Ask Lemmy

I try to minimize how many I have. I consider Internet/Phone utilities so not on the list.

Debrid service: Pirate VOD streaming for very cheap hooked to to Stremio which also gets me access to live TV broadcasts. I use Premiumize personally since RealDebrid revealed their true colours under legal threat. Slightly higher price but they're a package deal with debrid, vpn, cloud storage, couple other things I don't use.

Amazon: I use their free Prime trials to buy Zeolite cat litter (simply not available within Canada and I think it's unfortunate because it's the best and cheapest long term) and then cancel right away so it doesn't renew. I try to buy from Canadian stores or at least non-USA as much as possible now. They offer free Prime trials aggressively to get people back on month subscriptions even if you cancel all the time. When Prime is active, I redeem all the free games giveaways on Prime Gaming. A shit ton BTW, way more than Epic gives out. Usually they're keys for GOG and Epic. Some on Amazon's own client. Heroic Launcher supports all 3. I'm not regularly subbed yet I've redeemed 443 games across those three, although that also includes Epic's own giveaways from their own client which are separate from what Amazon gives away. Will I play any? Yes, a tiny % of them lol. Not a lot of shovelware either. Mainly however, it's for cat litter :P

HelloFresh: Temporary, learning to cook /w my roommate and fix my shitty diet which caught up to me. Actually saving money because I ate take out and ordered delivery all the time before this. Bad habits. This has been going well.

That's it. I have 3 but only a Debrid service is a regular.

I have the space for a home gym and built one with used hardware, I agree memberships are a negative experience when you go to cancel them at least where I live.

I don't stream music besides from my Youtube playlist on ReVanced. Generally I either pirate via rutracker or buy music on Bandcamp as vinyl and/or digital. Buying vinyl gets you the digital release anyways as well quite often. I also stream internet radio. My main is CKUA and roadhome.fm

Also refused to pay for console online play memberships, with one exception where I played the crap out of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe online for 3 months in a row once all the DLC track packs were out, then cancelled again. I stick to PC gaming generally. I don't think it's justified for corps to charge for online play and I've mostly stuck to my guns on that shit. I made that decision in response to Xbox 360 vs PS3.

Why pay for journalism that is all but dead and biased these days?

Have you though about why it's dead? It has always been biased, it's human nature.

Drug Science. A campaign to improve drug literacy and advocate for novel therapy, harm reduction, decriminalisation and legalisation via podcasts, mass meetings and seminars by experts in neuroscience, psychopharmakinetics, pharmacology and related fields.

Wikipedia, duh. It works because it's free of advertising and corporate influence. That costs money and I am a happy subscriber.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. A campaign to defend our right to privacy and freedom from exploitation in the digital space.

Sustrans. A campaign to maintain, improve and extend the alternatives to using cars and make a humane and ecologically sustainable transport network.

Not worth it, but more or less needed:

1. Rent (700€)
2. Electricity (100€)
3. Internet (60€)
4. Hetzner Storage Box for Backups (25€)
5. Domains (~10€)
6. External IP addresses (16€)
7. Donations to FOSS and content creators (idfk anymore)

Internet Service Provider and basic utilities. That's pretty much it. Everything else can be pirated or bought per item instead of through a subscription.

While Spotify is the last service I would choose anymore for my music provider, it only lets you skip songs? Definitely not true. Like any major music service, it lets you build a library, listen to unabridged albums, make playlists, etc. Not sure where this point is coming from.

Music streaming from a provider that prides themselves on artist support like Deezer or Tidal also have all these features. Music streaming is one of the few services I struggle to imagine not paying for.

I personally use Apple Music since they actually pay relatively decent per stream and obviously integrates well.

I'll assume the gym membership part is some large chain US gym or something? I couldn't disagree more.

I have a membership to a smaller gym and it's a great deal in my opinion. Cancel anytime, no deals, no discounts, just a price and access to a facility. It's one of the most pure and simple subscriptions I can think of.

German Train Ticket. Though the price increasing is horrendous

And News

Worth it: the medication I need to live.

Not worth it: the medication I need to live.

Nebula is worth it. Youtube plus, or whatever it is now, is not.

Tidal is worth it. Qobuz may be more worth it? Spotify is not; but preferably buy from bandcamp whenever you can.

Other than that, just, nothing.

It's a trick question. They're basically never worth it.

Have you ever actually had a gym membership? Most gyms I've belonged to had reasonable membership terms. Only one tried to get me to pay for the remainder of my one-year contract. The loophole was you could leave if you said you were moving out of town. They just took my word for it and that was it. Others just needed 30-days notice.

I guess with the gym it depends on whether you use it or not. The one I joined got a lot of complaints about not letting you out of your contract, but I never tried to get out of my contract and I used it all the time. For me it was definitely worth it. They never charged me a fee on top of what they disclosed at the very beginning. That would’ve been aggravating.

For journalism, I pay for 404 media because it’s journalist-owned, but it’s pretty niche in its scope.

My issue with Amazon Prime other than hating Bezos is that it was too good at all the things that drew me to it in the first place. Keeping track of everything I like to buy and free shipping and a speaker that I could just talk to and order stuff made shopping so convenient! It led to a lot of overconsumption. I would just browse my recommendations out of boredom and if something caught my eye I’d hit the one-click button and it would be on my porch in a day or two. I started to accumulate piles of crap I didn’t need and hardly ever used. I decided that spending money ought to be a bit inconvenient.

Everyone has their own opinions here. Here's my opinion on what's worth it and not:

Streaming services: Only if you're not getting ads bundled with your subscription and you're getting a lot of use each month from it, more than just renting each movie.

Amazon Prime: Again, only if you really need the frequent free shipping. I don't, so I'll eat $30 in shipping costs per year when I need something more urgently instead of paying $140 to avoid that.

Discord Nitro: Obviously not worth it but it's funny because I had it for a few months before their privacy policy shocker in 2023. I genuinely wanted to support them before then because it was feature rich but not as bloated and ad-free with a reasonable privacy policy before 2023.

News: High quality journalism deserve the support.

SiriusXM: Unless you're road tripping into the middle of nowhere, internet radio is free and has many more options.

Xbox game pass: I never saw the appeal because I'm a patient gamer.

Gym membership: I tried to get one a Planet Fitness a few weeks ago just for a month because the closer gym was revamping itself and was shocked to find that it wanted a downpayment. It tripled the price of a month of membership so I noped out, I'm not paying $50 for 8 trips to the gym that doesn't even have bench presses.

Going against the trend here, but i wouldn't be without spotify. We use the family sub, so I've got separate accounts for the family and for our smart speakers. My parents also use my account. We listen to a lot of music and podcasts, and it just works.

Beyond that the only other sub i have is Amazon prime, which we're kind of stuck with as all our photos are in the cloud using their service. It works pretty well and the fire TV does a slideshow so we actually look at them from time to time.

The rest of the streaming subs we've had in the past are long gone. IPTV does the lot, which I use through express VPN.

I'm happy to be a direct supporter of creative people whose work I enjoy; think Patreon and similar setups.

I find that making small monthly payments to a handful of independent folks who do work I love and who directly appreciate my support to be far more satisfying and worth it than subscribing to a wealthy and powerful media conglomerate thing which feeds me a bunch of crap the majority of which I don't care about.

I am not sure why people subscribe to Music streaming services. My ex said it was to discover new music, but I do that via YT and friends. Other than that I just have 10 to 20 GB of music on my phone. No subscription, always available. Connects to all my devices. I just don't get the point. Maybe if I didn't have a PC it would be slightly more difficult to set up and add/remove music. But other than that?

Nothing wrong with paying for biased journalism, as long as it's high quality.

New York times and walk street journal both publish a bunch of propaganda, but also have high quality stuff and I find it worth subscribing.

Paying holly creeps for their slop is funding your enemies

Same thing music streaming

Cut it out and pirate it. If you really care a out the artists and then money direct. Cut out the corporate parasites where ever possible. They are the enemy.

streaming is never worth it, and the service providers are bleeding money just to keep it afloat.

Password manager.

I only happily pay for YouTube premium, family subscription, it works out to 6€ per person. It is 90% of my entertainment, from news, to tech, to Docutainment.

I forgot to cancel prime before it renewed, but I will next cycle and I'm ripping some Disney+ shows before canceling it soon.

VPN for sure. Amazon you can use without Prime. Just wait until your total purchase hits $35 and delivery is free. I don’t have it myself, but I heard Youtube Premium is worth it because you get youtube and youtube music, so essentially 2 services for the price of one.

The subscriptions where you pretty much don't have a choice because there's no replacement.

If you're subscribing to any digital media, then odds are it's not worth it and you're just being a useful idiot. (sorry not sorry)

Utilities? Yeah, that's worth it.

I also pay a subscription to get my groceries delivered without an additional cost for each order. It's definitely worth it.

I agree with journalism.

They should pay me if they want to wash my brain with their propaganda.

YouTube Premium family plan is worth it for me. Sure, I can set up a PiHole and block ads. But that's only viable on networks I control; it won't work if I'm out of the house unless I want to set up a separate tunnel through my home network at all times. And I also don't have the time or inclination to set up and maintain a PiHole for each of my family members.