I modified the title to make it more descriptive
I also think it’s time for the open source and/or fediverse Trakt alternatives to get some love.
The price change is listed as going from $30 a year to $60 a year, and they’re also changing everyone to that price:
Starting May 20, 2025, all VIP renewals will move to a standardized price. This means that any legacy, promotional, or grandfathered pricing will no longer apply to renewals processed on or after that date. Instead, all VIP memberships will renew at the new standard rate going forward.
People are not happy on their forum:
https://forums.trakt.tv/t/upcoming-vip-renewal-pricing-changes/56676
This user poll suggests that around 97% of respondents (at the time of making this post) will not renew
https://forums.trakt.tv/t/poll-will-you-keep-your-vip-membership-at-60/56923
For people outside of the loop,
Trakt has been running since 2010, it got popular because it lets you track and record your watch history with a UI that no one else seems to offer. It connects to Plex and other services so you can scrobble your watches, get notified of new episodes and movies, and has a social layer throughout the site to commune with other users and comment on what you’re watching.
In the past few years, however, there has been one controversy after another.
Trakt abruptly stopping using TVDB for its data due to API costs and now uses TMDB. This created a number of problem with data being mismatched or completely wrong. The leadership of TMDB has a lot of weird ideas about how shows and movies are formatted, splitting episodes into multiple episodes here and merging episodes and entire series together there, or even disqualifying series from being listed over arbitrary technicalities. Trakt blindly follows whatever TMDB does and their admins locked a long-running thread complaining about these issues on their own forums.
Trakt started arbitrarily changing the way the site looks. Including locking the original color scheme behind a paywall, leaving free users a new, gaudy bright purple color scheme that isn’t even complete (random elements of the free site are still the original maroon). The site overall is getting harder to load and uses far more resources than it did just a few years ago. Trakt launched a “lite” version of the site which is not light in size, it’s just the mobile UI for desktop which is just as resource intensive.
Recently, Trakt nerfed crucial features for free users (and even for paid users in certain ways), limiting playlist making and record-keeping to the point where free is almost useless. And the reduction of playlists, which are curated and shared by users on the site, reduces engagement throughout the entire community.
Now this.
The whole company is becoming corporate and as a result been subjected to enshitification.
I am still using it, for now, because I still benefit from the recommendations it gives me based on what I’ve already watched. Once that stops being the case, I’m just going to leave.
I keep text documents of everything I watch. What I enter into Trakt is just a mirror. Trakt does allow all users (including free users) to download their data and just bugger off. So everyone who uses them should go test that feature.
I am outside of the loop and I appreciate your break-down. I am all for paying for useful services, but I have such a backlog of media that I need to watch, I don’t benefit from Trakt. I like a paid business model, though
We should all question a “free” app that lets us spend 1 or 2 or 8 hours a day on their platform. We’ve gotten greedy, thinking that everything should be personal data or advertiser supported. It stinks that Trakt is cutting features while raising prices, all for a pretty simple service, but I think subscription services that protect your privacy are worth funding.
It’s really sad, I am a VIP user for 10 years now but a 100% price increase is just too much for me. Are there any valid alternatives? The other commercial ones mentioned here cost pretty much the same so that not really and option for me.
Also, you mentioned you can export your data? Were you referring to third party export tools like traktextract?
*edit: Found the GDPR export.
I believe it also has a CSV export
I used the GDPR export which worked, now I just have to find a replacement.
Yep, there’s an export feature built into the site now. It used to be by request only, but now anyone can create a backup from the Settings > Data page on command.
I used it for a while but I don’t think I ever knew it could do those things. I just used it to manually keep track of what I watched. Was more useful in keeping track of movies but I liked TrackSeries.tv better for keeping track of my shows.
Course, I don’t think it can do any of the things you mention either so it’s certainly not a replacement. It is free though. And I’m not aware of any limits on it.
EDIT: I take that back. If you follow a series it will show you when there are new episodes. I do make use of that feature. That’s really been my biggest problem. Knowing when a new season of something comes out.
Sonarr has a calendar that shows you airing days of shows you track if you already use that for managing your library
I don’t. Nor do I use plex.
As I remember things, TVDB is the one with the weird episode splitting and ordering…
I really don’t think this qualifies as enshittification. There’s no evidence they’ve taken funding or have any shareholders they need to appease. They also only increased prices and have not moved the paid/free boundaries in any way.
I think it’s much more likely this is a side project that simply doesn’t pay for itself well enough, and the alternative would be shutting it down. If people aren’t happy with that, it’s totally reasonable to just cancel.