2025-06-24
As just about everyone else these days I have more than one streaming service, and unlike most others I also subscribe to some Patreons and Youtube communities to support creators extra.
I wish I could do more, but I need to be picky. The sad truth is that supporting three creators on Patreon is roughly the same cost as a streaming service with hundreds of TV shows and thousands of movies.
Let's go through the numbers a bit -- enjoy this partial disclosure of personal financial information. These are rough estimations of the costs in Euro, because the Swedish krona means nothing to most of my readers.
Here's the table in tsv format.
TYPE EUROS WHAT
Streaming 15 Netflix
Streaming 10 Disney+
Streaming 15 Youtube Premium
Patreon 3 Youtube creator
Patreon 6 Local Friendly Game Store
Membership 4 Youtube creator community
Donation 6 FLOSS game
Cloud 8 Minecraft realm
I probably spend more time trying to pick something to watch on Netflix than actually watching anything, unless I'm in a series binging phase.
Youtube Premium is well worth it considering all the hours I and the kids spend watching. It's not just that I don't have to deal with the constant arms race between ads and ad blockers -- that's an extra perk -- but that a view from a Premium subscriber pays a lot better for a creator than a view from someone who watches the for free (and suffers the ads).
Disney+ is basically for Star Wars, and to some extent Marvel. Worth it for me? No, but for the kids.
I also pay one-time things like donations on livestreams when I catch them -- especially for creators I don't pay regularly -- but let's not count that for now.
The Minecraft realm is very worth it because me and the kids play a lot in a world that's filling up with big projects.
This all adds up to around €63 per month. That's a lot. Is it worth it? I don't know. The two creators I support individually cost me €7, which isn't far from the cost of Disney+. If I were to cancel any of these subscriptions it would be Netflix and Disney+, and that would almost cut this in half. I recently got myself a DVD player and I buy most movies second hand for about £0.3 each. If I could get the whole Star Wars Clone Wars series on DVD I don't think my kids would miss Disney+ much. More and more they prefer indie creators on Youtube anyway; The Amazing Digital Circus, Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel.
Supporting my LFGS is a no-brainer. As a Patreon member I get a 10% discount on everything related to miniature gaming. That pays itself with just a couple of boxes of Warhammer models (because holy sheep fins Games Workshop knows how to take your money).
Apart from financially I support a couple of Youtubers by helping out with projects, and I contribute with code and mods to that FLOSS game (which any long time reader can figure out which it is). I also act as sysadmin for a forum I frequent (and sometimes I pitch in by paying a month of hosting as I do incur extra costs by cloning the VM now and again, after all). To be fair this is all mostly motivated by selfishness; I enjoy it and the results benefit myself directly. And also I become a little cooler in the eyes of my children because I actively do things together with Youtubers. Because Youtubers are mini-celebrities and what all kids aspire to be these days.
I'm privileged in that I have a financial situation that allows me to spend this amount of money, and a living situation that allows me to spend this amount of time. I recognise that this is unfeasible for most.
I don't know if there's anything to learn from this or any meaningful conclusion. I've wanted to write this for a while. Partly to show how much it adds up to support individual creators financially and partly to show that support can come in the form of time, too. Honestly I don't know what to feel about these numbers. Is it a flex that I'm so well off, or should I be embarrassed at my priorities? Feel free to judge me publicly or privately.
-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal