3 ms·

not to mention the "play in background" functionality that google anti-featured away.

nimajneb 6y ago
You need Youtube Premium for that. I have a legacy Google Play Music subscription and sometimes I feel like my experience vastly different than people without Youtube Premium. I use Youtube enough I'm ok paying to not see ads and play videos with my phone screen off.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  Oh they have been very clear about needing youtube premium for that. I do get it to an extent. If people want to use it as a jukebox. I have spotify and mp3s for that. I want to play videos in the background that don't have actual visual content ("people talking to the camera" style) and google doesn't want that. Luckily I can use alternatives for nearly all content like this, first and foremost actual RSS podcasts. As for the experience being very different on premium: I recently had to use YT on a browser without uBlock/uMatrix and I believe I got a taste of that difference. Scary stuff, not sure how people cope with all the shit being thrown at them.
  - stiray 6y ago
    I dont mind paying for the feature but I do mind having google aplication on my phone (which I dont - none). The trust in google not taking away my contacts, spying on my position, requiring to have their gms on my phone (which will further grab as much of my data they can have) is virtually zero. And with a very good and well known couse.
Godel_unicode 6y ago
s/anti-featured away/decided to charge for
- zeta0134 6y ago
  On Firefox for Android for example, the vast majority of video playing sites automatically continue to play in the background. YouTube should, but it has code specifically to check for Firefox tabs being backgrounded and pause the player. So it's going out of its way to disable a feature of the browser. Happily this can be reversed with an extension, but yes, it is an intentional anti-feature. Whether you agree with that business practice is your own judgement. Personally I think the real value add of Youtube Premium is the ability to offline videos in the official app; that's not something the browser can normally do. Well, and the secondary effect of contributing somewhat to creators, even if the payout isn't significant through that channel. It's nice for it to be automatic and not require an explicit subscription.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    Fwiw, the relatively few creators who are talking about it publicly tend to agree that cpm is (much) higher for premium users than users monetized through ads. So if you want creators to get more money, paying for premium is better than watching ads.
    - zeta0134 6y ago
      This right here is why I maintain my subscription even though I do not run the official app. :) Well, that and I mostly watch YouTube on my desktop with an ad blocker, so creators weren't getting ad impressions from me anyway. I figure that's a fair trade.
codesuela 6y ago
If you open YouTube in desktop mode (in the browser) and switch tabs, you can still play the video via the notification manager popup (not sure how it's called, basically when you drag down the top bar, there is still this sticky YouTube notification). This is how you can get free background play without 3rd party apps.

You need Youtube Premium for that. I have a legacy Google Play Music subscription and sometimes I feel like my experience vastly different than people without Youtube Premium. I use Youtube enough I'm ok paying to not see ads and play videos with my phone screen off.

black_puppydog 6y ago
Oh they have been very clear about needing youtube premium for that. I do get it to an extent. If people want to use it as a jukebox. I have spotify and mp3s for that. I want to play videos in the background that don't have actual visual content ("people talking to the camera" style) and google doesn't want that. Luckily I can use alternatives for nearly all content like this, first and foremost actual RSS podcasts. As for the experience being very different on premium: I recently had to use YT on a browser without uBlock/uMatrix and I believe I got a taste of that difference. Scary stuff, not sure how people cope with all the shit being thrown at them.
- stiray 6y ago
  I dont mind paying for the feature but I do mind having google aplication on my phone (which I dont - none). The trust in google not taking away my contacts, spying on my position, requiring to have their gms on my phone (which will further grab as much of my data they can have) is virtually zero. And with a very good and well known couse.

Godel_unicode 6y ago

s/anti-featured away/decided to charge for

zeta0134 6y ago
On Firefox for Android for example, the vast majority of video playing sites automatically continue to play in the background. YouTube should, but it has code specifically to check for Firefox tabs being backgrounded and pause the player. So it's going out of its way to disable a feature of the browser. Happily this can be reversed with an extension, but yes, it is an intentional anti-feature. Whether you agree with that business practice is your own judgement. Personally I think the real value add of Youtube Premium is the ability to offline videos in the official app; that's not something the browser can normally do. Well, and the secondary effect of contributing somewhat to creators, even if the payout isn't significant through that channel. It's nice for it to be automatic and not require an explicit subscription.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  Fwiw, the relatively few creators who are talking about it publicly tend to agree that cpm is (much) higher for premium users than users monetized through ads. So if you want creators to get more money, paying for premium is better than watching ads.
  - zeta0134 6y ago
    This right here is why I maintain my subscription even though I do not run the official app. :) Well, that and I mostly watch YouTube on my desktop with an ad blocker, so creators weren't getting ad impressions from me anyway. I figure that's a fair trade.

codesuela 6y ago

If you open YouTube in desktop mode (in the browser) and switch tabs, you can still play the video via the notification manager popup (not sure how it's called, basically when you drag down the top bar, there is still this sticky YouTube notification). This is how you can get free background play without 3rd party apps.