With everything moving to a subscription model and increasing cloud dependence, we are living in the era of the forever tax. Between Spotify, Netflix, and cloud storage, we pay for music, movies, and to keep our own digital memories safe. And while cloud storage started as a convenient utility with fairly minimal charges for an additional 100GB of storage when photos were all we uploaded, that’s not the case anymore. Between years of data archives, larger photo files, and even larger 4K video-first content capture being the norm, for many of us, it has morphed into a significant monthly bill that we aren’t really in a position to cancel.
Over here at Android Authority, we’ve talked about Network Attached Storage, or NAS, as a solution for the privacy-conscious or the tech-savvy enthusiasts who want to de-Google their lives and reduce their cloud dependence. We’ve even talked about data sovereignty and actually owning your files in a world that desperately wants you to rent them. But while all that is great, cost is another significant factor to consider. The fact of the matter is that a significant chunk of users considering a local storage option are only trying to reduce their monthly expenditure.