Does…. Any one, actually, you know, subscribe for YouTube?
I have a YouTube Premium subscription
How does it compare to a Netflix subscription, or whatever you got?
I’m technically still sharing a Netflix account with my parents, though I rarely use it at this point.
Whenever I want to watch a movie, and I check Netflix, they don’t have it. (It’s worth pointing out that I’m not in the US)In contrast, YouTube Premium gives me pretty much exactly what I seek from it. Videos from channels that I follow, but now without ads.
I would dump Netflix before cancelling YT Premium. Everything on Netflix I can stream for free from pirate sites to my TV. YouTube actually has tons of informational and educational content and a premium subscription lets me support it without the ads. I probably watch YouTube twice as much as all my other vid subs combined.
I’ve been so annoyed with the ads that I’ve started to go elsewhere for instructional content.
I watch a lot more YouTube than Netflix, personally
Ditto. It is my most used subscription.
I watch more YouTube than cable (never) or Netflix (maybe one binge a month).
I use it for music in the car and at work.
I play audio from some sciencey channels while I try to goto sleep.
I’ll probably keep paying. I do get value out of it.
You should do an AMA
Why
For me its solely because of a ad free experience on my TV, since its the primary device I’m using it on. And i got it relatively cheap from turkey so it’s not that big of a deal. I might reevaluate if the price increases though.
It really boils down to a few reasons:
- I don’t like ads, and I prefer not to see them
- Running a platform like YouTube is not cheap, and I understand that Google needs money to keep things running.
- The revenue of Premium is split between YouTube and the creators, much like ad revenue is. So it also supports the channels that I follow.
You pay and you’re still the product, they continue with all the tracking they do.
That hasn’t stopped me from using other Google services like Gmail, Docs, or Drive either.
If I ever decide I want to opt out of Google’s ecosystem I’ll just serve them a GDPR data deletion request.
That’s what I did when I deleted my Twitter account as well.
you hopefully mean you had a prem subscription, the more people quit because of price policy the better it will be for everyone
Oh yeah, because historically, whenever a large internet platform starts losing money, things definitely get better for everyone. Nevermind Reddit and Twitter and Meta and Netflix and Hulu having to nickle and dime users for basic functionality of their platforms, things are definitely better. I love all those raised prices and lowered quality of service.
Right.
out of all the subscriptions, it’s probably the best one. you can get youtube for free but either you’re gonna get ads or you’ll block them, and the creators you like will start seeking other forms of revenue that are just as/more annoying, or just quit.
yt-premium makes youtube an actually nice experience and keeps money flowing to creators. There’s a limit to how much that nice-experience is worth but it’s better than paying for netflix, and a bunch of netflix execs get paid, and the creators don’t. then the show you like is cancelled and removed anyway.
Yea I’ve been kinda watching youtube through this whole social media moment, suspicious that they’ve successfully taken a middle road here that will probably last. Ads and profiteering? You bet … but it seems that there’s a monetisation model for “creators” that kinda works (though I’m not sure at all about that). And so, for anyone that actually wants to make any sort of living doing the creative stuff that the rest of us lurkers want to consume, the inevitable question of how do you live within capitalism seems to have an answer of some sort in youtube while all the other platforms perhaps don’t have healthy or appealing answers.
As for the fediverse, I think there’s a massive opportunity for donations and crowd funding to become a much more central and normal aspect here so that making some sort of living by contributing to and being a part of this space is actually viable. Even some sort of subscription model for platfroms that are essentially non-profit creator-driven would make a lot of sense here.
That’s a problem that goes beyond any single platform though, and at the moment, cross-platform or fediverse-wide work seems to be lacking behind a little bit.
I fee like premium is really the only way to make youtube more sustainable for content creators and the platform alike. However, youtube has currently deemed that demonetized videos should lose all youtube premium revenue. That’s incredibly stupid.
Imagine if premium revenue went to creators you watched, regardless of monetization status. Premium subscribers would be highly sought after for content creators, since it’s a more reliable revenue source that gives them the freedom to make what they want. It’s good for YouTube/google too because thats less reliance on advertisers.
It could use some adjustments, maybe taking some inspiration from patreon.
I do, you get Youtube Music as well and no ads, which is a great combination.
The combo with YT Music is a good deal.
I primarily watch YouTube on tv, it is my most used video streaming platform, so yes I do. As does all my friends.
I do. I watch a ton of YouTube. Revanced and NewPipe are rad but there’s no effortless way to have an adfree experience on the TV.
Yes, a family plan makes it cheaper. You won’t see any ads on your devices, from your TV to your PC, and you can listen to YouTube videos even when your phone is locked. It also includes YouTube Music. It’s a great deal, and I’m not sure why some people don’t see it that way. Sure, you could get a different YouTube client for your phone, install an ad blocker on your PC, block ads on your router to get rid them on your smart TV, and listen to music on Spotify for free. But the value of a good service is that you pay a reasonable amount of money and get all these features without any additional work on your part.
Out of all the streaming services I pay for I get by far the most value out of yt premium, I probably spend 10x longer watching yt vids compared to movies and TV shows, and it has a dedicated music app that links nicely with my android auto.
Yeah, got YouTube music after they shut down Google play music. All my friends dog on me for not having Spotify but not having ads on iOS is so nice. I tried it once without youtube premium subscription and idk how people can sit through advertisment hell for every video.
Also having the creators I watch get a larger share of the YouTube money pie cause I watch them as a YouTube premium sub is a nice feeling too.
That being said though, I’m on a family plan and not this specific plan that got its price raised (although I’m pretty sure the family plan prices have also gone up recently if I remember right).
Yup. YouTube is most of what I watch.
I do, and YouTube is my primary Media consumption for both video and music.
That said, I have the family plan which went from $15-23 back a few months ago and it was difficult to keep. I actually cancelled it and used Spotify and some of the available ad-blocking apps, but ultimately didn’t like Spotify, so I came back.
If it were to go up again anytime remotely soon I’d be gone.
OP here. I do in fact confess that I share a YT Premium subscription with a friend, though I myself eschew the bog-standard YT apps with those patched using Revanced Extended just because of long-standing QoL issues on said regular apps.
I have one through my legacy Google Play Music subscription. I get YouTube Music and YouTube Premium for $7.99/month
I do but I got it „on my holiday“ in India
Question for you: I looked into trying this approach myself, but Google would not accept my non-Indian payment information.
As it happens, they also refused to take my payment information when I visited Argentina and Turkey, too.
How did you do it?
I used my credit card (Visa by Klarna) and it worked just fine. But it’s been a while since I’ve been there, maybe they changed something?
I pay ~£1 a month for it by ‘being Argentinian’.
This is on top of already using ReVanced and SmartTube because I actually use the download feature of YT Music.
I do! Would probably give up my Netflix subscription before YouTube to be honest. As a family, we spend more time using YouTube than most other streaming services.
I did, sorta.
I subscribed to Google Play Music All Access from day 1, because (at the time) it was like Spotify but also allowed me to upload my own music. I added a family plan when that became available for my friends/family who wanted it as well, and was grandfathered into that price when GPMAA eventually turned into YouTube Music, which was also bundled with YouTube Premium. Ad-free YouTube isn’t something I specifically sought out but it was bundled into a service that I was using as a perk.
I kept that subscription going at the grandfathered rate until I got an email from Google one day informing me that they were increasing the price, which was last October, and would only allow me to keep the grandfathered cost for an additional 6 months before hiking me up to the new price. That would bring me from $14.99/mo to $23.99/mo, so I said “fuck that” and canceled. The service only got worse after they killed GPM anyways.
MAN I miss Google play music. Uploading your own music was lit
I used to when I used have it when subscribed to Google Music—which was amazing but then they tried to replace it with YouTube Music and yet another big amazing Google product died—and there was no point anymore.
I’ve considered it to stop ads on the TV app, but always thought it wasn’t worth it. I can’t even be bothered ad-blocking the network to include the TV, so raising cost of Premium now may as well make the product cease to exist in my mind.
Yep. I watch more YouTube than TV. Once you get a curated list of channels set up, YouTube is great. And I don’t like ads.
YouTube has the creators I actually want to support. I don’t mind paying for all the hours of content I’m getting for it
Yes, the whole family watches YouTube on the TV, on the iPad/mobile phone apps, that it’s worth it not to see the ads there, plus background play of audio, plus the whole family can stream their music from YouTube Music so no need for an aditional Spotify subscription.
Anyway, I just wish they’d remove the sponsor stuff on the apps like SponsorBlock does on the desktop for me.
Yep, Family Plan here as well. It’s 4+1 of us, we all watch YT pretty much continuously at different age levels (two adults, one teenager and one preschooler), and since there was one extra seat left grandma also got ad free experience on her mobile. All 5 of us are also into different kinds of music so having access to YT music is also huge plus. The only other subscription I don’t mind paying for is Amazon Prime, for obvious reasons. Netflix, D+, Apple TV+ and such got the boot long time ago, with no plans to resubscribe any time soon.
I want to but the price is to high for what they’re asking for. I could have gotten myself a subscription for crunchy roll or Netflix with the money they’re asking
People with overpaid white collar jobs do that plenty and there are plenty of them who will pay probably up to $50 a month or more. Youtube is already testing predatory measures to make chrome users ditch adblockers by giving out warnings to people who use them. Many more will go Youtube Premium in the near future because of such measures and Youtube will keep ramping up prices of course.
So you are pissed off that people are actually willing to pay for service? Youtube hosts millions if not billions of videos and streams them to billions of users, dozens of times a day and they do all this essentially lag free. That infrastructure is not cheap.
Additionally youtube actually shares their premium revenue with content creators allowing people to actually make a successful living with their creative pursuits and you control how that revenue is shared by which videos you watch.
My YouTube subscription costs 0. ublock Origin.
They started blocking users with advanced adblockers completely in some places. It’s expected they’ll roll out that policy in most countries. Prepare to either ditch Youtube completely, watch dozens of ads as well as sponsored segments every couple of minutes (because why would Google pay content creators who make them a huge pile of money by providing content for free adequately, right?) or pay hundreds of dollars a year. Even then they might start showing you some ads because why the hell not? Big tech stole the internet from us and now they’re banking in on it big time. Needlesly to say this is not a sustainable business model, but since when did that ever bother mega corporations?
Unless they put YouTube content behind a paywall there will always be ways to block ads.
Probably that would be their future take, free 3 minutes of the video, if you want more… pay.
And then will the era of pirating and downloading YouTube videos begin.
Oh no my dns provider broke and it cant resolve the ad servers. Pihole for the win
Just that the ads and videos come from the same domain
I never got pihole to reliably block yt ads…
Can you cast it to your TV with no ads?
Unlock origin and ReVanced is great, but it doesn’t allow casting to the TV without ads…
I don’t have the money to sustain the “everything is a subscription” simple as that. So adblockers and piracy is the only way to get media content.
I still go to the cinema, but some cinemas over here are already experimenting with subscriptions.
I’d be willing to pay for a few subscriptions if I didn’t feel like subscription services are trying to gouge me left and right. I miss the days when subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify gave me access to 90% of content online.
Contrast this with Steam, which gives me centralized convenience, seamless updates, online sync, achievements… No wonder that’s where I spend almost all of my entertainment money these days.
By the time steam chokes and shittifies we are all doomed
It’s like what cable networks did back in the day, if you want to view a channel, subscribe to it. We have come full circle.
Good lord they are going to put ads again in streaming services aren’t they
They already have.
Where? Haven’t seen one on Amazon prime, Netflix or HBO yet
Peacock, Paramount+, Hulu, and YouTube TV all have ads or ad plans. Some even just have ads on popular shows no matter the price you pay.
netflix has a plan with ads! https://help.netflix.com/en/node/126831
amazon uses prime video as a hook to get you to sign up for prime membership (which itself has been steadily increasing in price).
i’d be shocked if HBO didn’t introduce an ad-supported price tier at some point in the future. that totally seems like zaslav’s MO.
I’ve started getting ads for other shows and movies on Prime. I’m sure they’ll start putting other ads in front of the actual content too soon
going to
Uhhhh
Wait Netflix has ads?
Well fuck me sideways
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Software subscriptions are what really bums me out. Back in the day you could just buy your software and have it forever. Now Microsoft Office is a subscription, Adobe Photoshop is a subscription, and so much more. Nothing pisses me off more than when I install a basic app on my phone and find out it’s actually a subscription app.
Literally the only major software I can think of right now that isn’t subscription based or insanely expensive is Apple’s Final Cut Pro at $300.
“buy your software and have it forever” was not really true other than in the very early days. everything that was in active development like office, photoshop, all the pro music software i used, was updated regularly and had an upgrade cost. my music app had a paid upgrade every year like clockwork for $150. it was essentially a subscription in all but name. yeah i could stop paying and stay with the last version forever but operating system and hardware advances would make it so those versions would stop running on newer machines eventually.
This right here is one of the biggest reasons I turned to exclusively open source software, cuz man the amount of internal rage I feel any time I have to log into software is unreal, like I open the software I want it to just go
Fortunately Microsoft Office isn’t fully subscription yet, but with how much they’re pushing Office365 it’s not too surprising that people don’t seem to realize this. You can still buy a permanent license from MS directly (with some digging around to get to the correct page) or from 3rd party websites. Only downside is it locks you into the current version of Office, but for the average user (me) that’s not too much of a big deal - I can’t recall them releasing any major must have features over the past 10 years.
If you’re going to all that trouble, why not try some open source alternatives next upgrade before shelling out for another license? You might be surprised how narrow the gap between Microsoft and libre office options has become.
I just don’t care 🙌
I seriously couldn’t give two fucks about supporting influencers or tech companies. Uploaders can pay for the infrastructure for all I care. Like people use to host websites out of passion, now everything is about profits, and politics, why would I want to support that? Why should I give two fucks about making someone else rich?
Fuck that shit. You can get cracked copies of the YouTube App that give a much better experience.
A single ticket to my local movie theater costs $16.50 for an adult ticket to a typical movie. That is already more expensive than a month of unlimited Youtube premium, even at the inflated price.
Video streaming is a consumable product. What model would you prefer. Ad supported is still available. A la carte is reasonable in theory, but doesn’t seem like it would work well for a site like youtube (even though youtube does have some a-la-carte offerings such as movies)
We used to have a movie subscription service around here. It failed because it was essentially sellings dimes for nickels.
I pay $22 per month for the family plan because I don’t want my kids or my folks to have to be constantly inundated with ads. And I enjoy being and to play free music that is exactly the songs I want.
I was really upset when they raised the price on me, and kicked me off the grandfather plan. But in the end I decided it was still worth it.
But what the real cost to Google is here is that they have evaporated my loyalty and good will. I now see them as a company that will squeeze me when they know they can get away with it, and that my loyalty and being an early adopter means nothing to them.
That will definitely affect every future buying decision I make for future products and services.
Yeah I love Youtube Premium on the family plan. People on the internet act like there’s no benefit to it as long as Adblock and Youtube Vanced exist. Meanwhile I have an iPhone, smart TVs, and my whole family does too. My nieces and nephews don’t have to get bombarded with ads, and that’s well worth it to me. But the way they silently jacked the price up $5 per month was a total dick move that I’m not happy about. If they keep pulling this shit, it’s only a matter of time before I find another solution.
smart TVs
SmartTube can solve that issue, at least, assuming it runs any form of Android. I don’t know enough about iPhone to know if there’s an alternative there.
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Yes. I was an early adopter away back when their motto was “don’t be evil”, when Android devices were premium hardware at extremely low prices, when Google apps were free or super cheap.
They have changed over time. They weren’t always greedy scumbags.
I’ve had a bunch of their pixel phones and one ended up breaking. So I did a warranty exchange and they kept sending me bad phones with even more problems than the one before it. Like their refurb department doesn’t even bother fixing a bad device before sending it to their next victim. And they have zero customer service, so I was pretty much screwed. No more pixels for me.
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get caught in an automated process and have your life ruined, for starters. I’d say that’s a pretty real world consequence of letting Alphabet scan all of your photos.
Google went public in 2004. They’ve always been greedy scumbags. It’s just more apparent now since they are constantly looking for new ways to extract money from their customers.
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Psst, Invidious and NewPipe don’t have ads either!
I had that for $14 a month and they were going to raise it to $22 so I said bye just at the perfect time since ReVanced released it’s manager to install.
Firefox+UBO and Revanced users: Oh no… anyway…
Revanced still costs $0/month.
Newpipe = all the pros of YT Red, none of the cons, and you don’t need root. 🤌🏼
NewPipe’s great, but it’s less useful because I prefer some features it doesn’t have (like the ability to log in).
🤓 Uh, logging in is a feature of NP…
Wait, is it? Switched to Revanced because NP wouldn’t let me.
Either’s cool, no judgement 🙌🏽
They gave me 3 months free and it was just the same broken website without ads.
Youtube is completely broken. The algorithm doesn’t even auto play undiscovered music or videos. It’s just serving me the exact same videos I already watched. It used to be a really fun and good service that was free and now you get shit and have to pay for it.
Why would anyone pay for that?
Is anyone running the company or are they all just doing drugs?
Unfortunately you need to (at least in my experience) purge the feed couple times a year. Just use “not interested” with a heavy hand and a light heart. It tends to recommend new stuff after that.
My wife and I watch certain YouTubers more then we watch TV, and use a TV to do it, so it’s pretty nice not having any ads and we don’t really rely on the algo at all.
If you’re using a smart TV running any version of Android (Fire TV, etc.) or you’re using a device that plugs into your TV that’s running Android, you can use SmartTube to watch YouTube if you want.
It blocks ads, it’s got SponsorBlock, and it supports casting from somewhere else (like your phone’s YouTube app). It’s also pretty customizable, too.
I’ll check out SmartTube, tho I also rely on Yt Music quite a bit and Yt Prem comes with that as well
ReVanced supports YouTube Music on Android, and it includes the ability to block ads and enable playing music in the background, among other things.
We believe this new price reflects the value of YouTube Premium
I disagree. YouTube offers nothing without the content creators. While reason I ever started using it because TotalBiscuit made a good case for it. But I have to say, while they keep jacking up prices I don’t feel like I’m getting anything more. I never asked for YT Music and would gladly take a discount to have it removed.
Keep fucking around and find out Google, I got no issues going back to ad blockers. Whole reason I got premium was to support those I watch and all I ever hear is how Google is fucken them over.
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I disagree. YouTube offers nothing without the content creators.
While yes, they depend on the creators, many of those creators would not make any money without a platform like YouTube. I don’t like the price raising, but YouTube stores your videos for free, and makes it easy to monetize content.
I’d rather have a cheaper version premium just for Youtube without ads though. I’ve heard there is or was Premium Lite in some countries, but not where I’m from. I don’t need Music, I already pay Tidal for that.
Or is YT Music with Premium so much better than the free one? When I cancelled my Spotify and were looking where to move to, I gave the free YTM a try. It would be two birds with one stone - YT without ads and a replacement music streaming service. But I just hated the whole experience. The UI, that my music “follows” get mixed with YouTube subscriptions, and that it always plays a video with every song.
Yeah basically the same. The video thingy only does it when the song is not available on YouTube Music and it’s playing a video.
Which honestly is the only thing why I switched to YouTube Music, on Spotify if the song isn’t there that’s it, but YouTube music there is always a user or band uploaded video.
When is available there is switch to choose if video or music and well on the phone you can always use the audio only option as you can do with YouTube. The rest the same as you said it.
I really wish they’d drop the YouTube Music aspect of this and just do an ad-free YouTube sub. Happy to pay content creators for their work; less happy to give Google money for a music platform after what they did to Google Music.
I’m the opposite. I’m still grandfathered into the $7.99 Google Music sub, which turned into YT Music + YT premium. The cheapest music service with basically free YT premium is nice
I wouldn’t pay more though
It’s probably improved a lot since the early days. I remember it being significantly worse than the Google Music it was replacing.
It still is in parts. Still takes a few extra taps/screens to get to playlists
They are least stopped the practice of just starting a song when you went into a playlist.
My big gripe was the loss of audio quality. Made me pick up Amazon music for a bit
Switched over from Spotify after they went too hard on Joe Rogan, so I never used Google Music. I like YouTube music. That said, they’ve just started adding podcasts - really hope they don’t go the way of Spotify.
I like YouTube music though? I refuse to give Spotify money because of Joe Rogan, and if you’re a classical music lover YT is just better.
That’s cool. I’m not saying they should only offer it without YT music, just that they should offer an alternative way of supporting YouTubers without buying a service you don’t need.
Yeah that I do agree with. I don’t have Premium so I guess I don’t know what that looks like.
They actually did a trial of such a sub in various Scandinavian countries, cost about five quid a month or so, which is entirely reasonable. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere.
I just find YouTube music does random mixes better than any other platform. I really dig it!
My adblockers are holding steady with a 0% rise! I still ain’t paying!
Lol. Theres already no way I’d pay for YouTube premium. Raising the price more and more just entrenches that more and more.
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Exactly. If you want me to subscribe, lower the price! Don’t these corporations do some kind of analysis, where if you lower prices, you get more subs and more money…or raise prices, less subs, and overall less money. The soda companies are the same way. It used to be $3 for a case of soda, now it’s $7+. I’ve noticed that since they did that, the soda aisle at my local grocery stores is about half the size it used to be.
Google’s really been on one lately. They’ve also been laying off staff, increasing ads while trying to ban ad blockers from YouTube, raised the pricing of workspaces yet again and closed the unlimited drive storage loophole. Removed photos from the album archive thingy. And I feel there’s been a few other things within the last couple months I’m forgetting.
Increasing the price of a service that is already piss-poor value for your money is incredibly smart. Who the hell is gonna pay 14$ per month just to get rid of ads?
It also includes YouTube Music. Yes, I know, many will say they value proposition it’s still poor even with that. Honestly it’s worth it to me. I subscribe to the family plan because we watch a lot of YouTube and listen to a lot of music. No ads plus unlimited music for 4 people is worth it to us.
Yeah same here, I use the hell out of my Youtube Premium. Though the biggest feature lately has been 0 ads on content, as the majority of my video streaming is from Youtube.
Same I get a lot of use out of the family plan. My group of friends just exchange various family plans to save money. I take care of YouTube, another friend Spotify, etc. I absolutely hate ads and can work around them but still like supporting my favorite channels. I’ve been on YouTube for well over a decade and is pretty much my main video entertainment, so well worth it.
I will (and do currently). I watch a bunch of YouTube on my TV through an AppleTV, and it’s the easiest way to get no ads and also support the people I watch.
People who’re gullible. I’m sure Twitch thought the same thing when their subscription service is exactly the same thing. $12 a month, just to remove ads. On top of them assuming you have Prime too, which is $15. So they want you paying $27 to get rid of ads.
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I suspect that most existing subscribers won’t even notice that the price is increasing and will keep letting it charge them anyway. AOL still makes money this way.
And not everyone is as savvy to set up an ad blocker, especially on mobile.
As for value, that’s always subjective. There are probably people who would argue that is more than worth their money. Not me though.
I really wish they’d decouple it from YouTube Music. I don’t use it and if just Premium was about $10 or so I’d at least consider it.
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Hmm that makes sense. I’m unfortunately all in on Apple’s ecosystem, since Apple Music links to iTunes Store, where I can buy music I like from my Recently Added list. And ever so often, I’ll get a GDPR request and run my own version of Replay that doesn’t have numbers rounded.
