We do the same thing. There are a couple of channels we watch on YouTube who forego ads and use Patreon to fund their livelihoods; we'd be sad to see them disappear, so I started supporting them with a monthly donation on Patreon. They offer the same early release perks, but like you said, the variety of our YouTube subscription feed is important. I could binge all of these creators' videos on Patreon if I wanted to, but my wife and I aren't opening YouTube to binge just one type of video.