7 ms·

Is it typical to spend so much on software subscriptions? I pay for Spotify and a cheap VPS if that counts but that's it. I figured the average person probably

by 63 4y ago

Is it typical to spend so much on software subscriptions? I pay for Spotify and a cheap VPS if that counts but that's it. I figured the average person probably has one or two media subscriptions (Netflix, Disney, Spotify, etc) and nothing else.

ghaff 4y ago
I would say that's definitely on the high side. What you're describing is probably on the low side. Of course, many people spend about $100/month on a cable TV bill. It looks like he has a couple of sports subscriptions but doesn't actually seem to be paying for live TV in general.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Of course, many people spend about $100/month on a cable TV bill. I think $100 may be low these days. At a neighborhood party around 2017 I asked people what they were paying for their cable service, because I was thinking about switching from satellite. Not one was under $125, and most were in the $175 area. $250 with internet. The big sports fans were well over $300/month. One guy who considers himself a "professional sports gambler" (when he's not repairing air conditioners 9 to 5) said he was paying over $600/month to feed the wall of six 60-inch TVs in his man cave. "Hunnert bucks a screen!" he crowed proudly. I ended up keeping my existing service, which I think was in the $35/month range.
  - ssl232 4y ago
    I know this has come up before, but since the gulf in cost is so stark I thought I'd mention it again. In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service (approx 65 Mbps, FTTC, unmetered), rolling monthly contract, and £65 up front. The contract guarantees at least around 50 Mbps or they automatically pay compensation. $100/month seems pretty crazy to me. I know the lack of competition and widespread collusion is bad in the US amongst cable companies, but you saying people typically pay 5x more for what seems like similar service to what I'm getting is really eye-opening. Apart from Virgin Media most companies share the OpenReach network that's sort of publicly funded (ish). Yet, the UK isn't exactly known for investing well in public services so I'm still surprised at the gulf in cost.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      We're talking about cable TV content. Satellite (DirecTV) costs about the same. But, yes, now that I only have Internet from my cable provider, I also pay about $100/month for that.
    - linker3000 4y ago
      Similar speeds, about £24/mo for the FTTC, with bundled phone (pay as you go) and one static IP. SIM only Mobile phone with same provider with unlimited calls and 7GB data for just under £10/mo.
    - comfypotato 4y ago
      There’s a lot of variation in the US. I’m in a 600k city and an area with some kind of COVID program that pays my $20.00 bill. I’m not paying anything for a very reliable 35 mbps.
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      I'm paying £43/month for 1Gbps symmetrical with Hyperoptic. My current bottleneck is the otherwise very capable Turris Omnia that I use as a router.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service Good for you. But I wrote about cable television service, not about internet service. Two different things.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - msbarnett 4y ago
      Looking at the exchange rate, I’m paying ~£65/month for 1Gbps unlimited fiber in Canada, which is not exactly known for its cheap internet. £20 a month for only 65Mbps seems not great to be honest.
      - 4y ago
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Wow I haven’t used cable in over ten years! I have a $30 per month Comcast internet subscription and I get all my stuff through there. I don’t pay for any streaming service except nebula.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    I only have cable for internet. But then a couple things like disney plus. Amazon Prime is there as a side effect :-) Since I need to update my mobile phone I'm thinking about using it as a hotspot at home as skipping cable entirely. Not sure how viable that is.
  - water-your-self 4y ago
    This information comes as a shock to me. My monthly subscriptions are for home internet and spotify alone
bluescrn 4y ago
If you use 'serious software' (Adobe, Autodesk, Unity, etc) the bill can add up fairly quickly. But that's for professionals and serious hobbyists, and that's powerful software that offers a lot of value to serious users. And any tech hobbyist can quickly end up with a number of smaller subscriptions (e.g. hosting, backups, AV, password management) But I've not yet found any mobile-only 'apps' that can justify the usually-overpriced subscriptions. The upside is that I don't spend too many hours on mobile devices, as so many games/apps have such obnoxious monetisation (see Diablo Immortal, or any 'hypercasual' game with more real-money-gambling ads than actual gameplay), and the 'mobile web' isn't as good as it should be (endless app nags, poor ad-blocking compared to a real computer)
- de_nied 4y ago
  Have you tried Brave browser for Android? Its ad-blocking works extremely well for me.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Or you could download a system-level adblocker and swerve the whole cryptocurrency/BAT thing altogether. There's a lot better solutions for fighting ads than downloading $SOME_GUY's Chromium fork/pet ponzi scheme.
    - doodlesdev 4y ago
      > $SOME_GUY's Chromium fork/pet ponzi scheme. You mean the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla co-founder?
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Yes, the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla co-founder's Chromium fork/pet ponzi scheme. A literal someguy.
      - Kye 4y ago
        There's something like a reverse ad hominem I don't have a term for. "Person made x, so why would you doubt them on y?" Lots of people latch on to high school achievements as their life passes them by until they realize they haven't done much in a long time and have a mid-life crisis. Some people buy an expensive car. Others start a Chrome fork and crypto scheme.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Especially among people who don't really pay attention to their budget, I'd expect this to be common. Maybe not as extreme as some of the apps are more aimed at professionals, but having seen the amount of money people who really can't afford it drop on useless subscriptions (e.g. antivirus for iOS) despite being told it's useless...
kaashif 4y ago
Yeah, I have an Amazon Prime subscription and a VPS for a personal blog, but that's it. I figure most people have like Prime and Netflix, or Disney+ and Spotify. Not all of the above, plus weather app subscriptions, and dozens of other things. But looking at some of these comments, we appear to be the odd ones out.
- poglet 4y ago
  Off the top of my head I pay for Amazon Prime, Spotify, Apple iCloud, Office 365, VPS, VPN.
IshKebab 4y ago
Definitely not normal. > but I didn't think my list was particularly egregious Grammarly is $150/year!! How is that not egregious? My only significant subscriptions are: 1. Netflix 2. Amazon Prime 3. Youtube Premium All shared with other people. This guy was paying $40/year for a weather app and was surprised he was spending a ton on subscriptions. How?
- noirbot 4y ago
  TFA literally ends with them saying they canceled Grammarly! I feel like half of y'all are out here flagellating the author for decisions where the whole point of the article is that they made some bad decisions and fixed them.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >Grammarly is $150/year!! How is that not egregious? I don't personally find Grammarly useful. But I know people who swear by it and, if it's an application that helps you write maybe every day, $150/year is nothing. I pay more than that for Lightroom which I also use a lot. More than that for The New York Times which I read daily. Etc. There's definitely a subscription version of "Does it bring you joy?" But there seems to be almost a moralistic pushback on paying for software/services things that you find useful.
  - elashri 4y ago
    I paid three month for grammaly when I was writing my MS thesis. It was useful for the extensive usage. But I canceled afterwards because it is not worth keeping.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    > $150/year is nothing except it is a lot compared to alternatives like a library card and cultivating literacy.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Yeah people shouldn't use tools they find useful.
brudgers 4y ago
Probably well above median and well below average. Median skewed by the fact that even people with little disposable income have phones with access to the App Store but aren’t dropping $408/year for premium Apple experience. But the mean is skewed by money is no object users who don’t miss a thousand dollars a month.
site-packages1 4y ago
I don't think so, I feel like mine are pretty aligned with what my friends have. I pay the AppleCare monthly, a couple smaller things like Peloton and Apple Music. Doesn't add up to that much overall. I do donate $20/mo to Signal, which is my largest software-only app thing, and I see the OP seems to donate to Twitter in a couple ways, so I guess to each their own.
system2 4y ago
No, the author has no self control. This is a financial issue rather than subscription addiction.
- josephd79 4y ago
  I agree, create a budget and stick to it. It's a good idea to audit every month so you know where your money is going and what you're doing with your money.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  I’m sorry, are you saying that paying for a weather app and 4 different note taking apps is not a good financial decision?
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Not all note taking apps are equivalent. I use 3 at the moment and a "sketch app". Mine are all free but the same concept applies.
- jonwinstanley 4y ago
  Agree with this. Either that or they are very wealthy. I can’t imagine looking at this long list of subscriptions and being satisfied I’m getting value from them all. Personally, my only subscriptions are for hosting, cloud, music and video. Most other things can be done for free or without a subscription.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Define "very wealthy" for me on this? Because I'm looking at some of these and going "so that's 50 cents per day. Seems ok for something I use daily". Sure, if I was making 30k/year I'd be reconsidering things, but if you're software engineer in the US, 2000/year isn't an insane amount of money to spend on essentially a full ecosystem of products and services for their phone, desktop, and work computer for them and their family. Not to mention that the point of the entire article is that they found out they weren't getting satisfactory value from all of them and cut back some! I feel like half of y'all read the post and thought it was a brag about how rich they were instead of a mea culpa about how they realized they were spending too much.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I'm a random dude with family and kids. Spotify, Netflix, Disney, prime, Adobe, jetide, reface (occasionally) toon faces (occasionally), peak,Duolingo. These are the ones I'm consciously aware of. Various educational services from Monthly to coursera to music ones such as pianote and ultimate guitar and songsterr. Previously stuff like code academy or oreilly etc. YouTube subscription. Half a dozen patron accounts I support (I am well-off enough, and as ex-programmer and ex-photographer sufficiently of content-producing/livelihood mentality , to have the luxury and intent to support the content I consume). Then there are the ones I only notice when I really think about it or look at yearly transactions - Microsoft office, Google drive, apple Icloud, backup (originally sync.com then back laze and now I Backup or something). 1password. Sometimes nzbmatrix and whatnot. Apple arcade. Geforce now. And it keeps going. This empathically does not include traditional subscriptions. My father in law lives with us and I am embarrassed at size of our cable bill as that's what he watches all day long.
- azinman2 4y ago
  I guess the question is do these things provide value to you? And what percent of your income is it? I’m guessing the answer is yes and small.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Correct. Mostly I wanted to indicate you don't have to have extraordinary needs to accumulate subs. We've gone from cable model to Netflix monopoly (how I miss it) back to myriad subs to get content for broad family. similarly for software, if you like to fool around with utilities computers, it's not hard to rack up the subs. A file comparison utility wants me to pay yearly fee. Image browsing program wants to be a subscription. Everything wants me to keep paying.
smsm42 4y ago
Depends. I used to have close to zero software subscriptions, but now I earn a little more and I can afford to pay for some software even if I technically could do without paid version - e.g. Duolingo, Evernote, Feedly, etc. I do it as a conscious effort to support apps I use - in part so that people that can't afford it still could use the free versions, and so that they continue to exist in general. From pure financial optimization angle, I am likely wasting my money. But I think it makes more likely the apps that I use survive and stay alive, which IMHO is worth a small investment even if I do not use too much of the paid features.
biztos 4y ago
I feel like I’m not a big subscriber to stuff, but I have, off the top of my head: - YouTube $10/mo and super worth it - Netflix $15/mo and lately meh - AppleTV $10/mo and meaning to cancel again - AMC $10/mo ditto - Apple Music $10/mo and want to cancel but need to figure out migration - Adobe $10/mo for PS+LR and pretty happy with it - DropBox $10/mo and I guess, whatever - 1Password I forget how much… - Old-School web hosting about $10/mo - GitHub $5/mo, tribal membership fee - Digital newspapers and magazines, probably around $50/mo or maybe double that? …plus a few obscure software subs that are sort of “pro” and Amazon Prime which is for fast delivery to rural America a few times a year, plus a bunch of domains, plus Patreon including at least one software person. Plus whatever I’m forgetting. My goal for media is to have one streaming movie/TV service at any one time, and go back to paying for music one album at a time. But who knows if I’ll get there. My monthly software cost will definitely increase soon. And despite all this, I think I’m pretty conservative and don’t have too many subs. Someone with a good income who subscribes on a whim, probably spends at least double this much.
- interactivecode 4y ago
  You can get the iCloud subscription and merge dropbox Apple Music and Apple tv all into a single thing.
- georgyo 4y ago
  You may not consider yourself a big subscriber, but you are paying $1700 a year in subscriptions. That is pretty substantial. Also YouTube music is pretty decent and replaced Spotify for me. Since you're already paying for it, it may be a good replacement for Apple music.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    It's not really that substantial if you're making 170k/year, which isn't an insane salary for a software engineer in the US.
    - topaz0 4y ago
slategruen 4y ago
I'm surprised too and a lot of their subscriptions seem to fall under the category of leisure/entertainment. Are people really that bored to spend that much on these services. It's even cheaper to start a new hobby.
collegeburner 4y ago
nah i got 0 subscriptions and will keep it that way. most of my friends got 2-4 (spotify and netflix for most, apple music and disney+ for some or maybe 1 other.)
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Software-wise, AllTrails is the only subscription I have.
jaimex2 4y ago
Most Apple users are bad with money, its a very lucrative user base to target.

by 63 4y ago

ghaff 4y ago

I would say that's definitely on the high side. What you're describing is probably on the low side. Of course, many people spend about $100/month on a cable TV bill. It looks like he has a couple of sports subscriptions but doesn't actually seem to be paying for live TV in general.

reaperducer 4y ago
Of course, many people spend about $100/month on a cable TV bill. I think $100 may be low these days. At a neighborhood party around 2017 I asked people what they were paying for their cable service, because I was thinking about switching from satellite. Not one was under $125, and most were in the $175 area. $250 with internet. The big sports fans were well over $300/month. One guy who considers himself a "professional sports gambler" (when he's not repairing air conditioners 9 to 5) said he was paying over $600/month to feed the wall of six 60-inch TVs in his man cave. "Hunnert bucks a screen!" he crowed proudly. I ended up keeping my existing service, which I think was in the $35/month range.
- ssl232 4y ago
  I know this has come up before, but since the gulf in cost is so stark I thought I'd mention it again. In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service (approx 65 Mbps, FTTC, unmetered), rolling monthly contract, and £65 up front. The contract guarantees at least around 50 Mbps or they automatically pay compensation. $100/month seems pretty crazy to me. I know the lack of competition and widespread collusion is bad in the US amongst cable companies, but you saying people typically pay 5x more for what seems like similar service to what I'm getting is really eye-opening. Apart from Virgin Media most companies share the OpenReach network that's sort of publicly funded (ish). Yet, the UK isn't exactly known for investing well in public services so I'm still surprised at the gulf in cost.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    We're talking about cable TV content. Satellite (DirecTV) costs about the same. But, yes, now that I only have Internet from my cable provider, I also pay about $100/month for that.
  - linker3000 4y ago
    Similar speeds, about £24/mo for the FTTC, with bundled phone (pay as you go) and one static IP. SIM only Mobile phone with same provider with unlimited calls and 7GB data for just under £10/mo.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    There’s a lot of variation in the US. I’m in a 600k city and an area with some kind of COVID program that pays my $20.00 bill. I’m not paying anything for a very reliable 35 mbps.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    I'm paying £43/month for 1Gbps symmetrical with Hyperoptic. My current bottleneck is the otherwise very capable Turris Omnia that I use as a router.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service Good for you. But I wrote about cable television service, not about internet service. Two different things.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    Looking at the exchange rate, I’m paying ~£65/month for 1Gbps unlimited fiber in Canada, which is not exactly known for its cheap internet. £20 a month for only 65Mbps seems not great to be honest.
    - 4y ago
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Wow I haven’t used cable in over ten years! I have a $30 per month Comcast internet subscription and I get all my stuff through there. I don’t pay for any streaming service except nebula.
- phkahler 4y ago
  I only have cable for internet. But then a couple things like disney plus. Amazon Prime is there as a side effect :-) Since I need to update my mobile phone I'm thinking about using it as a hotspot at home as skipping cable entirely. Not sure how viable that is.
- water-your-self 4y ago
  This information comes as a shock to me. My monthly subscriptions are for home internet and spotify alone

bluescrn 4y ago

If you use 'serious software' (Adobe, Autodesk, Unity, etc) the bill can add up fairly quickly. But that's for professionals and serious hobbyists, and that's powerful software that offers a lot of value to serious users. And any tech hobbyist can quickly end up with a number of smaller subscriptions (e.g. hosting, backups, AV, password management) But I've not yet found any mobile-only 'apps' that can justify the usually-overpriced subscriptions. The upside is that I don't spend too many hours on mobile devices, as so many games/apps have such obnoxious monetisation (see Diablo Immortal, or any 'hypercasual' game with more real-money-gambling ads than actual gameplay), and the 'mobile web' isn't as good as it should be (endless app nags, poor ad-blocking compared to a real computer)

de_nied 4y ago
Have you tried Brave browser for Android? Its ad-blocking works extremely well for me.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Or you could download a system-level adblocker and swerve the whole cryptocurrency/BAT thing altogether. There's a lot better solutions for fighting ads than downloading $SOME_GUY's Chromium fork/pet ponzi scheme.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    > $SOME_GUY's Chromium fork/pet ponzi scheme. You mean the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla co-founder?
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Yes, the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla co-founder's Chromium fork/pet ponzi scheme. A literal someguy.
    - Kye 4y ago
      There's something like a reverse ad hominem I don't have a term for. "Person made x, so why would you doubt them on y?" Lots of people latch on to high school achievements as their life passes them by until they realize they haven't done much in a long time and have a mid-life crisis. Some people buy an expensive car. Others start a Chrome fork and crypto scheme.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

Especially among people who don't really pay attention to their budget, I'd expect this to be common. Maybe not as extreme as some of the apps are more aimed at professionals, but having seen the amount of money people who really can't afford it drop on useless subscriptions (e.g. antivirus for iOS) despite being told it's useless...

kaashif 4y ago

Yeah, I have an Amazon Prime subscription and a VPS for a personal blog, but that's it. I figure most people have like Prime and Netflix, or Disney+ and Spotify. Not all of the above, plus weather app subscriptions, and dozens of other things. But looking at some of these comments, we appear to be the odd ones out.

poglet 4y ago
Off the top of my head I pay for Amazon Prime, Spotify, Apple iCloud, Office 365, VPS, VPN.

IshKebab 4y ago

Definitely not normal. > but I didn't think my list was particularly egregious Grammarly is $150/year!! How is that not egregious? My only significant subscriptions are: 1. Netflix 2. Amazon Prime 3. Youtube Premium All shared with other people. This guy was paying $40/year for a weather app and was surprised he was spending a ton on subscriptions. How?

noirbot 4y ago
TFA literally ends with them saying they canceled Grammarly! I feel like half of y'all are out here flagellating the author for decisions where the whole point of the article is that they made some bad decisions and fixed them.
ghaff 4y ago
>Grammarly is $150/year!! How is that not egregious? I don't personally find Grammarly useful. But I know people who swear by it and, if it's an application that helps you write maybe every day, $150/year is nothing. I pay more than that for Lightroom which I also use a lot. More than that for The New York Times which I read daily. Etc. There's definitely a subscription version of "Does it bring you joy?" But there seems to be almost a moralistic pushback on paying for software/services things that you find useful.
- elashri 4y ago
  I paid three month for grammaly when I was writing my MS thesis. It was useful for the extensive usage. But I canceled afterwards because it is not worth keeping.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  > $150/year is nothing except it is a lot compared to alternatives like a library card and cultivating literacy.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah people shouldn't use tools they find useful.

brudgers 4y ago

Probably well above median and well below average. Median skewed by the fact that even people with little disposable income have phones with access to the App Store but aren’t dropping $408/year for premium Apple experience. But the mean is skewed by money is no object users who don’t miss a thousand dollars a month.

site-packages1 4y ago

I don't think so, I feel like mine are pretty aligned with what my friends have. I pay the AppleCare monthly, a couple smaller things like Peloton and Apple Music. Doesn't add up to that much overall. I do donate $20/mo to Signal, which is my largest software-only app thing, and I see the OP seems to donate to Twitter in a couple ways, so I guess to each their own.

system2 4y ago

No, the author has no self control. This is a financial issue rather than subscription addiction.

josephd79 4y ago
I agree, create a budget and stick to it. It's a good idea to audit every month so you know where your money is going and what you're doing with your money.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
I’m sorry, are you saying that paying for a weather app and 4 different note taking apps is not a good financial decision?
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Not all note taking apps are equivalent. I use 3 at the moment and a "sketch app". Mine are all free but the same concept applies.
jonwinstanley 4y ago
Agree with this. Either that or they are very wealthy. I can’t imagine looking at this long list of subscriptions and being satisfied I’m getting value from them all. Personally, my only subscriptions are for hosting, cloud, music and video. Most other things can be done for free or without a subscription.
- noirbot 4y ago
  Define "very wealthy" for me on this? Because I'm looking at some of these and going "so that's 50 cents per day. Seems ok for something I use daily". Sure, if I was making 30k/year I'd be reconsidering things, but if you're software engineer in the US, 2000/year isn't an insane amount of money to spend on essentially a full ecosystem of products and services for their phone, desktop, and work computer for them and their family. Not to mention that the point of the entire article is that they found out they weren't getting satisfactory value from all of them and cut back some! I feel like half of y'all read the post and thought it was a brag about how rich they were instead of a mea culpa about how they realized they were spending too much.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

I'm a random dude with family and kids. Spotify, Netflix, Disney, prime, Adobe, jetide, reface (occasionally) toon faces (occasionally), peak,Duolingo. These are the ones I'm consciously aware of. Various educational services from Monthly to coursera to music ones such as pianote and ultimate guitar and songsterr. Previously stuff like code academy or oreilly etc. YouTube subscription. Half a dozen patron accounts I support (I am well-off enough, and as ex-programmer and ex-photographer sufficiently of content-producing/livelihood mentality , to have the luxury and intent to support the content I consume). Then there are the ones I only notice when I really think about it or look at yearly transactions - Microsoft office, Google drive, apple Icloud, backup (originally sync.com then back laze and now I Backup or something). 1password. Sometimes nzbmatrix and whatnot. Apple arcade. Geforce now. And it keeps going. This empathically does not include traditional subscriptions. My father in law lives with us and I am embarrassed at size of our cable bill as that's what he watches all day long.

azinman2 4y ago
I guess the question is do these things provide value to you? And what percent of your income is it? I’m guessing the answer is yes and small.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Correct. Mostly I wanted to indicate you don't have to have extraordinary needs to accumulate subs. We've gone from cable model to Netflix monopoly (how I miss it) back to myriad subs to get content for broad family. similarly for software, if you like to fool around with utilities computers, it's not hard to rack up the subs. A file comparison utility wants me to pay yearly fee. Image browsing program wants to be a subscription. Everything wants me to keep paying.

smsm42 4y ago

Depends. I used to have close to zero software subscriptions, but now I earn a little more and I can afford to pay for some software even if I technically could do without paid version - e.g. Duolingo, Evernote, Feedly, etc. I do it as a conscious effort to support apps I use - in part so that people that can't afford it still could use the free versions, and so that they continue to exist in general. From pure financial optimization angle, I am likely wasting my money. But I think it makes more likely the apps that I use survive and stay alive, which IMHO is worth a small investment even if I do not use too much of the paid features.

biztos 4y ago

I feel like I’m not a big subscriber to stuff, but I have, off the top of my head: - YouTube $10/mo and super worth it - Netflix $15/mo and lately meh - AppleTV $10/mo and meaning to cancel again - AMC $10/mo ditto - Apple Music $10/mo and want to cancel but need to figure out migration - Adobe $10/mo for PS+LR and pretty happy with it - DropBox $10/mo and I guess, whatever - 1Password I forget how much… - Old-School web hosting about $10/mo - GitHub $5/mo, tribal membership fee - Digital newspapers and magazines, probably around $50/mo or maybe double that? …plus a few obscure software subs that are sort of “pro” and Amazon Prime which is for fast delivery to rural America a few times a year, plus a bunch of domains, plus Patreon including at least one software person. Plus whatever I’m forgetting. My goal for media is to have one streaming movie/TV service at any one time, and go back to paying for music one album at a time. But who knows if I’ll get there. My monthly software cost will definitely increase soon. And despite all this, I think I’m pretty conservative and don’t have too many subs. Someone with a good income who subscribes on a whim, probably spends at least double this much.

interactivecode 4y ago
You can get the iCloud subscription and merge dropbox Apple Music and Apple tv all into a single thing.
georgyo 4y ago
You may not consider yourself a big subscriber, but you are paying $1700 a year in subscriptions. That is pretty substantial. Also YouTube music is pretty decent and replaced Spotify for me. Since you're already paying for it, it may be a good replacement for Apple music.
- noirbot 4y ago
  It's not really that substantial if you're making 170k/year, which isn't an insane salary for a software engineer in the US.
  - topaz0 4y ago

slategruen 4y ago

I'm surprised too and a lot of their subscriptions seem to fall under the category of leisure/entertainment. Are people really that bored to spend that much on these services. It's even cheaper to start a new hobby.

collegeburner 4y ago

nah i got 0 subscriptions and will keep it that way. most of my friends got 2-4 (spotify and netflix for most, apple music and disney+ for some or maybe 1 other.)

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Software-wise, AllTrails is the only subscription I have.

jaimex2 4y ago

Most Apple users are bad with money, its a very lucrative user base to target.