Nowadays we don’t really buy things. We just subscribe to online services.

And how can we resist? The streaming revolution has brought us vast amounts of video and music entertainment at the click of a button. In an era of cloud storage, where we store our data on remote computer servers, tech companies like Google and Apple take care of the headache of managing our information so that we no longer lose important files or progress on our work.

For many of us, giving up control and ownership to these services is the point. But for others, there is a downside to losing some flexibility and freedom. While Spotify may not have all the music we want to listen to, if we cancel our subscription, we lose access to its large catalog of music. With cloud storage services, putting our documents and other files online is simple, but pulling them out can be a pain.

This can make some people feel trapped. We could always resort to the obvious old-school methods, like buying discs of music and carrying around thumb drives of our files and documents, but who wants to do that?

Fortunately, there are some approaches to taking control of our media while enjoying the benefits of subscription services. Those steps range from the obvious, like creating local copies of your data, to more advanced methods, like making a personal cloud using an internet-connected storage device that acts like a miniature server.