as a notice. I can't find anything decent to watch on there anyway, so will likely just cancel it again.

vader1

Given what you posted and the fact you have a bunch of MR2's means you might be close to my age and then you start to get in to the phase where you don't buy a ton of new music anyway. Either because you think most of it sucks, or you have a bunch of music from "back in the day" that you would prefer to listen too. I don't buy any of the music services, just a random song once a month from Itunes. I love the fact that both my cars now have the card reader slots and I can put all of my music on something that costs $2 off of Amazon and is the size of a quarter, slide it into the dash and am good to go and never worry about pairing a phone. (since I still don't have one)

But if you are into the DVD discount bin, I too love my DVD/Bluray collection and love to have a hard copy. While sitting at home under marshall law and frowning behind my pointless surgical mask I pay-per-viewed the latest Guy Ritchie caper movie called The Gentlemen. It was quite good. So I thought, you know my collection of movies is all sci-fi, or action or war movies, but I don't have any caper movies so I looked at lists of best all time capers, went on to Ebay to find older Guy Ritchie movies and other capers (Heat, the Sting, yada yada) I stumbled into the fact that there are giant collections of DVD and BluRay's for sale for an average of $3-$5 with everything you can imagine. I spent about $100, got about 25 new to me movies and spent the boring lockdown pro-sportsless nights watching all of these movies. I created a list of all time great horror movies, capers, scifi, war, Wes Anderson flicks, Tarantino movies, whatever and went hunting on Ebay. It has been great. The main difference between this and the discount bin is your choices are unlimited for the most part. If you have not perused Ebay in a while and like old DVD's check it out. My $2 copy of Solaris is on tap for tonight.

TommyDeVito

Not a chance in hell. As engifineer said, no way. It's bad enough with the taxes. There should be a tax limit on my home too. I don't have any kids, so don't have any in the school system. I'm definitely up for paying my own way, what is that k-12, so 13 years of paying property tax and I should be done paying it, period. My taxes are almost half my monthly mortgage payments and 2/3 to 3/4 is the school system. It's ridiculous, and that's without HOA dues. A land lease, I'd rather be shot in the face. And I'm living in the only house I have ever lived in as I didn't live in one growing up. This is the last one. Next will be 10 acres, and a barn-do with a 3000-4000 sq garage on land where I can do whatever I want, be as loud as I want. Put in a damn gun range, boat ramp, make a little MX track and wail on the 450's.

engifineer, as it pertains to streaming, I'm talking about films, not audio. I was in the music business for over 20 years and I have thousands of records. I still buy CD's when I want an album, so I get the highest quality. Then I can move to i-devices. The streaming sucks comment from me pertaining to audio is films. I loathe it. Streaming is limited range so I have to turn my AVR way the F up, even then it's still limited range. I prefer 4k and blu-ray discs all day. The only time I will stream a film is if there is no other way to get it, is say like the Irishman. Big film buff so Scorsese films are required viewing. That was the only way to get it. I'm dreading the day that physical media goes away because I have film soundtracks like say, BR2049, Tron Legacy, Oblivion, and a bunch more that rattle the theater and walls. It's awesome. Haven't watched some bs streaming service that could provide the same as disc yet and I have tried them all. Thankfully there are still snail mail Blu-Ray and 4k disc services that arrive to my mailbox weekly.

engifineer, what's funny is those developments you wrote about. Here they are big $. And they are building the homes so close together, I could scale a 2 story home, Batman style, by putting my feet on one house, putting my back on the other and inch my way up, easily. I mean they are so close together, if the two bedrooms, opposed, upstairs, if the windows were open, I could literally reach out of my window into the other home. That would be great if I was 16 and the daughter next door was hot AF, would enable pow pow and never get caught. As a grown man, I drive by these developments and just marvel at them. And it'll be a 500k per home development. And people eat them up, and they have no backyard. It'l be a porch with enough room for a chihuahua to take a dump, that's about it.

ssbfgc, no I don't think this stuff is all millennials but the largest age group of all this garbage is. It's already bad enough anywhere I go everyone has their face buried in their phone. I mean isn't just common, it's rampant. If people want to stream or subscribe their whole life away, more power to them, I'm tired of it being forced on all of us.

Films. I can't even go to the cineplex anymore to see the new release without some young(er) ADD person sitting next to me and/or someone constantly checking their phone. See American life used to be before your mobile computer/phone/errything, go to theater and go to the window. Buy a ticket. For 2 hours be relatively quiet and watch the film, enjoy, you paid for it. Now it's hey I do my phone everywhere so DEAL WITH IT! 2 years straight going to films up until April of 2019, ADD and phones. Every single film and used to go most weekends. Them days are over.
Films at home, slowly or quickly depending on how you look at it, streaming, complete with crap audio. I won't cover people thieving and how that affects us all, nor people "Sharing" their subscriptions, and how that leads to higher prices.
Go shopping for groceries, have to try and get around idiots in the store, like getting around a drunk person on the highway who is swerving. They are on the phone having a conversation, they are face timing it, just delusional that other people are in there trying to get their shit done.
Driving, I don't make a single drive any longer without someone swerving, going too slow, or camping at a green light because they are dicking with their phone. I see it every time I drive now. It's dangerous AF on the highway.
Go to the gym, again, everyone on their phone. Nobody cleaning up after themselves. If they can be bothered at all to re-rack, it's in the wrong place. Used to you'd get your ass kicked out and your gym membership torn up for being a douche. Now it's acceptable behavior. Well I'm going to build my own gym now.
Go to a restaurant to eat, someone has their phone on speaker or playing some loud game. Go to a bar, everyone there is on their phone. Used to you'd go the bar to have a blast, get some drinks in you, dance (not just pump your fist), talk, dance on the bar, get laid, used to be a blast. Now it's phone time. I won't cover that awful karaoke.
Sports or performance cars, affordable ones, especially with manuals, dying a slow or quick death. Why? Because everyone wants to CUV it. People are too damn dumb to understand the mfr's want you buying them as they are treated as light trucks for MPG purposes so the mfr's have marketed the living f out of them. And Americans are very very stupid, and eat up marketing like a Hyena tearing into a Caribou. Everyone wants to be McSame now. We used to be a society of individuals going their own way, doing their own things. Because people are dip shits and so susceptible to marketing, that's over. Everyone wants to do what everyone else is doing. So click "like", and "subscribe", and don't forget to hit the notification bell. And follow me on fakebook, snapcrap, insta-crap, and twatter. Whatever you do, FOLLOW ME!

Society has shifted. It's all about that g damn phone and subscription services and social media applications. I've been on a surf trip to Maui and people are more interested in videoing every damn thing for their followers than being in the moment, taking it in, taking a break from work, etc. Walking out to Kaanaapali beach in the morning for a swim and seeing all ages sitting their on their screens, swiping, and using their thumbs. And everyone is hooked on "convenience". Oh you mean I have clean my own house or apartment? You mean I have to cut my grass myself, with my hands? You mean I have to go into the grocery store and get my groceries myself, with my own hands and a shopping cart? Oh my gawd, I have to physically write a check for a bill, or use a credit card, and can't pay with my phone? This is some BS!!!!! That little screen everyone carries around with them has turned everyone into ass holes and narcissists thinking they are special. You aren't. Nobody gets out of this alive, we all die in the end, no matter how important you think you are, how rich or poor you are, you end up in the ground or in the fire. So you out there, cupcake, all you are is a single grain of sand in human history. It's changed society, for the worse, and it'll never go back. Hi Karen! Now they want to make our vehicles subscription based? Invest in restoration businesses now, business is going to be damn good in a few years.

mosesbotbol

In New England, land leases are virtually unheard of, but I know they are pretty common in the South West and probably some other locales. Not sure I would be too quick to get into a land lease either.

I no longer care about owning music. I just want to listen to it. Been selling off my record collection; worth a lot more than I paid. I am happy with Tidal and leave it at that.

rob-2

Well the way I look at it. For $9/month I have unlimited access to music in a portable fashion. Thats about 10 records/year to purchase, give or take. I can add or shrink my collection at any time without spending anymore money. While on a road trip my wife can pull up music we might not care to own but think is fun to listen to. It's pretty hard to sling around a CD collection these days and I don't want to get into the business of loading my iTunes with purchases. The shorter version is I don't 'care' about owning music, I 'care' about listening to music.

The challenge when that becomes a material possesion like a car is that same line of thinking doesn't hold for me. Partly because I see music like I do TV/Movies - owning those is foolish. The music I listened to in the 80s and 90s isnt in my regular play list anymore. Similarly, I don't rewatch 90s movies regularly. Ownership brings no value. The forms have also changed. How easy is it to watch a VHS movie collection? Not very. Streaming it provides flexibilities ownership does not. Now with a car I want to own the whole thing like I do a house.

rob-2

TommyDeVito try moving to a place in the country with lower taxes and stop complaining like a whiny little baby. You own your life so act like it. So over people complaining about things they can change. Clearly there is some reason you enjoy living where you do or you'd move - so pay your taxes and bequiet about it. Or get into politics to change it, or vote or do what I first said - move.

When 4K is old school like VHS and you cannot play it anymore you're just going to be that old person complaining about how 8 tracks were amazing cause you never had to rewind them. Just cause the options available in the marketplace don't work for you doesn't mean they suck or have no value. In fact, sales would suggest they dont suck. What the market has shown is most people aren't audio files, they just want to listen to music wherever they go. Makes them no better or worse then you. Most people listen to music because of the way it makes them feel and similarly there is a tone of music options out there.

While I generally agree with the entire phone comment, consider for a moment the very lame reality we're discssing matters on a website instead of face to face, with people we'd never meet. Feel free to be the pot or kettle - it don't matter to me. FYI I don't spend much time on my phone but I do spend about 10hours/day on a computer making a living. Technology has it's place. Parents have been failing their kids for decades by not understanding the implications of technology on their development. Give it a few more generations and they'll gladly take a chip to avoid having to lug a phone around....