People not coprotations.
In other words, things like Patreon or FOSS projects, where you subscribe to a “person/small group” to support whatever they do.
Volumio - Multiroom audio service. You install the os on a pi and hook up some speakers. The basic streamer is free for local files on a single device at a time. I paid $200 for a lifetime pass a few years ago. That gets you multiroom synced audio like Sonos and lets you add in streaming services.
Qobuz - Music streaming service. Much higher quality than Spotify, no shitty MQA like Tidal. They will have articles diving into a genre, band or record label with links to notable albums. It’s “station” playlists and similar artist recommendations are garbage but I’m more of an album person.
Never heard of Qobuz. Been looking to replace yt music. Their algorithm is trash.
I like Qobuz, but it’s worth noting Tidal has discontinued their usage of MQA in favour of FLAC across the board.
Fyi, Tidal dropped MQA in July and moved to using FLAC. https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/06/tidal-officially-dumps-mqa/ I like Qobuz too, and I support and encourage their mission in the streaming world. But personally I find more of my favourite artists are available on Tidal than on Qobuz. Unfortunately I find the tidal “station”-style playlists are also garbage. Nobody has a chance to effectively compete with Spotify’s algorithm on that front.
I’ve never heard of Qobuz before but just signed up for the 30 day trial. Thank you!
PBS, specifically the Passport that you can get through your local PBS. You get tons of content and you support public broadcasting
My own domain name, on which I host a whole array of services (such as this Lemmy server). Bitwarden is also cool, I pay for it even tho I self host it to support development. But even if one doesn’t self host, it’s still worth it. Only 10€ per year for such an epic service. A VPS at Hetzner is definetly worth it. A relatively cheap service for all the stuff you can do on it.
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!
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
What’s wrong with paying a subscription for a service that requires resources to continuously operate, such as email hosting?
A reputable VPN, preferably with port forwarding (I use AirVPN, $5/mo and I have no problems with it.)
A Usenet provider and indexer (Newshosting is reasonable; nzbgeek offers a lifetime subscription)
Do you use the VPN to hide your traffic or to access foreign streaming sites?
Yes. And to watch porn when I’m visiting family in Texas.
Wait, you can’t watch porn in Texas? 😂
I pause to appreciate their concern for my soul as I set my location to Kazakhstan and grab the lotion.
Yea, this law was just christian bullshit
Narc
Yo, we don’t ask that kind of questions here!
Paying the subscription for The Great Courses is absolutely insane value if its something you use regularly. Its not a credit system like Audible, its literally unlimited streaming of university level courses for 20$ 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.
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.
my library gives them to me for free through hoopla
Thats awesome! Do they offer the whole catalogue?
afaict
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.
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.
Nebula. It’s a video streaming service that is ad free and directly supports the creators.
I also have a Nebula subscription and recommend it as well. $60/yr or a $300 lifetime subscription.
Frequently you can get discount codes from the creators on there. I think I paid $20 this year.
Yeah I paid $30. Totally worth it.
It’s crazy that we live in a time where you have to add to your answer that it is ad free
As a fan of Jet Lag and the crew, it pains me how expensive it is outside the US.
Your highest quality local newspaper (includes online).
If you like rock and roll then I recommend Night Flight streaming service. They were running a deal if you paid for the year it cost less than $5 a month
I’ll check it out thanks!
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.
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.
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 a big as youtube to be entirely free.
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.
As predatory and invasive as google is, its still a small miracle that theres a free add supported tier.
Having your own domain is pretty cool, even if it’s just a single page with some text and links to social media profiles.
More like a yearly subscription, but Down Dog. Keeps me active and I never get bored with them because the app is very customizable!
Do you do the yoga or which classes do you do?
I only use it for yoga, but a friend also uses it for meditation and rotations
