I think there's a pretty big misunderstanding about what, exactly, Premium funds. I get that ads are annoying, but if you're not paying for the service and you're blocking ads, you're not just hurting Youtube/Google, you're hurting content creators.
It's my understanding that, per viewer, Premium pays content creators more than ad impressions. Remember, that's per viewer. For even the very large channels, their Youtube revenue is primarily ads, but it's because their Premium viewers are a small portion of their total viewers.
Make your own choices. I'm not going to tell you what to do. Just don't play mental gymnastics over it and understand what you are actually doing when you make the decision to deprive funding "out of principle".
Yea, we can call folks greedy left right and centre, but the "all content must be free" brigade gets a bit tiring after a while. Servers need to be built and powered, content needs to get moved around the world at lightning speeds and content creators need a slice.
If you like the content you watch? Pay for it. You have two choices with YT: ads or Premium (or sub to a channel but I'd rather support them off YT).
There are things like Nebula and Floatplane, but largely I haven't seen a compelling reason to go there, and YT Premium for my family is pretty good value for money IMHO.
I would love to support creators on other platforms where it's monetization first. My issue is I primarily consume this content on my living room TV through an AppleTV 4K, so I rely on apps being available for that to access that content. I think Nebula is available. Floatplane does not have an app (though I think there's a third party app to access Floatplane content, but not sure if I can trust it).
The other alternative platforms have the same problem. A few youtubers I subscribe to encourage joining them on their other platforms, such as Odysee. Again, not available on my TV.
In the model I would support, I would pay creators for their content. If the content creator would like to use youtube as their distribution platform, that's fine, but then it's up to the creator to pay Youtube as their distributor. I'm sure there's plenty of reasons "why that would never work", but don't chastise others for not paying Youtube.
So it's not "content creators need a slice". Content creators need to get paid, and distributors need a slice.
>you're not just hurting Youtube/Google, you're hurting content creators.
Well, yes. That's the point. We can't do much about Google as a company, but if we hurt the creators badly enough to make YouTube no longer viable, then they move to a different platform.
Do you know why content creators use Youtube despite it being a fairly hostile place for creators? It gets views. Odysee doesn't get views. Vimeo doesn't get views. Youtube is your best chance of getting discovered and finding success.
If you want to drive content creators to other platforms, you should stop using Youtube and giving them views. That's how it's done.
You're not entitled to the content nor the platform for free.
> For me, the platform has always been more of a resource than a habit. I only go to it for specific content and nothing more. Unlike die-hard YouTube consumers, I don’t subscribe to multiple channels and follow each and every video they put up. So paying to remove ads, watch YouTube in the background, or use the multiple other features a YouTube Premium subscription offers didn’t really make much sense to me.
This hits the nail on the head for me.
So much internet-based subscription marketing is purely targeted towards heavy users. That makes good business sense, of course - heavy users are more likely to pay up. But positioning your product solely towards these users trashes the user experience for people who still want to use it, just less frequently.
Adobe Creative Cloud is another case in point. I use Illustrator a couple of times a month, no more, for a few legacy freelance gigs that don't pay very well. Before CC, the Illustrator pricing model worked quite well for users like me: only update every few years and you were fine. Now? It's £240pa whether you're the heaviest of heavy users, or just an occasional user like me. I can't justify that, so I'm still eking out an old copy of CS6.
I remember visiting the original Legoland in the mid-90s and being impressed that they offered cheap tickets from mid-afternoon onwards. The London Boat Show used to do something similar. As the inexorable move to subscription models continues, I'd like to see more of this "lite" pricing.
The better comparison seems to be if Adobe were to offer an ad-supported version of illustrator and their other offerings. I'd be fine with that. (I'm in a similar boat to you. $30+ a month just isn't worth it for the hobbyist use cases I have. $10 or $15 was something I could muster.)
Common also in gambling and gaming (particularly "loot boxes"), as well as other "high roller" activities.
Among other issues, whales may themselves have addiction or other psychological issues and be manipulated into participation, and content and interactions become modified with time to increasingly appeal to them.
There should be more literature on this, though this article is a fair introduction:
"What it means to be a ‘whale’ — and why social gamers are just gamers"
Youtube premium is the best value video subscription there is and its a win-win: You can a clean ad-free experience and both Youtube and the video creator get more revenue.
Absolutely agree. Somehow, since going premium, YouTube is a better experience overall, with better content. Add that to the lack of ads and we’re sticking with it.
Youtube Premium is the subscription I have that I wish I didn't the most [1].
I mean, getting rid of the ads is great, but you still have to fast forward through the in-video ads from the content creators. "But first, a message from our sponsor..." is exactly the thing I'm paying to get rid of, but I can't even be free from that.
The thing that makes me the most upset is how they tie the YT premium subscription to the ability to turn off my iPad screen without turning off the audio. This kills me for two reasons. First, it used to be the case that you could do this for free on the original Apple iPad app. Then it became a paid feature. So that still bugs me.
But moreover, it's sets a terrible precedent. The iPad hardware is mine. The state of the hardware should be of no concern to the app. What's next, the video stops playing if the audio is muted? Or I can't mute ads? I subscribed to Peacock because it was $1.99, and now they show ads when the video is paused. We're slowly rolling to the future where you have to stand up and scream "McDonald's" before you video will resume playing, and I don't know how to stop it [2]. Subscribing to YT Premium seems like giving in and admitting defeat.
p.s. This is kind of an edge case, but the other thing that's terrible about YT Premium is the support. I was recently locked out of my Google account, and that meant I couldn't get into YT Premium. Google offers 0 support in recovering accounts, the forum was useless and locked my question, and the only place I could find help was Reddit. Meanwhile, I couldn't cancel my YT premium subscription, because I had to be logged in to do that, which I couldn't do. So because Google offers 0 customer support to people locked out of their accounts, the only solution to canceling the YT premium subscription was to cancel my credit card, which is a huge hassle.
[1] I have it because my wife wants it. Can't say no to that.
Have you tried using SponsorBlock? It skips over the sponsorships and other unwanted sections of YouTube videos and I don't believe it deprives the creator of their sponsorship income either.
The citizens of the internet generally don't want to pay for many things, they get upset when the product vanishes or changes, and get upset when they become the product.
I feel like there's just a cycle here where you get advertising monopolies dominating and everyone else comes and goes / has no chance ... because nobody wants to pay.
If the money doesn't come from uses where does it come from?
Lol. Where else are you going to go? YouTube is a de facto monopoly when it comes to self-published shortform videos.
The consequences of the "everything-is-free" Web 2.0 internet has created some very arrogant consumers that won't even pay $10/mo. to support content creators.
I use NewPipe and could not be happier. No ads. I can hide comments and recommendations. I only see what I search for. I set subscriptions as the startup tab so I can see only new content from my subscriptions- nothing more.
This is the way. But I'm always afraid to mention it because it needs to stay under the radar. If paying for premium made the app as good as NewPipe I'd probably do it.
I subscribe to youtube premium + youtube music. I think its a decent deal if you watch a lot of youtube. I'm not a huge fan of the occasional "invite family and friends and get free months" ads on my pay for service.
That being said I also subscribe to office 365 and it seems like advertising there is getting worse and worse too. Outlook on windows recently started advertising the android app, because I apparently need to see ads in my paid subscription too.
All of this tells me that I will never escape ads, no matter how much I pay.
If rumble or some other platform gets close enough that I can use it instead, I'll try, but ultimately what makes youtube valuable is its content creators, and youtube hasn't pissed them off enough to make them all switch to an alternative yet, as no one else has the audience and budget.
> I'll try, but ultimately what makes youtube valuable is its content creators, and youtube hasn't pissed them off enough to make them all switch to an alternative yet, as no one else has the audience and budget.
For me this is getting less and less true by the day. Over the top voice inflection (to appeal to kids), in-video ads that are sometimes minutes long, etc. Try looking up a video on almost anything programming. Without a doubt the search will send you to some obnoxious shill like TechLead or the 1,000 people like him. It is VERY difficult to find stuff.
Aside from very niche creators the average "content creator" is a really annoying shill. Youtube has changed from a platform for people to post interesting things to a TV network where quality isn't even controlled. I'm not sure how anyone can justify paying for that.
I understand that Youtube is in control of how it chooses to monetize its platform, how many ads it shows, and how annoying it makes its sales pitch for Premium. I am in control of how I react to that: so far, it's been to not pay them anything, and install ad blockers to prevent seeing as many commercials as possible. They provide a useful service, and as a freeloader I try not to pay for the service.
But, I don't feel entitled not to pay for the service. I don't get mad at them for trying to show me ads that I try not to watch. And if one day they decide to stop me from skirting their rules, I'll have to choose what to do next.
The battle over online content has always been a battle of dual entitlement: People who think they're entitled to getting content for free and people who think they're entitled to getting paid for content they publish. It's OK that both can be wrong.
Been premium since they gated the listen-with-screen-off feature behind it. Never looked back.
Ad free is great, and I’m happy to pay for it / support the creators. Compared to my other subscriptions, I’ll probably keep this after I cull most of the others.
I would love to sympathize with the author, but this isn't a hill I would die on. The biggest complaint in the article is:
> Fast forward to 2022, and I cannot open YouTube without having an annoying pop-up urging me to subscribe to Premium
I mean, hitting skip on a popup is a very small price to pay for the content provided for free on YouTube. As opposed to cable, where not only did you pay for the service, you were still forced to watch 3 minutes of ads for every 6 minutes of content.
And then the author goes on to complain that:
> I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed that YouTube has progressively shown more and more ads to free users
This isn't controlled by YT. The people who make the videos decide how many ads, what timestamps to place them at, whether or not they are skippable, and whether or not there are ads at all. The YouTubers have full autonomy over this, and for the channels I watch that have chosen to not place ads on their videos (like NoClip), I have never seen YouTube place ads on those videos. So it seems like YT is respecting the channel owners decisions.
But many people (okay, me at least) just want to watch one or two videos once a week, so a subscription makes no sense... The article also mentions how absurd un-skippable ads have become. The whole "casual YouTube watching experience" is a real pain now, and I do not know if focusing on hard-core tubers will prove right in the long run.
For sure but if you're watching 2 vids a week that's only like a few minutes of ads. For people who use Youtube as entertainment, I'd recommend premium. You also get unlimited music streaming with that so it's a solid deal. Cancel your spotify sub and get youtube music which has the same or more songs and you get ad-free youtube as a bonus.
I would have thought so, but I’ve noticed here and Reddit that every time YouTube ads are brought up, people come out of the woodwork to announce that they proudly pay for YouTube premium. “I hate the ads so much, thank god for premium”
At the beginning of the article, I thought I was following the argument: she doesn't want premium because she's fine watching ads. But then the latter half of the article is also that she doesn't want to watch ads. I find it hard to be sympathetic with that degree of entitlement.
There's something about YouTube Premium that I just can't get comfortable with. Maybe I'm just old, and don't like the world moving to subscriptions? But €12/m seems a lot to avoid ads, despite watching quite a lot of YT. I know it also offers other things, but I don't care about those; €5-6 would seem a more reasonable price?
And is it weird that, as the ads are becoming longer and less skippable, I'm considering upgrading our living room from an AppleTV to some sort of NUC, primarily because I can then run ad-blocking software for YouTube? This would likely cost > 1 year's subscription, plus setup time, hassle, etc.
The price is slightly punchy for a monthly subscription, but probably worth it considering the amount of valuable content on there and the amount of ads. Think they have a lifetime subscriber here!
You can learn so much on YouTube, and you can be entertained for hours, sometimes to a fault. You can watch movies, interact live with like-minded people, and share videos effortlessly. You can also make a business out of content production, build an audience, and make good money with the right combo of audience insight and hard work. That's not without caveats, just like anything. All of this must be worth something. Is it worth $12 per month? I believe the answer is yes.
I myself consume so much content on YouTube (hours of video essays and podcasts) - and the ads are so relentlessly aggressive - that paying an extremely minimal fee each month for the service is an absolute no-brainer.
How is this even first page HN material? It’s entirely a personal choice as to whether a certain streaming service is worth it to you or not.
Do I make a blog post that’s suddenly trending because I decided not to subscribe to Paramount+?
Yeah, it's pretty crazy how much educational content is readily accessible these days thanks to youtube. There's never been a better time in human history to want to learn something. Having a massive trove of knowledge at my fingertips is easily worth the small amount of money a month premium costs.
I have YouTube Premium for the whole family, watching YT any other way is now unacceptable! Maybe it's sad that I have to be forced to pay to hide the ads? But yoinks, the platform needs to get paid somehow and honestly YT Premium is pretty good value when I look at it.
I'm a subscriber and I think you're missing the point. It's about the aggressive tactics to get people to subscribe. And even worse, they don't stop once you've subscribed. You pay them $15.99/month or whatever and then they still do full screen ads for additional product lifecycle steps (listening to music) or enroll family members. It's better on the web but the app experience is terrible. A side-effect I'm sure of the typical engagement/"experiment"-driven product management mindset, where what is not measured (consumer dissatisfaction) does not get managed.
Yea, my rule of thumb is: The more aggressive a company is trying to get me to subscribe, the less likely I will subscribe. On one end of the spectrum are sites that operate via donation and don't loudly ask that I donate. I'm more likely to subscribe to them. On the other end is YouTube Premium.
The hours of content and supporting the creators way more. YouTube music is included. it's not as good as Spotify but it works well enough, google play music was 100x better. still a bit bummed over that they canned it.
I dislike and avoid Google products as much as possible, but I get a lot of value out of YouTube and I am happy to pay them money for Premium to avoid the insane amount of advertisements.
There's a couple of services I subscribed to in the last year as an experiment and YouTube premium is one of them, probably the most successful. Love not having ads, love being able to play in the background on mobile even more.
Now if only I could pay YouTube for more API calls instead of playing games with quota appeals.
"I find significant value in one of the most amazing resources to exist on the Internet, but I steadfastly refuse to pay a penny for it out of sheer principle. Now, read more as I engage in extensive mental gymnastics to bolster my position and die on this hill."
Another way of viewing this is Google intentionally lost money on Youtube for years in order to kill out competition. Now that competition has been eliminated and its network effects are firmly in place Google is has greatly degraded their service to grow revenue.
There's another industry that operates like this, your local drug dealer that gives away the first few hits to get you addicted then charges going forward.
first few hits to get you addicted then charges going forward.
Sorry, but this comparison doesn't hold water. Your ability to use Youtube is not a binary decision based on being a premium subscriber or not. Advertising has been a thing on the Internet for a while.
I'm a premium subscriber but feel like I was bullied into it rather than wanting. I can deal with the ad breaks and unskippable ads. But the skippable ads! If you let 2-3 in a row go by without skipping them, youtube starts throwing 45 minute long ads at you.
Like, I'm fine with ads, but why do I need to physically interact with them every 7 minutes or be punished.
Yeah - YouTube is one of the few services that actually allows you to pay to escape the ads. If you value that, pay for it (I do). This doesn't free you from "sponsored content" from the creators themselves, but that's generally easier to bypass.
I wish it also allowed you to escape the incentives that cause them to design the app to be crappy (default to 'home' instead of subscriptions), but at least they also let you turn all of that tracking/history off.
If only the other ad-driven services allowed such an escape hatch.
When I realized that Facebook would not let me pay $5 / mo to opt out of ads on their platform, subscribing to YouTube was a no-brainer.
Our family uses YouTube for so much education and entertainment, paying $16/mo or whatever it costs for a family plan is a no-brainer. YouTube is one of my favorite parts about the modern Internet, and I want to directly pay to support it and its content creators.
Both are easy to bypass with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock. Not all videos are indexed by SponsorBlock but between helping out on my own marking the ad timestamps and the huge amount of people already doing so, I barely ever see an ad on YouTube. And that goes for both mobile (polymorphicshade's fork of NewPipe) and Android TV (SmartTube Next) as well.
I agree. Of all the "premium" services from any company, I find TY Premium to be near or at the top as far as cost/benefit.
My main complaint is that I cannot sign up for YT Premium Family on my Google Workspace account where my family members have lots of YT history under their emails.
I started there but ended with the writer. First of all, they are paying for the product in time spent watching ads, and second of all if YouTube is going to offer this ad-supported product they should offer a good ad supported product. It’s like complaining about arduous enterprise software, it’s not that they don’t want to watch ads, but five or 11 in a row, is that even good for the advertisers if people are watching multiple or the same ad?
YouTube wants to have their cake and eat it to, in terms of a free product to get users and be the market leader and then hound those users .
The kicker is even after you subscribe they just shut up for 2 months or so and after that the pop-ups show up again but begging you to upgrade to a family account.
Oooh this would make a bit of sense. I am in a flat that shares internet with the rest of the building and I was always being asked to up to the family plan
.. YouTube, bro. I'm tragically single and live in a single room alone. I last saw family at Christmas. You're seeing a NAT connection mate.
It's my understanding that, per viewer, Premium pays content creators more than ad impressions. Remember, that's per viewer. For even the very large channels, their Youtube revenue is primarily ads, but it's because their Premium viewers are a small portion of their total viewers.
Make your own choices. I'm not going to tell you what to do. Just don't play mental gymnastics over it and understand what you are actually doing when you make the decision to deprive funding "out of principle".