6 ms·

An inside look at YouTube’s new ad-free subscription service

31 points by jonathansizz 11y ago

sageabilly 11y ago
This service seems squarely aimed at mobile users- blocking ads and allowing YouTube to play in the background are two functionalities that are already enabled on desktop (with the addition of a browser-based adblocker). I'll be honest, it took me a minute or two to wrap my head around paying money to block ads on YouTube since I already do that with a browser extension. Is YouTube really that popular on mobile? With Netflix and Spotify already having mobile apps I don't see many people paying $10 a month for the ability to skip ads and play YouTube music in the background. And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.
- fixermark 11y ago
  You may underestimate the vast long-tail appeal of PewDiePie. ;)
- dangoor 11y ago
  I'm guessing that YouTube is quite popular on mobile devices. Beyond that, though, I think the fact that this service is bundled with Google Play Music is a big deal. There's a market already for $10/month music services... now, your $10/month gets you the music service and ad-free YouTube. I don't know how Google Play Music stacks up against the others, but it's something I would consider.
  - msabalau 11y ago
    Exactly this--the value isn't just Youtube--it's Youtube plus streaming music. If you are paying for a streaming service, switching gives you ad free YouTube "for free". Also, being able to take videos "off line" seems like it could be pretty useful for some people.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    GPM is fairly competitive on its own, and now you get even more for your money. I have been a subscriber from the start.
  - schnevets 11y ago
    I didn't see myself jumping from Spotify/Netflix to this bundle because Spotify has a lot more niche content than the other services, but Google could gain a huge market if they collect the music library for the younger, YouTube-obsessed demographic who would care about PewDiePie's exclusive content.
- krstck 11y ago
  > And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards. The (mostly teenage) audience for Youtube celebrities is massive, and is probably mostly invisible to you if you don't know any kids. I don't know whether they'd be willing to pay for a subscription service, but regardless of whether you think Netflix is higher quality than Youtube, there are many millions of people who get their entertainment mostly just from Youtube.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    ...and I weep for a generation raised on LolCatz and FailzTeenThrob
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      And your parents weeped for a generation raised by MTV. It is very easy to mis-characterise and or dismiss the younger generation's content, it is also ironic as your parents and their parents did exactly the same thing.
      - raldi 11y ago
        This "Rock-n-Roll" is just noise. And the Beatles need to cut their hair.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I'd laugh if I wasn't crying. Let me try it in essay form. The quality of the medium has gone up in 200 years; the quality of the message, down. This is documented. Read old literature, if you can. Its hard for us, with our 9 second attention spans, to follow the thread in old books with their page-long paragraphs. Not because they wrote badly; because we're no longer trained to understand complex ideas. Instead 4-minute songs with one lyric, distilled one-note thought pieces with sophomoric moralizing, videos pandering to the lowest emotion. Folks reading this will dismiss it as maudlin ranting, misplaced nostalgia. The trend has exceeded a single lifetime. Generations decry the drop in standards, because the standards drop. They had a long way to go, and we near the bottom. Its not about hair and noise. Its about the message. Which there's no longer any room for.
- abalos 11y ago
  This also allows you to have access to Google Play Music which is currently $9.99 / mo. This rocks.
digitalengineer 11y ago
>"I make a little bit of money from ads, not much, but something," she recently explained. The real money these days is in product placement" Why doesn't Google just buy https://famebit.com/ https://famebit.com/ ?
hoopism 11y ago
My nieces love pewdiepie... Easy xmas gift. I watch a few short series on youtube while working... it's a fine medium for content. 10 bucks seems steep to me... but I also don't pay for cable. I can see this working.
- abalos 11y ago
  The best part is that it's wrapped in with Google Play Music. So I don't have to pay anything extra for more stuff? Works for me.
wesd 11y ago
How does this subscription affect content creators on youtube who monetize based on ads?
- maskedinvader 11y ago
  They will be forced to share the subscription revenue as per tech-crunch [1]. 1. http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-but-bullies-creators-into-deals-crunch-report/519176342/ http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-but-b...
mcintyre1994 11y ago
I signed up early for Google Play Music and got it at £7.99 instead of £9.99 - if they keep that price and add this I think I'll be pretty pleased.
skrause 11y ago
My main question is: How is my money distributed? If I only watch a single video in a given month, will that creator get my $10 (usually called "subscriber share model") will my money go into a big pool which is distributed equally by clicks, in which case the creator of my favorite video will get almost nothing?
- tehstone8 11y ago
  I wonder the same thing. My assumption is that it will (unfortunately) be similar to Spotify's model. Distribution of those subscription dollars will be based on total views platform wide rather than on your individual views. So even if you only watch videos from one channel, they will only get a piece of your $10 proportional to their total views among all videos on Youtube. Who knows though, being a Google property, it wouldn't surprise me that they have a more complex algorithm.
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    If the payment is proportional to the view distribution among Youtube Red subscribers, I'm not sure whether the methods would work out very differently. Actually I guess one way it could get skewed if the viewers of one channel on average watch more/fewer videos than the population at large. Hopefully they figure out how to weight the value of a given minute of "view time" for fix-it videos etc vs music videos which are running in the background.
mrwizrd 11y ago
Google should consider lumping in membership of Contributor in with YouTube Red for the $10 a month fee. That would be a great product - (Google) ad-free web plus ad-free YouTube that works in the background on mobile devices and offline (as long as you download the video first). I'd be more likely to pay for that than the two services separately. This feels a little too close to the scenario where you're paying every advertising network in the world a subscription each month. https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
ohthehugemanate 11y ago
I guess I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about this. Youtube is going to the cable subscription model. Hooray? Everyone knows that the next few years is about consumers "cutting the cord" from cable bundles so they can pay the same amount for bundled streaming services. So Youtube is joining the list of paid streaming services. Not surprising, or exciting. Everyone already seems to acknowledge that paid streaming services will go the same way cable TV went: first you're paying for no ads, but in a few years you're paying with ads, too. This goes beyond "not exciting" and right to "bad for consumers." The only big question for me is, if "information wants to be free" really is baked into the digital world... who's going to do to Youtube, what Youtube did to cable TV?
- mc32 11y ago
  Brand's complete quote is more illustrating of the dilemma: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other"
  - dingaling 11y ago
    > On the other hand, information wants to be free The original context of this axiom was that information will tend towards making itself free of confines, not cost. The free-beerness is a consequence of this liberation, not the goal.
wildpeaks 11y ago
Sounds like a consequence of Youtube not being able to purchase Twitch
amelius 11y ago
Google should remove ads for people who upload videos that generate a lot of traffic. That way, you can fight ads by generating more ads yourself :)
Kristine1975 11y ago
The ad-free Youtube service I use is called youtube-dl.
- j_s 11y ago
  With first-class Windows support; impressive! https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html
MattGrommes 11y ago
What are they going to do about the ads creators do inside their videos? Unless they ban "This video is supported by..." type content inside videos there will still be ads, just not Youtube separate ads. And banning those ads will probably end many channels who rely on them to make up for Youtube's pretty lousy ad pay-out.

31 points by jonathansizz 11y ago

This service seems squarely aimed at mobile users- blocking ads and allowing YouTube to play in the background are two functionalities that are already enabled on desktop (with the addition of a browser-based adblocker). I'll be honest, it took me a minute or two to wrap my head around paying money to block ads on YouTube since I already do that with a browser extension. Is YouTube really that popular on mobile? With Netflix and Spotify already having mobile apps I don't see many people paying $10 a month for the ability to skip ads and play YouTube music in the background. And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.

fixermark 11y ago
You may underestimate the vast long-tail appeal of PewDiePie. ;)
dangoor 11y ago
I'm guessing that YouTube is quite popular on mobile devices. Beyond that, though, I think the fact that this service is bundled with Google Play Music is a big deal. There's a market already for $10/month music services... now, your $10/month gets you the music service and ad-free YouTube. I don't know how Google Play Music stacks up against the others, but it's something I would consider.
- msabalau 11y ago
  Exactly this--the value isn't just Youtube--it's Youtube plus streaming music. If you are paying for a streaming service, switching gives you ad free YouTube "for free". Also, being able to take videos "off line" seems like it could be pretty useful for some people.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  GPM is fairly competitive on its own, and now you get even more for your money. I have been a subscriber from the start.
- schnevets 11y ago
  I didn't see myself jumping from Spotify/Netflix to this bundle because Spotify has a lot more niche content than the other services, but Google could gain a huge market if they collect the music library for the younger, YouTube-obsessed demographic who would care about PewDiePie's exclusive content.
krstck 11y ago
> And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards. The (mostly teenage) audience for Youtube celebrities is massive, and is probably mostly invisible to you if you don't know any kids. I don't know whether they'd be willing to pay for a subscription service, but regardless of whether you think Netflix is higher quality than Youtube, there are many millions of people who get their entertainment mostly just from Youtube.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  ...and I weep for a generation raised on LolCatz and FailzTeenThrob
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    And your parents weeped for a generation raised by MTV. It is very easy to mis-characterise and or dismiss the younger generation's content, it is also ironic as your parents and their parents did exactly the same thing.
    - raldi 11y ago
      This "Rock-n-Roll" is just noise. And the Beatles need to cut their hair.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I'd laugh if I wasn't crying. Let me try it in essay form. The quality of the medium has gone up in 200 years; the quality of the message, down. This is documented. Read old literature, if you can. Its hard for us, with our 9 second attention spans, to follow the thread in old books with their page-long paragraphs. Not because they wrote badly; because we're no longer trained to understand complex ideas. Instead 4-minute songs with one lyric, distilled one-note thought pieces with sophomoric moralizing, videos pandering to the lowest emotion. Folks reading this will dismiss it as maudlin ranting, misplaced nostalgia. The trend has exceeded a single lifetime. Generations decry the drop in standards, because the standards drop. They had a long way to go, and we near the bottom. Its not about hair and noise. Its about the message. Which there's no longer any room for.
abalos 11y ago
This also allows you to have access to Google Play Music which is currently $9.99 / mo. This rocks.

digitalengineer 11y ago

>"I make a little bit of money from ads, not much, but something," she recently explained. The real money these days is in product placement" Why doesn't Google just buy https://famebit.com/ https://famebit.com/ ?

hoopism 11y ago

My nieces love pewdiepie... Easy xmas gift. I watch a few short series on youtube while working... it's a fine medium for content. 10 bucks seems steep to me... but I also don't pay for cable. I can see this working.

abalos 11y ago
The best part is that it's wrapped in with Google Play Music. So I don't have to pay anything extra for more stuff? Works for me.

wesd 11y ago

How does this subscription affect content creators on youtube who monetize based on ads?

maskedinvader 11y ago
They will be forced to share the subscription revenue as per tech-crunch [1]. 1. http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-but-bullies-creators-into-deals-crunch-report/519176342/ http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-but-b...

mcintyre1994 11y ago

I signed up early for Google Play Music and got it at £7.99 instead of £9.99 - if they keep that price and add this I think I'll be pretty pleased.

skrause 11y ago

My main question is: How is my money distributed? If I only watch a single video in a given month, will that creator get my $10 (usually called "subscriber share model") will my money go into a big pool which is distributed equally by clicks, in which case the creator of my favorite video will get almost nothing?

tehstone8 11y ago
I wonder the same thing. My assumption is that it will (unfortunately) be similar to Spotify's model. Distribution of those subscription dollars will be based on total views platform wide rather than on your individual views. So even if you only watch videos from one channel, they will only get a piece of your $10 proportional to their total views among all videos on Youtube. Who knows though, being a Google property, it wouldn't surprise me that they have a more complex algorithm.
- bpodgursky 11y ago
  If the payment is proportional to the view distribution among Youtube Red subscribers, I'm not sure whether the methods would work out very differently. Actually I guess one way it could get skewed if the viewers of one channel on average watch more/fewer videos than the population at large. Hopefully they figure out how to weight the value of a given minute of "view time" for fix-it videos etc vs music videos which are running in the background.

mrwizrd 11y ago

Google should consider lumping in membership of Contributor in with YouTube Red for the $10 a month fee. That would be a great product - (Google) ad-free web plus ad-free YouTube that works in the background on mobile devices and offline (as long as you download the video first). I'd be more likely to pay for that than the two services separately. This feels a little too close to the scenario where you're paying every advertising network in the world a subscription each month. https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/

ohthehugemanate 11y ago

I guess I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about this. Youtube is going to the cable subscription model. Hooray? Everyone knows that the next few years is about consumers "cutting the cord" from cable bundles so they can pay the same amount for bundled streaming services. So Youtube is joining the list of paid streaming services. Not surprising, or exciting. Everyone already seems to acknowledge that paid streaming services will go the same way cable TV went: first you're paying for no ads, but in a few years you're paying with ads, too. This goes beyond "not exciting" and right to "bad for consumers." The only big question for me is, if "information wants to be free" really is baked into the digital world... who's going to do to Youtube, what Youtube did to cable TV?

mc32 11y ago
Brand's complete quote is more illustrating of the dilemma: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other"
- dingaling 11y ago
  > On the other hand, information wants to be free The original context of this axiom was that information will tend towards making itself free of confines, not cost. The free-beerness is a consequence of this liberation, not the goal.

wildpeaks 11y ago

Sounds like a consequence of Youtube not being able to purchase Twitch

amelius 11y ago

Google should remove ads for people who upload videos that generate a lot of traffic. That way, you can fight ads by generating more ads yourself :)

Kristine1975 11y ago

The ad-free Youtube service I use is called youtube-dl.

j_s 11y ago
With first-class Windows support; impressive! https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

MattGrommes 11y ago

What are they going to do about the ads creators do inside their videos? Unless they ban "This video is supported by..." type content inside videos there will still be ads, just not Youtube separate ads. And banning those ads will probably end many channels who rely on them to make up for Youtube's pretty lousy ad pay-out.