I like Nebula by itself. I like it and find enough content there to make it worth it. There is some long form content there that wouldn't be released on YouTube.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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I think with promo codes, that a lot of YouTubers have, you can get the e bundled cost down to $15 per year.
Overall I’d say for that price they’re a great choice.
I subscribe, but I can't figure out the Nebula business model. I'd love to know if there are any Nebula content creators here who want to share their experiences. Curiosity Stream seems to mainly license content so their model seems straight forward enough.
When I first signed up for it Nebula was a $5/year addon to curiosity stream which wouldn't even pay for the bandwidth I used in year one. That is not much money to spread around to creators. I assumed this was a short-lived audience grab, but it's continued (with some variation) for years now. Meanwhile creators are making a lot of Nebula exclusives for what seems like a very small pool of money. As someone who's been in tech for a long time this seems like a value pump to sell, but that only makes sense if the creators (or least the biggest ones) have some form of equity... if it makes sense at all in the current market.
Nebula is owned by creators of content, maybe not all of them, but definitely at begining.
Subbed to it last year because I like a lot of the nature stuff, and it's pretty good. But to be honest, in the day to day live I tend to forget it and go for the quick and easy dopamine rush of a comedy show I already saw 300 times. A bit sad
They might have covered it a bit in this video
This kinda showcases a weakness of Nebula - that is a Nebula video, but sharing the Youtube version is easier. Unless I don't understand Nebula's sharing feature?
That said my watching has gradually been shifting from Youtube to Nebula.
Edit: Oh right, the Nebula link. https://nebula.tv/videos/wendover-how-a-small-group-of-creators-built-a-150-million-business/
I don't think Nebula is meant for "Broadcast yourself" YT where everyone and their mom can create content and get found. I think it's meant for creators with established audiences.
I dont have any interest in the curiousitystream content, but I enjoy supporting my favorite science and engineering youtubers on Nebula, which is owned by creators. There's a few unique videos on Nebula that you can't get on YouTube, but I mainly just subscribe as a more direct way of paying my favorite youtubers without any middlemen.
It's been fine for me. I've watched a handful of documentaries/series on curiosity stream and I watch like, 2 creators on nebula but I've got it for $19.99 a year so I don't think about the cost
I like them both. They are also dirt cheap, so you can hardly go wrong with it.
I signed up about a year ago to watch historical videos. I've signed on maybe once a month, maybe less. It's nice the videos don't have ads. I like the idea of it. Just need to carve out time to watch the hour long vids - could save for later, but I'm bad about follow up on media.
I just use Nebula to watch Jet Lag. I haven't watched anything else on it
I know 4 people who have a nebula subscription, literally everyone has the same reason.
Jet Lag is so good. I'm happy to support the show
Curiositystream seemed like a dump for B-documentaries and Nebula... while it has many cool creators, I don't think it scales well. Neither the interface nor the business model seems to work for a larger amount of creators and it gets boring quick. Also the Apple TV app keeps bugging out for me, even years later, they just don't seem to care much about it. I think it should cost more and they should invest more into a better experience.
I subscribed for a few months but I kept getting the feeling that it is a mostly white/male space with little effort to branch out from that. I like most of the creators on there, and there are some great BIPOC creators if you search for them, but the "front page" and all of their advertising appears to be almost exclusively white dudes talking science/history. Feels a little icky
If the pirpose is degoogling try using newpipe or libretube
That'd still expose you to Google, just using a FOSS client rather than Google's proprietary clients. It's better but Google still has all the power here.
They suck, quite badly. There’s very little interesting content and all of it is just reuploads of YouTube with very few exceptions.
I don't use it yet but the content from the creators who take part in Nebula that I see on YT would be reason enough to drop 15-20$/year on it.
What makes you say that's not interesting content?
I didn’t say there isn’t any interesting content on there, just that there’s very little of it. And almost all of the interesting content I can get for free elsewhere, and I would rather support creators I like by donating to them directly rather than letting them have some small percentage of money while they’re tied to a specific platform.
That's the thing, you're not getting it for free elsewhere. On YouTube/Google, you're paying through different means. If you don't think that price is justified, Nebula could be a much cheaper alternative.
I use both YT and Nebula. Nebula is for when you know what you want to watch, like those creators you already know from YT, and you follow them on Nebula to get the ad-free version. YT is for when I don't know what I want, just mindlessly scroll until something catches my attention.
The YT algorithm doesn't always work, but it's still likely the most effective way to discover new content to my taste so far. And when it doesn't work, all I see is just crap.
So, why would someone say Nebula is less interesting than YT? Nebula may not be your cup of tea, but it's always someone's cup of tea. Meanwhile there are tons of trash on YT.
My suggestion is to use both and for the right purpose.
Read my comment more carefully. There’s very little interesting content doesn’t mean that there is no interesting content or that there isn’t interesting content on there. There is content on there that is interesting. There is just very little of it for the money compared to paying for any other streaming service. And for a service that claims to be a documentary streaming service, most of the videos on there that I saw are only a few minutes long. Not what I’d class as documentaries.
If you want to support creators that you like then just subscribe to their Patreon or use their Kofi link or something like that.
If you want to remove ads then get an adblocker or pay for YouTube premium.
Yes, there's little interesting content there. But I think if you get a code for the extra-cheap bundle that's less than $20/year, it can be worth it.