Um subscription to what? Is none an ok answer?
I pay for my fibre, and my phone. They’re indispensable.
Oh and a VPN
I can see why people pay subscriptions for media, but people who pay subscriptions for software or services are a massive problem. If people refused to use a service as soon as it turned to a subscription model, the idea would’ve died out
Nope, folks are fucking stupid
I don’t think of phones as subscriptions but ok, yeah, they are somewhat needed, so fine, especially if you use it enough.
YouTube Premium. I watch a lot of content on YT. I work from home and will generally have something on in the background while I work, so I’m easily consuming 10+ hours of content a day. It’s honestly worth it for me, if for nothing else than to avoid the cat-and-mouse hellscape of adblocking. I’d rather pay $25 each month and have everyone in my family have an ad-free experience on all their devices no matter where they are or what network they’re using, than having to help them troubleshoot browser extensions and DNS settings and PiHoles and all that.
Edit: Absolutely insane that people are upset that I pay for a service I make use out of, lmao
It’s funny to me that people have such a problem with YouTube Premium. There are a LOT of reasons to criticize YouTube/Google, but YouTube Premium is about as close as it gets to the platonic ideal of a video subscription service. It completely banishes any ads you’d get without paying, and it provides the creators you watch with more value than someone watching without premium. If showing ads is unacceptable, and paying to not see ads is unacceptable, then what’s the alternative? People have to make a living, and servers don’t run on magic.
It’s funny to me that people have such a problem with YouTube Premium.
Just means you don’t see or agree with their point of view.
YouTube Premium is about as close as it gets to the platonic ideal of a video subscription service. It completely banishes any ads you’d get without paying
I don’t understand what you mean here (could be because English isn’t my native language). For YouTube premium, you still need to pay. So how does it banishes ads without paying?
Anyway, you still get in-video sponsors which doesn’t get automatically skipped by YouTube’s “premium”. A lot of people (included myself) find premium expensive for what it is. I, personally, don’t need the whole package for €15-20/monthly. It could’ve been like €5/monthly to remove ads.
Sure one could use advantage of currencies but ain’t worth it when there’s uBlock Origin + SponsorBlock for Firefox, SmartTube for TV, uYou+ for iOS and ReVanced for Android.
If showing ads is unacceptable, and paying to not see ads is unacceptable, then what’s the alternative?
It is not that’s “unacceptable”, it is the price and ‘value’ you get out of it.
People have to make a living, and servers don’t run on magic.
Google/ YouTube (whatever) as a company are immensely rich. Toning down the price or change their tactics won’t hurt them so much. But of course they won’t, I would not either because eventually there are people who will gladly pay the €15/monthly. So why change?
It also pays the creators better than ads ever did or ever will.
Sure you could pay them all individually, but that gets tedius real fast when you like hundreds of channels.
Yeah, I’ve got a lot of channels I subscribe to. I don’t know the total count right now, but last I checked it was 100+. Some of them are daily/weekly uploaders, but I think a majority of them are much less frequent. If I had the means, I’d rather financially support those creators directly, but that’s just impossible for me right now. So at the very least, I’m making my views more valuable to them.
I had did a premium trial and totally agree. I am always suprised by the people who expect a service as big as youtube to be entirely free.
I subscribe to YouTube Premium because I do watch a lot of YouTube plus you get YouTube Music included. I wanted to switch to Spotify but after years without seeing ads on YouTube, I don’t think I can go back.
As predatory and invasive as google is, its still a small miracle that theres a free add supported tier.
A bus pass maybe, that way you can just get on and not have to fumble around paying the fare when you board.
I live in the Los Angeles area and have a car but yes, I have the bus pass on my phone for when I don’t want to drive or just have a short trip in town. It’s great!
Maybe it’s just my area but there’s also like, a 25% chance the reader won’t work and you’ll just get a free ride if you try to pay with your phone rather than cash. It makes hopping on the bus a fun gamble!
A reputable VPN, preferably with port forwarding (I use AirVPN, $5/mo and I have no problems with it.)
A Usenet provider and indexer (Newshosting is reasonable; nzbgeek offers a lifetime subscription)
Do you use the VPN to hide your traffic or to access foreign streaming sites?
Yes. And to watch porn when I’m visiting family in Texas.
Wait, you can’t watch porn in Texas? 😂
I pause to appreciate their concern for my soul as I set my location to Kazakhstan and grab the lotion.
Narc
Yo, we don’t ask that kind of questions here!
Paying the subscription for The Great Courses is absolutely insane value if its something you use regularly. Its not a credit system like Audible, its literally unlimited streaming of university level courses for 20$ a month (or like 12$ if you pay annually). The individual courses can cost upwards of 100$ so even if you only take one course every two months you still haven’t lost money.
It’s infinite learning, i cant shill hard enough.
my library gives them to me for free through hoopla
Thats awesome! Do they offer the whole catalogue?
afaict
Oh this seems like something I’d be interested in for sure. Thank you!
You bet! It’s even better if you have a braindead job like I do, then you can spend all day learning and getting paid for it.
Youtube and OCW have infinite amounts of that, why pay some company?
Because they don’t want to sift through tons of garbage to find the good stuff. I presume.
Proton Mail. High quality mail service where they don’t mine your emails for data to sell. It’s like 4-5 bucks a month depending on how you pay and it’s been worth every penny.
They are always giving you goodies as a bonus for being a subscriber. I second the proton subscription
Premiumize. I dont fully understand. But they have server farms thst will download your torrent, and then you download the file from them. Its faster and your IP doesn’t see it as a torrent. You also dont have to leave ypir PC on if there’s only one seeder. If somone else has downloaded thst torrent before its already in the farm and you visit download it from them.
However the main thing is they integrate into Kodi and my new fave Stremio. So you can just stream anything anytime without all the torrent stuff I just mentioned.
PBS, specifically the Passport that you can get through your local PBS. You get tons of content and you support public broadcasting
Having your own domain is pretty cool, even if it’s just a single page with some text and links to social media profiles.
Dropout and MeansTV
Dropout is a mostly improv streaming service, very high quality entertainment and a chemistry between performers only seen between people who love each other, it’s like watching a friend group of very prepared comedians. It’s about 6 bucks a month and password sharing is encourages
MeansTv is a worker owned streaming service aiming to provide information and entertainment tailored for a class conscious audience, it’s mostly documentaries but they’re really good and i’ve seen many ideas from all the left spectrum, it’s about 10 bucks a month
Sam Reich is the goat
Love the content from MeansTV!
public library
here the subscription fee for one year is about as expensive as a single book.
Your highest quality local newspaper (includes online).
GeForce now. As long as you have streaming speed Internet you can play so many games, at such high quality.
Microsoft game pass, I haven’t tried it with the above because I don’t have great Internet (I’ve got grandfathered into the intro price of GeForce now, I’m not canceling it, I’ll have better Internet some day), but it’s better than browsing games at my blockbuster/warehouse/Hollywood video back in the day.
YouTube premium. I’ve only listen to ads when I’ve first turned on a new phone, every time I do I count my money as well spent. Add in YouTube music (much better than Spotify imo) and I’m good for 95% of my media input.
A hundred bucks a month on various content creators. Not listening to ads in my podcasts, not having to fast forward and rewind, and supporting the people who make my life happier, it’s a win win.
For Microsoft Game Pass I look for deals on cdkeys.com or eneba.com and get Ultimate for $6-7/month. Been doing it for years.
Been listening to digitally imported since the winamp days! Never subscribed though. Good stuff!
Yeah, they’ve been around for ages and are still excellent. I’m also very glad they still support actual audio streams and don’t require some stupid app.
(No affiliation just a happy customer.)
I use the app haha I play it in my car during my commute.
Ha, you do you… But I’m glad they have alternative means to enjoy the streams.
- A privacy-respecting mail service: I use mailbox.org since it follows email standards, but I think many ppl like Proton mail/Tutanota. Recommend because they are privacy-respecting, and self-hosting email is way too difficult
- More of a yearly subscription per-se, but a personal domain from any domain registrar. Recommend because why not? There are so many cool things one can do with a domain: custom email, your own blog, professional website for job, …
- A VPS from Linode (or any reliable provider). Recommend because some things are better done on a VPS… and I want a public-facing IP that is not directly from my bedroom
- I used to have subscriptions to the local arcade. Recommend because I basically get cardio workout on the DDR machine (and it costs less than a gym. And easier to cancel)
Protonmail is great, it comes with cloud storage, a really good password manager, and a very fast VPN. The linux experience is mid for their apps, but great on MacOS or Windows.
