On Subscriptions

~2 mins 02 Oct 2025

Credit to Joel for inspiration!

I think everyone today is subject to spending way too much money on different subscriptions, whether offline or online. In this post, I'll reflect a bit on what I'm spending on, what I think is worth it, and what is not.

Streaming

Given that I watch YouTube every day, I subscribed to YouTube Premium. Yes, it may seem a bit redundant due to the existence of ad-blockers, but sadly, uBlock Origin doesn't work on iOS and probably never will without jailbreaking or sideloading. And even though Premium does come at a hefty price of €9.55/mo, I still think it is worth it only due to how much I use it, plus Premium helps me support creators (even though that does also come with an asterisk, but yeah).

Netflix is another thing I pay for, and which I'm not really happy with. In recent years, a lot of movies and TV shows have moved from Netflix to other platforms, and the platform has become shit to be honest, and it's totally not worth the price it once was. I haven't yet decided to cancel it, only because there are still a few shows I watch on it, but when I do finish those, I will fully switch to torrenting, because what all streaming platforms are is one big scam.

Music

This one is complicated. Most of the day, I have my AirPods in, and music is one of the most important things in my life. I've been using Spotify for as long as it has been available in Croatia (July 2020), and it has honestly been the only thing I've ever used. I've tried to switch to YouTube Music many times, but every time I've just switched back to Spotify.

But Premium is kind of becoming expensive, especially for me as a student, plus the CEO has been doing controversial things (I'll let you read up on that on your own), so I've been looking into other options recently, one of them is buying an iPod + wired headphones and listening to music that way. No subscriptions, no recommendations, no internet, just me and my imported library of hand-picked music. Will have to save up for that, though.

Fitness

I've been going to the gym 2-3 times a week for the past few months, so I have a monthly membership. In my local gym, I pay 36€/mo for an unlimited membership. This includes the student discount.

Web

Next up are web services. I currently pay around 11€ for this domain name (which I plan on changing to my real name).

I also pay 3€ a month for mail (currently mailbox.org) and €9.48 / 2mo for my Hetzner CX22, on which this website is hosted.

All rounded up!

In total, I spend around 70€ monthly, or 840€ yearly on subscriptions. It's a lot, and I will definitely cut it down in the coming months, but for now, I think it's OK since I use every service very often.

Until next time! 🖋️

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