As my income drops in slow periods, I pause subscriptions to many things. The very last two I would be willing to give up are (n-1): YouTube Premium and (n): Kagi.
For me, YouTube Premium (for family) is so worth it because:
- It removes ads for my kids, which are going to watch YouTube no matter what I do
- It includes YouTube Music, so I don't need a separate Spotify subscription
- It sends money to creators based on what I proportionally spend time watching, rather than based on how valuable of an audience I'm deemed to be when an ad slot is auctioned
- It is a signal that I'm willing to pay for content, and I want platforms and creators to continue offering that option
People just don't do that. If they did, the state of things wouldn't be the way it is. It's also kinda unfair to creators whose content people consume but just don't pay for in any way, because of a variety of possible reasons (they just don't even think about it, or they don't deem them "worthy" of being paid, or it's about having to go out of their way to pay someone, and then people only paying a limited amount of "chosen" people, etc.)
