Obviously the answers here might be a bit lower than other places…
Spotify. It is the only subscription I have aside from my VPN, and mostly because their library is MASSIVE.
With how much I drive I’m constantly listening to the damn thing and being able to pick a genre and let it shuffle without thinking about it is 1000% worth the ten bucks a month to not be constantly picking songs, downloading them, sorting and transferring the library to my phone, maintaining storage space, etc…
Yeah, discovery was one of my main reasons for using it. Getting my own music just sounds like a huge undertaking considering how I listen on a whim.
Use a modded apk?
Sure. I could. But you misunderstand my point. As Gaben said, piracy is a service problem, not a cost problem. Spotify’s service is clean and very nice to use, add on the available library and it makes it very worth my time to pay for and support it.
Hell yeah. I’ll pay a reasonable price for a service with lots of stuff on it if it’s reliable and has a great UI. I’ve considered Spotify, even though I have my beautiful flac collection. It’d be nice not to have to worry about converting them to my phone so I can listen in my car.
Have you tried ViMusic?
I stream natural gas, electricity, garbage pickup and internet. That’s all.
I don’t pay for a fuck.
Technically none, but my partner pays for Spotify and I’m on a shared YouTube Premium plan. I used to have 5-6 subscriptions and cut them off in January 2022. No regrets! Even buying an old machine second hand, an external storage, and a VPN still costs way less than my many subscriptions. It’ll be hard to give up Spotify… Too convenient.
Spotify xModManager for android with ublock manager on the desktop is a great way to cut the cord on spotify premium :)
Spotify. It’s the only paid streaming service I’ve ever used.
We’ll see what YouTube is going to do with their war against adblockers but if it gets too inconvenient to use I’ll probably get the premium. I get so much value from that site that I almost feel bad for using it for free.
I only have YouTube Premium because it’s convenient to download and watch things on mobile devices. I torrent and use adblocker and yt-dlp on my PC, but it’s just easier to have for my phone so I can download things for work or whatever.
A good quality usenet server.
I have been trying to get into Usenet. Which server and indexers are you using?
Basically you want one primary usenet service, doesn’t really matter what (they all have pros and cons but for a normal users they’re basically the same), and another secondary service on a separate backbone (see https://whatsmyuse.net) to get good coverage without being hurt too hard by takedowns.
It’s kinda not cool in the usenet world to recommend specific services because there’s so much shilling going on. I’ll tell you what I use but please don’t take it as a specific recommendation. No affiliation with any of these.
For indexers I use nzb.su and drunkenslug. The former seems to have better coverage but the latter is faster. I hear nzbfinder is good too.
I use frugalusenet but only cos I got a deal that makes it $34/year. It comes with a free secondary block account on a second backbone so it’s kinda helpful in that way. But overall coverage isn’t as good as two well chosen providers. They often post good deals to Reddit/etc so keep your eyes open for a good one (Black Friday is a good time)
Some other person here, and thank you for the info! I’m soooo out of touch on Usenet… I used it as a chat room wayyyyy long ago when I was a wee one, but never for downloading stuff.
Just Spotify, they haven’t ruined their service yet. I will never be one of those boomers who manually download all their mp3s and think normal people want to transfer files around between devices.
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I don’t think the average baby boomer knows how to download an mp3 or play it on a smartphone.
who do you think are the people filled in IRC chatrooms? anyone under 40?
Gen X: still the forgotten generation.
Yeah, (wild estimation) 0.5% of boomers worked in various fields of computer science and were absolutely brilliant with what they accomplished. They built the foundations of everything that we used today, and enabled us to work at levels of abstraction that make our lives way easier.
But still, the average boomer needs to call their grandkids over to switch their TV from HDMI 1 to HDMI 2. I’m being a little bit hyperbolic, but the boomers who didn’t work in tech spent most of their adult lives with virtually no exposure to the computing metaphors that younger generations understand implicitly.
The difference between them and younger generations is that the average millennial grew up using computers, and so the average millennial had vastly better computer literacy.
Not all boomers who manually download mp3s transfer them around. I’m one of those “boomers” (I’m in my 30s) that download their mp3s because I like to own my stuff. I then stream it to my devices using a selfhosted media server without transferring anything.
Yeah that sounds like a very painful experience
None. I run Jellyfin locally. No license bullshit or fifty different services. Don’t even need internet if it goes down and I can curate my own library.
This is the way.
I’ve never heard of this, and it seems like something I’d love to try!
I have a GSA, but I have no idea what to do with it. It’s been flashed with non-Google BIOS stuff I guess? I suppose I’ll try to figure out UNRAID and pop Jellyfin on it somehow!
Spotify like many others here. Just haven’t had many issues with the program and it does what I want for a reasonable price.
Wanna give a big shout out to Nebula. It’s meant to be a YouTube-esque site but solely for educational content. I found it via LegalEagle but it has a ton of documentaries and other educational content creators. I believe my subscription is $5/year or something like that. Just insanely cheap for really high quality content.
I have the Disney+/Hulu bundle. I love Disney movies and with all the franchises they own now I feel it’s worthwhile. Hulu happens to have quite a few of my favorite shows and the bundle made it worthwhile to me.
Currently trying out YouTube premium and, I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but I think it’s worth it to me. I use a lot of YouTube and also chromecast it. While it’s possible for me to get ad blocked YouTube for free on mobile and cast it to my TV it’s… Cumbersome and unstable. I generally have the opinion that I don’t mind paying for services I enjoy using so… For now, gonna stick with YouTube premium. Just so much less of a headache.
AmazonPrime but only for Amazon’s services really, the few shows that are on Prime Video for free are a nice bonus though.
And currently I pay for Netflix and share it with my family but the very first second Netflix cracks down on that I’m dropping it and have told my family as such for years. Already started torrenting most shows I kept up with via Netflix in preparation.
The only other one I consider is HBO… But there just hasn’t been enough of an allure thus far.
If you wanna give your money to something useful, give it to local journalists that do investigative journalism.
I’m surprised at how many people are paying for YouTube premium. Just patch the YouTube app with revanced and you get better than YouTube premium for free
I primarily watch YouTube on my smart TV. There are pretty much no other options to avoid ads.
I use SmartTube on my Chromecast to watch YT without ads.
It even has Sponsorblock. built-in. It’s the best Youtube experience on TV.
HDMI
Would setting up a raspberry pi-hole do the work? Asking from ignorance but IIRC, at least in the past, it got the job done
Not for youtube
Only helps on mobile, though.
Ublock origin
I’m shocked by the amount of people that don’t know of adblockers on desktop.
But then I remember, I have no life.
Netflix - my husband watches it a lot more than I ever did.
Amazon Prime - using a student discount (not a student lol - I emailed my uni’s alumni association and asked to get one of their .edu email addresses, and used that to get the student rate for Prime).
Pandora - my husband listens to it all day long while he works, so to him it’s worth it just paying for premium without ads
Get Peacock Premium for free from my ISP so that doesn’t count.
None :). I have neither the luxury nor the budget to pay for subscriptions.
Lol so many “pirates” in here
“piracy is a service issue” - if a product doesn’t cost much and saves you time/effort then it can be worth paying a little versus essentially paying yourself less than minimum wage if it’s hard to pirate (depends how valuable your time is though!)
Spotify only. I get an Amazon Prime voucher for 30 days from another telco whenever I subscribe to a data plan.
you don’t even need to pay for that, as I found out recently. on desktop just use an adblocker and you’re good, and on mobile use this https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager assuming you have an android phone
Thanks, but I’m on the Family Plan.
