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I'm happily paying for youtube premium because it allows me to watch youtube on my iPad without ads, and to download the videos to watch offline. Totally worth

I'm happily paying for youtube premium because it allows me to watch youtube on my iPad without ads, and to download the videos to watch offline. Totally worth it. I don't know how many youtube users are paying for it, but youtube premium is still a thing, and I hope it continues to be. Seems like they're making it work somehow.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
titzer 6y ago
uBlock origin works great against YouTube ads. Unfortunately it is broken on Safari atm.
- richrichardsson 6y ago
  There is something very wrong with the idea that you can afford an Apple computer but refuse to pay for content, instead employing techniques to avoid remuneration going to the service and content provider.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    There are plenty more reasons to not pay for YT Premium beyond the monetary aspect. Not trusting Google is a big one (and in fact why I personally don't pay for it despite happily paying for Spotify and donating to the YT creators I watch directly).
  - freediver 6y ago
    Note that those techniques are in the spirit of the initial vision of the internet being open and free, and you, the user, controlling what you see on the web through your 'user agent' and not the other way around. Also remember those ads are not free, they come at great cost of bandwidth and compute, resulting in net co2 emission. If I as a user want to object to that, using an ad blocker is morally completely valid.
  - titzer 6y ago
    There is something very wrong with the web which has become a cesspool of trackers and surveillance capitalism and every waking moment is pregnant with monetization options from the powerful players in the attention economy. I mostly prefer to watch DVDs and employ an ad blocker so that every day existence doesn't require my brain to edit ads out of reality because it's been trained by 25 years of abuse from the internet that this is necessary to just be able pretend like I exist independent of my eyeballs' worth to some goddamn shysters halfway across the world. You know, like most of 400,000 years of human existence. Come to think of it, maybe I'll sign off now.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Invidious is a good solution and solves a lot of the other issues with YouTube's UX (the ads can actually be dealt with AdGuard for Safari): https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
jsnell 6y ago
They had 30M paying users at end of Q3 (up from 20M 9 months earlier). That includes both Premium and Music subscribers, but given the pricing structure it is hard to imagine who would pay for just Music. In terms of all users, 1.5 years ago they said 2B monthly active users. On one hand, that sounds miserable. Only 1% of the users are paying! On the other hand, a Premium subscriber is an order of magnitude more profitable. The ads run rate seems to be about $20B/year, and subscriptions behind at just a factor of 5 at about $4B/year. (The $20B is a hard number from the Q3 earnings, $4B is back of the envelope. It's hard to say just how e.g. regional pricing if affecting it, or how the family plans are counted.)
enos_feedler 6y ago
I pay for this too and justify it as actually an education/learning SaaS subscription. Youtube has become the way I learn everything. I don't want ads interrupting that learning experience.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

titzer 6y ago

uBlock origin works great against YouTube ads. Unfortunately it is broken on Safari atm.

richrichardsson 6y ago
There is something very wrong with the idea that you can afford an Apple computer but refuse to pay for content, instead employing techniques to avoid remuneration going to the service and content provider.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  There are plenty more reasons to not pay for YT Premium beyond the monetary aspect. Not trusting Google is a big one (and in fact why I personally don't pay for it despite happily paying for Spotify and donating to the YT creators I watch directly).
- freediver 6y ago
  Note that those techniques are in the spirit of the initial vision of the internet being open and free, and you, the user, controlling what you see on the web through your 'user agent' and not the other way around. Also remember those ads are not free, they come at great cost of bandwidth and compute, resulting in net co2 emission. If I as a user want to object to that, using an ad blocker is morally completely valid.
- titzer 6y ago
  There is something very wrong with the web which has become a cesspool of trackers and surveillance capitalism and every waking moment is pregnant with monetization options from the powerful players in the attention economy. I mostly prefer to watch DVDs and employ an ad blocker so that every day existence doesn't require my brain to edit ads out of reality because it's been trained by 25 years of abuse from the internet that this is necessary to just be able pretend like I exist independent of my eyeballs' worth to some goddamn shysters halfway across the world. You know, like most of 400,000 years of human existence. Come to think of it, maybe I'll sign off now.
Nextgrid 6y ago
Invidious is a good solution and solves a lot of the other issues with YouTube's UX (the ads can actually be dealt with AdGuard for Safari): https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

jsnell 6y ago

They had 30M paying users at end of Q3 (up from 20M 9 months earlier). That includes both Premium and Music subscribers, but given the pricing structure it is hard to imagine who would pay for just Music. In terms of all users, 1.5 years ago they said 2B monthly active users. On one hand, that sounds miserable. Only 1% of the users are paying! On the other hand, a Premium subscriber is an order of magnitude more profitable. The ads run rate seems to be about $20B/year, and subscriptions behind at just a factor of 5 at about $4B/year. (The $20B is a hard number from the Q3 earnings, $4B is back of the envelope. It's hard to say just how e.g. regional pricing if affecting it, or how the family plans are counted.)

enos_feedler 6y ago

I pay for this too and justify it as actually an education/learning SaaS subscription. Youtube has become the way I learn everything. I don't want ads interrupting that learning experience.