What subscription services do you actually pay for and get value from?
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?
A TV EPG provider so i can set my HTPC USB receivers to record stuff each week for the family (1. It details for specific channels new series/new episodes for the week aired between certain times of day which websites dont seem to do 2. Its cheaper & far more efficient than a TV mag/newspaper 3. Its extremely cheap so great value)
I donate to some open source projects/devs when I find I'm using a product regularly
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. 🙄
Surprising this thread is so positive so I'll share mine I've gotten downvoted for before:
Discord Nitro.
I use it a lot as I'm active in a bunch of servers. I don't even pay for the expensive one, just the $3/month one and it's TOTALLY worth being able to make emojis of my cat and annoy people with them, here are my favorited and frequently used emojis:
Bring in the downvotes, but Spotify. I listen to music several hours a day, both old and new and it helps me discover lots of new music and even genres. For me personally, that's worth the money.
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
Amazon Prime; I run a business repairing things. I'm small enough that I can't afford to keep everything in stock for various makes/models. Getting it here quickly allows me to repair more machines faster. There are no places to get the parts I need locally.
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.
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.
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.
YouTube premium. Mostly for music but no-ads is nice.
I have the basic iCloud sub but it feels like a scam. I should at least get more storage if I buy more Apple products. If you have two devices your backups get too big for the free storage amount.
I offloaded a bunch of things from iCloud but it becomes a hassle for how cheap their subscription is.
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.
But I do regularly buy gift cards for my self to get Geoguessr, I just refuse the whole subscription model.
If companies offered a one year pass without a subscription attached I believe they would have more customers.
They could even make it a few € more expensive than the normal subscription price for that period and I believe it would work fine.
A few weeks ago I found that you can get a lifetime pass for Nebula and Curiosity Stream for a resonable cost (a few hundred USD IIRC) and I am seriously considering it.
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.
Spotify: yes, you can download and set up your own music but spotify has a bunch of integrations that just work without any effort. I'm also using a student subscription (that will probably keep working forever) so it's not very expensive.
Mobile contract: mobile data is expensive compared to other countries but at least my current ISP has coverage everywhere. Too bad everything else about the company sucks.
Deezer. Last year I listened to 770hrs of music. The majourity of that using the suggestion algorithm. I couldn't buy that many albums and I certainly couldn't name the all the albums I've pulled songs from.
At home I'm an album person. But, in the distractions of everyday life keep blasting singles at me and I'll wait for something to catch my ear.
Proton Unlimited, which gives me access to mail, storage and a VPN.
Linode, I have a VPN which I use for selfhosting some things.
Various domain names. They're actually cheaper than you think they are.
Youtube Premium. I watch a lot of YouTube, and it helps creators.
Discord Nitro. Begrudgingly.
1Password. Technically I don't pay for this, as I get it free as part of a plan from work, but I'd probably buy it when that runs out.
I'm kinda interested in watching streams more (to diversify my video watching habits), so am kinda curious about Twitch's ad-free premium plan thing as well...
Of course, there's also donations and patreon/subscribestar/ko-fi subscriptions, but I don't really consider those "subscription services".
Logseq sync, need it for work, and its only £3.74 (5 cows for the Americans). Tried proton VPN plus as well, too expensive for me being £8.38, but its fine because their free tier is generous and I can do video calls with plus aswell. Food is also a good subscription, you can find food shops everywhere with great variety, but the price of the overall spend is higher, but if you buy high volume low cost food you can combat this price increase; some people like to spend extra and add alcohol to their subscription, but i don't see the appeal unless its liquor shots like Apple sour or Baileys, because they taste good.
NextCloud hosting, since I don't trust myself to do it safely.
BitWarden, 50/50 for the value and to support them. Tuta.io, for the custom domain and extra storage. Addy.io (or SimpleLogin)
Nebula, if the LG app was available where I live/on my TV (yeah, the household wants to use a spytv).
I've been using Trade coffee for the last 2 years or so. The subscription basically amounts to free shipping.
The selection is good, and I get something new every time I order without having to go to multiple websites to see who has what in stock that I'd like.
I don't think their recommendations are that great, but the filter options make it easy to find something I am interested in.
I subscribe to two podcast networks on patreon. I could listen for free, but I feel it's worth paying for the several hours a month of entertainment I get from them.
Udio. There aren't yet any locally-runnable music generation tools like it, and even if they were they'd have to be pretty darned good to rival Udio's quality. I make a lot of use of it for tabletop roleplaying games, but also "just for fun." It's only $10 a month.
I'm learning a language as a hobby and Disney+ BY FAR is the most consistent in having dubs and subs available in a variety of languages. I haven't actually watched anything that didn't have it (for the language I'm learning). Whereas most things on other streaming sites don't tend to have it at all unless it's a foreign film and that's the original language.