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I'm curious what YouTube's real numbers are for YouTube profitability. Are these channels at such high subscriber rates that they're cutting into YouTube's abil

I'm curious what YouTube's real numbers are for YouTube profitability. Are these channels at such high subscriber rates that they're cutting into YouTube's ability to sustain themselves? They recently demonetized all of the Salad Fingers videos, causing David Firth to remove all those videos from YouTube and only allowing them to Patreon subscribers via Vimeo. I hope this pushes towards more independent, distributed toob sites. YouTube is simply too big a monolith.

jgtrosh 8y ago
I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature. Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- samschooler 8y ago
  I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via the embeded video player.
  - alexbeloi 8y ago
    Where do the creators you follow host their videos?
    - hundchenkatze 8y ago
      Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS readers".
      - Arnavion 8y ago
        Oh wow, how have I never noticed that. In fact there are individual channel feeds (https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<> https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>) and this is a wrapper around that. That's great! I currently receive email notifications for subscriptions, but I've noticed I don't always get emails for all the uploads of some of those channels. A direct RSS feed should solve that problem too.
    - samschooler 8y ago
      They're all still on YouTube, but I just subscribe to the YouTube rss feed. Also since they don't get ad revenue, I pay ~$15/month to assorted creators.
  - JetSpiegel 8y ago
    You can also use a local podcatcher like gPodder to automatically download the videos.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
DanBC 8y ago
There's a bunch of Salad Fingers videos on Youtube.
faladSingers 8y ago
I just made the mistake of watching a single Salad Fingers video, and it was a waste of bandwidth, and I want those precious minutes of my life back, but I can't make that happen. It's not spam, but it certainly is worthless. There's something to be said, regarding platforms having a need to project an image of depth and variety, and there was a time when it might have been useful to have something like Salad Fingers hanging around, to fill out the infinite scroll playlist, but let's not pretend that Youtube has a gap like that, needing occupants anymore. Youtube is eye-to-eye with (or far ahead of) Netflix and Amazon, in that they are active content producers now, and it's out-of-touch to imagine them as a DIY empowerment engine, providing a means for nobodies to bootstrap themselves out of obscurity scribbles we all might hypothetically fawn over for thirty seconds, while checking to see if the infinite scroll will crash our browsers.
- kojon99 8y ago
  That’s what I feel every time I watch a video from one of the big names of YouTube. I guess I’m getting old.
southerndrift 8y ago
I am curious, too. The blog post mentions 1M views [1]. At €1 per TB [2], and assuming a video of 100Mb which are roughly 1GB, you end up with 1000TB a €1000. Even if Google just pays a fraction like $0.1 per TB, they still have to earn $100 somewhere else to break even. [1]: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende... [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud https://www.hetzner.com/cloud
- lev99 8y ago
  > Even if Google just pays a fraction like $0.1 per TB, they still have to earn $100 somewhere else to break even. 1. The bad press generated is easily worth more than $100. 2. Youtube exercises the option recommend other videos. Blender gave them 1M opportunities to attract attention to other videos that are monetized. 3. Blender's videos were probably much larger than 100MB. I remember watching several that were over 30mins.
cvwright 8y ago
That's a very good question. Supposing YT is still unprofitable after all these years, isn't that evidence of dumping? In other words, evidence of Google/Alphabet illegally pushing in to take over this market?

jgtrosh 8y ago

I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature. Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
samschooler 8y ago
I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via the embeded video player.
- alexbeloi 8y ago
  Where do the creators you follow host their videos?
  - hundchenkatze 8y ago
    Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS readers".
    - Arnavion 8y ago
      Oh wow, how have I never noticed that. In fact there are individual channel feeds (https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<> https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>) and this is a wrapper around that. That's great! I currently receive email notifications for subscriptions, but I've noticed I don't always get emails for all the uploads of some of those channels. A direct RSS feed should solve that problem too.
  - samschooler 8y ago
    They're all still on YouTube, but I just subscribe to the YouTube rss feed. Also since they don't get ad revenue, I pay ~$15/month to assorted creators.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  You can also use a local podcatcher like gPodder to automatically download the videos.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

DanBC 8y ago

There's a bunch of Salad Fingers videos on Youtube.

faladSingers 8y ago

I just made the mistake of watching a single Salad Fingers video, and it was a waste of bandwidth, and I want those precious minutes of my life back, but I can't make that happen. It's not spam, but it certainly is worthless. There's something to be said, regarding platforms having a need to project an image of depth and variety, and there was a time when it might have been useful to have something like Salad Fingers hanging around, to fill out the infinite scroll playlist, but let's not pretend that Youtube has a gap like that, needing occupants anymore. Youtube is eye-to-eye with (or far ahead of) Netflix and Amazon, in that they are active content producers now, and it's out-of-touch to imagine them as a DIY empowerment engine, providing a means for nobodies to bootstrap themselves out of obscurity scribbles we all might hypothetically fawn over for thirty seconds, while checking to see if the infinite scroll will crash our browsers.

kojon99 8y ago
That’s what I feel every time I watch a video from one of the big names of YouTube. I guess I’m getting old.

southerndrift 8y ago

I am curious, too. The blog post mentions 1M views [1]. At €1 per TB [2], and assuming a video of 100Mb which are roughly 1GB, you end up with 1000TB a €1000. Even if Google just pays a fraction like $0.1 per TB, they still have to earn $100 somewhere else to break even. [1]: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende... [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

lev99 8y ago
> Even if Google just pays a fraction like $0.1 per TB, they still have to earn $100 somewhere else to break even. 1. The bad press generated is easily worth more than $100. 2. Youtube exercises the option recommend other videos. Blender gave them 1M opportunities to attract attention to other videos that are monetized. 3. Blender's videos were probably much larger than 100MB. I remember watching several that were over 30mins.

cvwright 8y ago

That's a very good question. Supposing YT is still unprofitable after all these years, isn't that evidence of dumping? In other words, evidence of Google/Alphabet illegally pushing in to take over this market?