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I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too [edit: as in "sub to each channel a la cart"]. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ad

I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too [edit: as in "sub to each channel a la cart"]. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription tiers that add flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch. Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy. Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue. Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
> Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income They already do and have for quite some time. https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m
- CivBase 6y ago
  That is not a la cart. I want the option to subscribe to individual channels - ideally with multiple tiers.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    In your parenthesis you said, "or ten dollars a month on YouTube premium." What did you mean by that? I thought you meant that a YouTube premium subscription for $10 a month would be acceptable but maybe you meant something else.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      "YouTube Premium" is a subscription service that allows users to disable ads on the entire platform (plus a few other minor perks) for a flat monthly fee. I guess it's actually $12/month, not $10/month. That subscription fee supplements the platform and creators for the lost ad revenue. I meant that they could continue to offer YouTube Premium as a way to disable ads on all channels and support premium subscriptions for individual channels as an alternative for users who might not be interested in buying YouTube Premium just to support one or two channels.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        > as a way to disable ads on all channels and support premium subscriptions for individual channels Ah. In your comment you said "or," so I thought you meant "or." As in YouTube should offer this or that, not YouTube should offer this and that. But it seems like another poster has also brought up the relatively new channel membership feature.
  - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
    They do that as well. It‘s called channel memberships. Though they are nowhere near Twitch yet in terms of funcionality. https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-memberships https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-membe... You need to in the Partner program and have 30‘000 subs though (1000 for gaming content). This is obviously very important for YouTube Gaming. They are (finally) getting into bundling one membership per month with YouTube Premium. This is IMO the single most reason why Twitch is so successful. They should’ve copied Twitch Prime much earlier. The fact that kids can use their free sub a month from their parents Amazon Prime sub was a stroke of genius.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      Interesting. I watch a lot of content through YouTube daily, but I have never seen this "Channel Memberships" thing. Thanks! EDIT: Wow. I'm even subed to MKBHD, the example you use in your other comment, and I never noticed the "Join" button before. YouTube does a terrible job of advertising that! How am I even supposed to know what "Join" means? Thanks again for pointing that out!
justapassenger 6y ago
> I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription tiers that ad flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch. Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers. > Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy. It's far from being proven: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon-announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators-in-2019.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patre... https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/15/amazons-twitch-hit-a-wall-in-live-streaming.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/15/amazons-twitch-hit... > Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue. Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps on growing. So is YouTube share in it. Ad revenue for creators tho - that's a different story.
- CivBase 6y ago
  > Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers. Source? Twitch and Patreon get along just fine. The existing options can continue as they are. > It's far from being proven. YouTube has already swallowed the expensive part of the deal - creating a video hosting platform. I'm just asking them to augment their monetization scheme that other platforms have already demonstrated demand for. > Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps on growing. Source for what? Of course YouTube is expensive. It's expensive to host content at that scale. It's expensive to regulate content at that scale to comply with the law and satisfy ad partners. I don't know what else to say. I don't know if YouTube operates at a profit or not, but that's not really relevant. What matters is YouTube's profit is almost completely dependent on their ability to sell ads. Content without ads can only benefit the platform if it drives premium subscriptions or drives users towards content with ads.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
paxys 6y ago
Isn't the exactly what YouTube Premium is (https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium)?
- CivBase 6y ago
  No. YouTube Premium is a subscription to the whole platform, not a channel. It does not allow me to subscribe to channels a la cart. If I only watch one or two channels regularly, my options are to A) buy YouTube Premium, B) watch with ads, C) watch with an ad blocker. I bet YouTube would see more than a few people switch from C to B if they supported per-channel subscriptions. They could bring in even more revenue with subscription tiers that offer trivial rewards like comment flairs, special emojis, or early access to videos. Even if most of the extra revenue from higher tiers goes to the channel instead of the platform, it would still be extra revenue for practically no cost.
  - paxys 6y ago
    YouTube also lets you subscribe to individual channels. Go to some of the popular ones and you'll see a price next to the subscribe button. Channels can choose to publish videos to subscribers only.
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
      Got link? I've literally never seen these. (Or maybe I'm just in a geo that doesn't support this?)
      - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
        MKBHD‘s channel supports it for example: https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee You should see a blue „Join“ button next to the sub button. It‘s called channel membership. You need to be in the partner program and have 30‘000 subscribers (1000 for gaming channels) to activate it. https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-memberships https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-membe... Edit: depending on what your region is it might not be a thing yet. But if your region supports Premium, I‘m pretty sure memberships are supported as well.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

> Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income They already do and have for quite some time. https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m

CivBase 6y ago
That is not a la cart. I want the option to subscribe to individual channels - ideally with multiple tiers.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  In your parenthesis you said, "or ten dollars a month on YouTube premium." What did you mean by that? I thought you meant that a YouTube premium subscription for $10 a month would be acceptable but maybe you meant something else.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    "YouTube Premium" is a subscription service that allows users to disable ads on the entire platform (plus a few other minor perks) for a flat monthly fee. I guess it's actually $12/month, not $10/month. That subscription fee supplements the platform and creators for the lost ad revenue. I meant that they could continue to offer YouTube Premium as a way to disable ads on all channels and support premium subscriptions for individual channels as an alternative for users who might not be interested in buying YouTube Premium just to support one or two channels.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      > as a way to disable ads on all channels and support premium subscriptions for individual channels Ah. In your comment you said "or," so I thought you meant "or." As in YouTube should offer this or that, not YouTube should offer this and that. But it seems like another poster has also brought up the relatively new channel membership feature.
- v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
  They do that as well. It‘s called channel memberships. Though they are nowhere near Twitch yet in terms of funcionality. https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-memberships https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-membe... You need to in the Partner program and have 30‘000 subs though (1000 for gaming content). This is obviously very important for YouTube Gaming. They are (finally) getting into bundling one membership per month with YouTube Premium. This is IMO the single most reason why Twitch is so successful. They should’ve copied Twitch Prime much earlier. The fact that kids can use their free sub a month from their parents Amazon Prime sub was a stroke of genius.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    Interesting. I watch a lot of content through YouTube daily, but I have never seen this "Channel Memberships" thing. Thanks! EDIT: Wow. I'm even subed to MKBHD, the example you use in your other comment, and I never noticed the "Join" button before. YouTube does a terrible job of advertising that! How am I even supposed to know what "Join" means? Thanks again for pointing that out!

justapassenger 6y ago

> I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription tiers that ad flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch. Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers. > Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy. It's far from being proven: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon-announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators-in-2019.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patre... https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/15/amazons-twitch-hit-a-wall-in-live-streaming.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/15/amazons-twitch-hit... > Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue. Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps on growing. So is YouTube share in it. Ad revenue for creators tho - that's a different story.

CivBase 6y ago
> Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers. Source? Twitch and Patreon get along just fine. The existing options can continue as they are. > It's far from being proven. YouTube has already swallowed the expensive part of the deal - creating a video hosting platform. I'm just asking them to augment their monetization scheme that other platforms have already demonstrated demand for. > Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps on growing. Source for what? Of course YouTube is expensive. It's expensive to host content at that scale. It's expensive to regulate content at that scale to comply with the law and satisfy ad partners. I don't know what else to say. I don't know if YouTube operates at a profit or not, but that's not really relevant. What matters is YouTube's profit is almost completely dependent on their ability to sell ads. Content without ads can only benefit the platform if it drives premium subscriptions or drives users towards content with ads.
- justapassenger 6y ago

paxys 6y ago

Isn't the exactly what YouTube Premium is (https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium)?

CivBase 6y ago
No. YouTube Premium is a subscription to the whole platform, not a channel. It does not allow me to subscribe to channels a la cart. If I only watch one or two channels regularly, my options are to A) buy YouTube Premium, B) watch with ads, C) watch with an ad blocker. I bet YouTube would see more than a few people switch from C to B if they supported per-channel subscriptions. They could bring in even more revenue with subscription tiers that offer trivial rewards like comment flairs, special emojis, or early access to videos. Even if most of the extra revenue from higher tiers goes to the channel instead of the platform, it would still be extra revenue for practically no cost.
- paxys 6y ago
  YouTube also lets you subscribe to individual channels. Go to some of the popular ones and you'll see a price next to the subscribe button. Channels can choose to publish videos to subscribers only.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Got link? I've literally never seen these. (Or maybe I'm just in a geo that doesn't support this?)
    - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
      MKBHD‘s channel supports it for example: https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee You should see a blue „Join“ button next to the sub button. It‘s called channel membership. You need to be in the partner program and have 30‘000 subscribers (1000 for gaming channels) to activate it. https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-memberships https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/channel-membe... Edit: depending on what your region is it might not be a thing yet. But if your region supports Premium, I‘m pretty sure memberships are supported as well.