I’m usually against subscription services, but there are a few I use that I think provide enough value to justify the cost. Are there subscriptions you think are worth the money for you?
Bitwarden.
Annual donation to KDE Foundation.
Donations to a number of my podcast hosts.
Premiumize.
Real-Debrid. No more paying for compressed streaming services!
- A seed box (Whatbox). I’m paying USD 15/month, and they’ve actually upgraded my storage and bandwidth twice now without any price increases. I think I’ve been using that for roughly 10 years now. At this point, it’s cheaper than any single streaming service, while allowing me access to basically every TV show and movie ever produced, and I can easily share my library with friends via Plex. Now that I have *aars, it’s very little effort to keep up with my favorite shows.
- Whatever the YouTube music thing is called now. I signed up when it was brand new, and while I occasionally consider going back to piracy for music, it’s just not worth the effort for me these days, but I am extremely opposed to ads.
- Amazon Prime. I should probably cancel, but I don’t have a car and definitely utilize the same day delivery quite often.
- Housing. Do mortgage payments & HOA fees count as subscriptions? Lol. I definitely get a lot of value out of housing, and appreciate the fact that I don’t have to wonder if my landlord is going to renew my lease each year.
- YouTube Premium, because I listen to a ton of music but I also like listening to dorkier deep-dive video channels.
- Disney+ w/ Hulu because I am a raging Marvel fanboy and like to be able to keep up with shows like Simpsons/Family Guy/Bob’s Burgers.
- Office 365. This is the most likely to get canceled at some point. I used to need Office for work, but now I mostly use the Notes app and Excel on my phone… and the 1 TB of OneDrive storage isn’t as great a deal as it once was.
I donate about $5/month to a bunch of nonprofits that I benefit from.
- Debian project
- openbsd project
- wikimedia foundation
- EFF
- Internet Archive
My career wouldn’t exist without these folks, so it’s the least I can do.
Great selection. I feel if you have the means to do so, drop a few dollars their way each month. You’ll likely spend more on a night out drinking anyway 😜.
- Tidal ($5.82/month student), like my HiFi music, even if it’s indistinguishable on most of the speakers I use
- Nebula ($2.50/month), mostly the same shit as on YouTube but as-free (without adblock) and usually a bit early access
- PIA (~$2.33/month), avoids a Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, Discovery +, Paramount+, you get the gist+ subscription. You had a good thing going but you got greedy and fucked it
- Recurring donation to Lemmy dev ($5/month), despite any of the devs political views, I appreciate the service and continued support of the software and recognize that dev isn’t free,though I do need to sit down and set one up for my instance as well as my mastodon & pixelfed instances.
Some of these are yearly but reduced to monthly for ease of viewing
At the risk of being crucified, YouTube Premium.
I like having no commercials on something by legitimate means, and unlike most streaming services, the content stays there once it’s there. For the hours we use it, it’s still a hell of a deal.
I adblock and sail the seas, but Premium gives what it promises without any real hassle. We use it way more than we used Netflix or Disney+.
Same, I have the Family tier and it just makes sense. At 23/month if all 5 slots are filled it works out too $4.60/month/person.
No ads AND no hassle with this and that instance going down or that app being blocked or browser shannigans
Same here. I’m mostly paying because at least some of the money goes to creators, and I don’t want to have to constantly be fighting with the adblocker stuff. I watch a lot of youtube (perhaps more than is healthy) and realistically it does cost Google money to host it.
This is mine too. I use the hell out of it and YouTube music that comes with it. If we look at $/hr, then this is a no-brainer for me.
I know this is the “wrong answer,” but YouTube. I watch it a lot, and mostly on my PS in the evenings. If I only watched it in my phone or PC, I wouldn’t bother.
I also pay for Spotify for my mom and I, and ProtonVPN/Mail for myself. Oh, and PS+, which I still think is bullshit. 🙄
It’s only a ‘wrong answer’ because people here downvote on an ideological basis. If it works for you, then it’s okay 👍
Hulu. Best collection of shows for me, right now.
Spotify. I listen to music constantly, it’s a necessity.
Libro.fm for audiobooks, and supporting my local book store.
My gym membership (lumping Zwift in there too). I exercise a lot, like 15+ hours per week. These are part of my chosen lifestyle.
Opensnow. The only phone app I pay for. It’s a weather app but better if you’re a skier/snowboarder.
RuneScape. I love OSRS and I enjoy playing in my downtime. I’m an adult, I can do what I want.
The Atlantic. Because of its magazine heritage, there’s the perfect number of new articles per day (5 or 10), all top notch journalism and beautifully written. I look forward to reading a few of them each evening.
Apple Music. It’s just easier than pirating music. You also get Apple Classical which is awesome as classical music can’t be indexed in the same way as regular music.
And Atmos! And 4K music videos! Couldn’t agree more.
Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, protonmail / drive / vpn, Usenet, bitwarden
That’s about all I have.
Although I pirate 90% of what tv and movies we watch, I feel like I pay my fair share for internet stuff.
I might sub to a few local streaming sites from time to time. To catch up on tv.
Ground News because I want to see what’s going on in news across the media spectrum and they make it a lot easier.
Discord nitro classic because I don’t have a better alternative and I get the features I actually need at half the price I’d pay for the normal subscription.
A VPN because none of your goddamn business.
Protonmail
Spotify
Motortrend (now Discovery Plus)
Nebula
An small-time streamer
Amazon Prime - planning to cancelJetBrains IDEs.
