Which media are you subscribing to these days?

September 5, 2023 9:02 AM

#metafilterfundraiser2023 Versions of this have been asked before, but I'm paying a bit to ask what media subscriptions you have these days. (Please, aside from major video-streaming services; assume I know about Netflix).

So what patreons/podcasts/websites/newsletters do you pay for? Why? [If that's not possible for you, which would be the first one(s) you would pay for? Or what have you unsubscribed to purely for personal finance reasons?]

I'll go first with a selection from my current mix.

Patreon:
- Video creator Brian David Gilbert. I found him via his video about American health insurance here on MetaFilter. Gets some behind-the-scenes stuff and updates, but mostly I just like supporting it.
- Kevin Stroud's The History of English Podcast. Also found via this site. Gets me cool bonus episodes.

Newsletters:
- The Anxious Overachiever. Just started paying for this after she switched on paid subscriptions but have enjoyed the insights for years.
- Stained Page News. Cookbook newsletter. Even though I'm mostly out of that game, I still know tons of people in it and I'm interested in the topic.

Other:
- Kottke.org. Probably needs no introduction.
- Accidental Tech Podcast. Nerdy, amusing podcast.
- Glass, photo sharing app. I really like taking/sharing photos but dislike many other platforms for doing it.

I also pay for MetaFilter. Not everything here is done the way I would do it or the way it should be done, but my payment aligns with the value I get out of the site and my ability to pay.

posted by fruitslinger to Media & Arts (25 answers total)

Popular Information by Judd Legum does excellent muckracking investigative reporting. He's broken some important stories that I'm glad to have supported, such as determining the TN house speaker was not meeting residency requirements.
posted by veery at 9:16 AM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am a huge fan of Nebula. It's a content streaming service, but it's creator-built and owned. Its a place where a lot of my favourite youtubers post nebula-first and original content, without worrying about the youtube algorithm. I primarily watch a lot of edutainment and explainer type videos, which is where Nebula shines. If I only had $5/month to spend on streaming services and/or supporting content creators, this is where it would go.
posted by cgg at 9:26 AM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Los Angeles Times, as I firmly believe in the need for a daily newspaper and the LA Times is quite good (and unionized!). I will add a Portland OR media subscription once I figure out what I want, as I like to have a subscription for the city I live in.

Non-legacy newsmedia:
Novara Media, UK news site, great coverage of austerity, good audio series (Novara FM) with great interviews with experts (scholars, activists) on pressing topics, like policing and sex work (this was especially good)!
Jewish Currents, for super nuanced essays and introducing me to so much amazing art/artists.
Meduza (one time donation), for their coverage of Ukraine and Russia.

Podcasts that I subscribe to with actual money (via Patreon):
Maintenance Phase, MeFi favorite, for the diet culture critique and data nerdery (and their charm!).
Tech Won't Save Us, for the wide range of interviewees.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:27 AM on September 5, 2023

JAY KUO.

The Washington Post and Boston Globe, because my father was a reporter for the latter and news is in my blood. NYT does not get my money, because they are tone deaf.
posted by Melismata at 9:32 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I pay for the Canadian magazine The Walrus, and my local community print newspaper.

I also pay the $3.45/mo for NYT access to their games and recipes (but I think I got a special deal that is ending soon). I never read their articles lol

I also subscribed to streaming service Stackers+ recently so I could watch Alone from the History channel but sadly they only have the latest season. I was able to find that series for free on the Kanopy app through my public library card.

I also pay for metafilter.
posted by winterportage at 9:33 AM on September 5, 2023

-Netflix up until a month ago.
-YouTube TV
-MugClub for Steven Crowder
-Patreon for a band that does cover songs in "canvas" (like jazz improvisation) so I can rewatch their live performances back and download
-Spotify

That's pretty much it.
posted by PetiePal at 9:34 AM on September 5, 2023

Time Team on Patreon! They also have two great YouTube channels Time Team Official (with the new stuff) and Time Team Classics full of their hundreds of BBC episodes. I'm delighted they're making a comeback as a viewer funded production company.
posted by anastasiav at 9:56 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I subscribe to the Guardian Weekly

It's not cheap but it's a way to send a generally solid news operation a few bucks. And I've discovered it's good for my mental health to not hang on every breaking news drama as it happens ... but rather wait for them to show up in my mailbox roughly ten days later somehow making more sense -- the world having not ended, the apocalypse having not fully unveiled.

It feels a much saner way to do things.
posted by philip-random at 10:06 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Other than Metafilter (and the major streaming services, of which there are too many), the only thing I pay to subscribe to these days is the Double Pivot podcast, an extremely nerdy soccer/football podcast.
posted by General Malaise at 10:07 AM on September 5, 2023

Metafilter, NY Magazine, and Defector are my current subscriptions. For music I pay for Spotify, which I know is not a Good and Trusted way to do it, but I am not up for Bandcamp. This fall I think I will try to figure out the best way to watch NHL hockey (I am not sure this qualifies as a hyperfixation, but I do want to watch games since I have been absorbing great wodges of data since the playoffs caught my attention this spring. Can I tolerate watching more than highlights? Time will tell.)
posted by Lawn Beaver at 10:19 AM on September 5, 2023

Here are the independent publishers I currently appear to be paying, in no particular order:

Talking Points Memo Prime
The Comics Curmudgeon
Tom the Dancing Bug Inner Hive
Welcome to Hell World (Luke O’Neil)
INDIGNITY (Tom Scocca)
Platformer (Casey Newton)
The Present Age (Parker Molloy)
Today in Tabs (Rusty Foster)
Unpopular Front (John Ganz)
The Watch (Radley Balko)
How Things Work (Hamilton Nolan)
posted by staggernation at 10:23 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

- Metafilter
- NY Magazine
- An annual donation to WFMU. (WFMU is REALLY COOL about fundraising; Metafilter could probably take some cues from them)
- An occasional donation to Gothamist. (WNYC is NOT COOL about fundraising, I'm afraid if I give too much I'll start getting spammed by them)
- Currently feeling guilty for not paying for hellgatenyc.com; I guess I'm kind of waiting to see if the site is a sustainable venture.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 10:28 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dropout.tv. Dimension 20 (video series of improv comedians playing D&D; that link is a free YouTube link to S1E1) was the gateway drug to the rest of the service.
posted by Ampersand692 at 10:33 AM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

My media streaming these days tends toward Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Thai shows - iQiyi, Viki, and Gagaoolala between them cover my watching habits nicely.

On the web browsing side, I donate to MeFi and until recently had a Slate Plus subscription that I've since done away with.

I don't typically subscribe to podcasts but I'm thinking of ponying up for You're Wrong About to get my hands on a specific one of the recent bonus episodes. I probably would subscribe to Well There's Your Problem but my partner already does, and we watch bonus episodes together via his account.

My Patreon subscriptions are to local mutual aid funds, local bail funds, and the OddGiants team trying to rebuild dearly departed game Glitch.
posted by Stacey at 10:40 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Right now, Amzn Prime, Peacock (.99/mo special), hboMax on a shared subscr. I change these as I run out of content I really like. NYTimes, WaPo, local newspaper. I recently donated to ProPublica, routinely donate to MeFi.
posted by theora55 at 10:55 AM on September 5, 2023

The only nonstandard one I have is Hearts of Space, a space-music streaming site.
posted by number9dream at 11:27 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

When I write it out like this I realize I've got really bad subscription creep, but I'm still reading, watching or listening to all of these so I'm unlikely to cancel any at the moment.

News:

• NYT Weekender home delivery (it is not a perfect organization, no; but I am from the NY Metro and have been reading it my entire life). I am likely to cut back to digital all-access at some point in the next few years as the paper edition gets more and more stale, but I'm not quite there yet.
• The City. Non-profit news org punching above its weight!
• WNYC / Gothamist (I've cut back now that I don't live in NYC any longer, but there is enough WNYC-produced programming that I listen to that I still give some every month--mainly so I have something to cancel if they cancel what I like.)
• Local NPR/PBS affiliate
• Local newspaper home delivery. I am probably bottom 1%, age-wise, of people who still get two papers home delivered.
• El País (digital subscription) - Spanish practice + better coverage of Europe and South America than most English-language sources

Sportswriting:

• Defector
• Cup of Coffee (MLB daily digest by Craig Calcaterra)
• Bicycling Magazine
• The Athletic (included with NYT subscription, would not pay for standalone)

Video: My new goal is to rotate out ones that I'm not actively watching, so Paramount might drop off in favor of Netflix again once the Bake Show comes back, etc.

• Hulu / Disney+ / ESPN+ (included at the moment via cell plan; I only really use Hulu)
• Peacock (I keep it mostly for soccer but really enjoyed Poker Face + Mrs. Davis)
• Paramount+ (Mostly for Star Trek but in theory I watch Champions League games)
• AppleTV+ (probably the best streamer right now at having exactly one active show I want to watch week-to-week, thereby keeping me from taking a few months off)

Webcomics / Music / Other

• Drive by Dave Kellett
• Achewood
• Cat and Girl (the patreon sends you quarterly zines of the comic, which is delightful)
• Spotify. I don't feel remotely guilty about using it to stream older music--in theory the artist might see a little bit of money whereas they wouldn't see any if I had bought a used record. I feel a little guilty about it for new music--but I'm middle-aged now and the alternative is really that I just wouldn't listen to new music at all.
• KMHD (Portland OR jazz radio)
• Metafilter!
• Strava

posted by thecaddy at 11:38 AM on September 5, 2023

I just upgraded and am now a paying subscriber to The Chatner
posted by Morpeth at 11:49 AM on September 5, 2023

Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study (Substack), mostly for the excellent essays and interviews, but when I have time to dive into her recommended links, they're very good. I don't engage with the comment/discussion topics very much, but when I have, I've enjoyed them.

Summer Brennan's A Writer's Notebook (Substack) just came back from hiatus. I mostly subscribe to it because of the effort she puts into Essay Camp.

My local City Paper because while I barely read it, I don't want the dire state of local journalism get worse.

Join the Party's Patreon because they're the only D&D actual play podcast I've found so far that consistently hits the right combination of cozyish/funny/smartass for me, and they're pretty strong on inclusivity. (Quest Friends and Imprinted Echoes are doing well on their auditions, though.)

Dropout, because Tumblr started pushing Game Changer (YT) at me. It turns out I like quite a bit of their stuff.

Radiooooo because it's curated rather than an algorithm and provides access to music I would probably never come across on my own.
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:37 PM on September 5, 2023

I subscribe to a lot of stuff apparently!
Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Crunchyroll, and Volleyball TV for watching stuff. Technically I'm also subscribed to TSN until Thursday but that's because my father-in-law was visiting over the summer and he must watch sports so even though I cancelled it the day he left I still have access to their programming until then.
Metafilter, the Guardian, bikepacking.com, and the Toronto Star for websites. I just recently subscribed to bikepacking.com, mostly because I want to receive copies of Bikepacking Journal which they put out twice a year.
Youtube Music for music.
Wired and Jacobin for print magazines.
And they aren't officially subscriptions but I usually have some comics on a pull list at my local comic store (when a new issue comes out they set one aside for me). I think my current ones are Miracleman, Fables, The Expanse, and The Forged but the first two will be over soon.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:51 PM on September 5, 2023

Not official subscriptions, but I regularly pick up the globe and mail, the nyt and new internationalist. I used to buy the financial times until the local shops stopped carrying it. I less regularly pick up a copy of london review of books and the economist. And occasional bookazines and sports season preview magazines when they catch my eye.
posted by philfromhavelock at 9:03 PM on September 5, 2023

I cancelled Medium, switching to Scribd on advice of a friend.

Our household has Paramount+, YouTube Premium, Disney+, Britbox, Acorn.

Other services include Kindle, Audible, Dropbox and Wired.

Probably not what you had in mind, but for completeness: our Church, Costco, YMCA, NJ EZ-Pass and Verizon cell phones.
posted by forthright at 10:10 PM on September 5, 2023

Dropout because it's very very funny. I had to go through the youtube subscription.

New Naratif for South East Asian news and investigations.

Spotify, Netflix and Amazon for my family's access. We had an Apple account through an ex-son-in-law and miss the account more than him.

I bought an Audible subscription for my sister who is not big on fiddling, but I use my library, Kubo and other sources for audiobooks. I have a large Audible library but deeply resent a) Amazon's handling of audiobooks and b) that they inserted ads into titles I'd already bought once I stopped being a subscriber.

I would pay for a weekly newspaper that I could filter to just a few topics and types of coverage, but I haven't found anything like that.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:15 AM on September 6, 2023

We stream Netflix and Prime.

My only Patreon is a friend of a friend in Russia who makes horror movies. I'm not keen on horror, it's to help him get by.

I'm still big on dead tree subscriptions. We get The Washington Post daily. For magazines, we get Food and Wine, Real Simple and Better Homes and Gardens. My daughter gets Highlights.

My daughter is very visual and loves Better Homes and Gardens, so it's mostly her subscription now. She pokes through the photos and has informed us that her house will be pink, she will live in Charleston like the travel ad, she will have a meadow garden, and so forth.
posted by champers at 5:16 AM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I subscribe to SiriusXM, in part for the commercial-free music in my car, and in part for the bonus streaming-only channels like The Loft, which I'm listening to right now, and which just moved from "Maybelline" by Chuck Berry (1955) to "Pierced Arrows" by Hurray for the Riff Raff (2022) to "Going Underground" by The Jam (1980) to "Ballet for a Rainy Day" by XTC (1986).

It's $20/month which is priced higher than I'd like, but I can never go back to commercial rock. And, it's introduced me to a lot of new artists and new genres. Worth it.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 6:39 AM on September 12, 2023