6 ms·

There is not just that. Another big reason is that youtube, despite all theirs tries, have never been able to separate their music part for which they want to s

by nolok 4y ago

There is not just that. Another big reason is that youtube, despite all theirs tries, have never been able to separate their music part for which they want to sell subscription, from their video part. And some of the things they need to do to push subscription on their music premium thingy are contrary to the things they need to keep quality on the video side of things. For exemple, easily playing the video from an artist channel (or the many channels publishing music in a genre or publishers etc ... like Suicidesheep, NCS, Proximity, ...) is not something they want. So what did they do ? They removed the "play all" from the "uploads" page of a channel. This button played what was essentially a playlist of all the uploads of the channel, also allowing you all the playlist tool (repeat, shuffle, ...). Because you're supposed to do that through a youtube music (or red, or whatever the name is now) subscription, they gutted it, and now there is no way to easily watch all the videos of a channel unless the channel owner curates it himself into a playlist. (usually, music publisher channels have a playlist by genre/subgenre, or artists one by album etc..., and had the automatic "uploads" playlist for all of it, so they did not have a specific playlist for everything) As a side effect, you can't do that on video channel either anymore, oupsie ! (the reason I believe it was done on purpose for music is because there is no gain to change that for video channel, quite the contrary: if you use that feature on a video channel not only are they retaining you, but they should also be able to target you much more accurately with their ads, eg if I'm watching all of "mandalore gaming" videos then video games ads are clearly for me)

eastbound 4y ago
Amazon Prime does music very well. You click on a song, and another song of the same artist play, and you get a message saying you have to buy a supplementary fee to play what you want (I already pay for prime). Genius. Explicitly not do what the user wants.
- powvans 4y ago
  I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who thinks this is serious heavy duty dumb. Last night I saw an ad that seemed to imply Amazon Music would now be included with Prime. I thought, hmm, let me check if it still does the thing where you can’t play what you tap. Yup. Still does it. Tap a song and some other random song plays. Somewhere deep in the bowels of Amazon there is an exec who thinks this is a brilliant way to drive conversion. Probably has some data that somehow supports this notion. Amazing.
  - tartoran 4y ago
    I agree it’s dumb but maybe you overestimate the masses. Maybe on some level it works for the execs, especially in the short term.
    - jerf 4y ago
      That's what powvans is referring to with "brilliant way to drive conversion". Measure "engagement" by "how many songs the user starts playing" and combine that with "clicking on a song the first time actually plays a different song" and you'll get more clicks to start songs as the user tries to correct their problems. This isn't a good thing, the metric has been over-optimized, but if you're paid by metrics this is what happens. Likely there is a programmer or two well aware of the issue and the presumably 1-10 line fix, but has either tried it and been told to revert it, or simply knows they can't push it, because they know what it would do to the metrics. Probably a good number of the complaints people are leveling here against Amazon services source from that. For instance, mixing paid options into the list as quickly as possible when you explicitly asked for free stuff can't hardly help but "convert better" than letting the user truly browse through the free stuff; if so much as one person ever gives in and buys something that way, or even browses, leaves, comes back to the same screen later and forgot they were supposedly looking at free stuff and buys something, boom, better conversion rate than pure free. Doesn't take much to move the needle off of "zero". But it's still not what we asked for. (& yes, I know that it's non-free stuff in the recommendations when viewing a free option, not unfree stuff mixed right into free carousel, but I think it's fair to say customers are definitely interested in a "free only right now please" view and a good percentage of them probably think that's what they're getting when they're in the "free" tabs.)
- nolok 4y ago
  The whole galaxy of Prime services surrounding package delivery would never survive on its own -- or, another way to see it is that they don't have the market pressure necessary to improve/get fixed due to how they are tied to the package delivery. Prime music for the reason you give, Prime video who keeps finding way to suggest you movies you need to pay extra for (you go specifically to "free/included", you click a couple times, and you're being recommended extra costs things ...), Amazon Drive keeps your file "forever" but then no sorry we're deleting them we stop this but then wait no we're making Amazon Photos now your photos will be kept everything else deleted but wait no only some photos will be transfered ... The people managing those services are coasting on other people's success.
  - patentatt 4y ago
    Agreed. I see the other 'prime' labeled services as a negative value frankly, because I know that the entire intent is to make the process frustrating enough to upsell me to their amazon branded services which are universally inferior to the other options I would have picked in the absence of the 'free' 'prime' offering. I've finally converted enough of my online shopping to target and Walmart that this is the year I'm doing away with amazon prime for good.
intrasight 4y ago
>have never been able to separate their music part They could and they should - and is simple: just remove all music from www.youtube.com. This is what they should have done when then created music.youtube.com.
- nolok 4y ago
  The reason they don't, I believe, is because they may lose their leader position if they do that. The reason the artists are there, and don't bite to any of the "let's push you into a separate page", is because they want the eyeballs. Youtube "normal" pages have the eyeballs. When you see how youtube "live gaming" section is failing despite being so much technically superior to the competition on the video side, I don't think the artists are wrong on that one. But yes, I agree that they absolutely should, and it would make the experience so much better ... Another exemple is how your "my subscription" page, meant for checking all the channels you're subscribed at once to not miss any content that you're interested in, becomes utterly useless once you sub to a couple decently active music channels, which tends to publish much much more frequently than regular video channels.
  - intrasight 4y ago
    If by "eyeballs" you mean discovery and recommendations, I also don't see how staying on the main site helps artists. It has a crappy music experience for the consumer. And I, the consumer, generally know what I want to listen to and will search for it.
    - nolok 4y ago
      No I meant literal eyeballs, or put another way, the number of people looking at those pages.
      - intrasight 4y ago
        looking at which page?
Akronymus 4y ago
You mentioned shuffle. Youtubes shuffle is broken as hell. Constantly gets into loops of 2 or 3 videos. (Instead of actually shuffling the playlist, it sets the next video based on some criteria, so if two point at each other...)
- anubiskhan 4y ago
  Ah man, i hate this. It also used to (may still) randomly end the loop in the playlist and kick you to some suggested video instead. Absolutely awful UX
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    The ending the loop thing is why I disabled autoplay. (I use a music playlist a lot when programming or gaming.)
kuschku 4y ago
The "play all uploads" feature actually still exists — but only on the TV app.
- nolok 4y ago
  Oh yes I didn't get into details but it's still there. More specifically, if you know or reconstruct the urls to it, it's there and working including videos added or channels created after the removal (probably because they don't want all those devides like the TV you mentionned not working anymore). They just removed the button on the interface, which shows it wasn't a technical need or anything like that, it was on purpose to stop people being able to enjoy that feature.
jkaplowitz 4y ago
Did they keep this feature for people who do in fact subscribe to their music premium thingy? That would be the logical approach to add another reason to subscribe. But I guess they provide an alternative way to do that for music and didn't think about the video use case. Sloppy... (Disclosure/clarification for those who know from other comments that I once worked at Google: I never worked for them in any YouTube-related role, have no inside information on this, and haven't worked at Google at all for over 7 years now. Definitely not speaking for them here.)
- nolok 4y ago
  No, you need to use the dedicated youtube music app (on mobile) or webpage (web / desktop).
  - jkaplowitz 4y ago
    Ah. That doesn't solve it for non-music videos, I assume? Anyway, from some of the many updates in the original article, it seems they want to bring it back after fixing some technical issues, and presumably for prioritization reasons, are encouraging people who care about this to submit feedback. Not as bad as we feared.

by nolok 4y ago

eastbound 4y ago

Amazon Prime does music very well. You click on a song, and another song of the same artist play, and you get a message saying you have to buy a supplementary fee to play what you want (I already pay for prime). Genius. Explicitly not do what the user wants.

powvans 4y ago
I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who thinks this is serious heavy duty dumb. Last night I saw an ad that seemed to imply Amazon Music would now be included with Prime. I thought, hmm, let me check if it still does the thing where you can’t play what you tap. Yup. Still does it. Tap a song and some other random song plays. Somewhere deep in the bowels of Amazon there is an exec who thinks this is a brilliant way to drive conversion. Probably has some data that somehow supports this notion. Amazing.
- tartoran 4y ago
  I agree it’s dumb but maybe you overestimate the masses. Maybe on some level it works for the execs, especially in the short term.
  - jerf 4y ago
    That's what powvans is referring to with "brilliant way to drive conversion". Measure "engagement" by "how many songs the user starts playing" and combine that with "clicking on a song the first time actually plays a different song" and you'll get more clicks to start songs as the user tries to correct their problems. This isn't a good thing, the metric has been over-optimized, but if you're paid by metrics this is what happens. Likely there is a programmer or two well aware of the issue and the presumably 1-10 line fix, but has either tried it and been told to revert it, or simply knows they can't push it, because they know what it would do to the metrics. Probably a good number of the complaints people are leveling here against Amazon services source from that. For instance, mixing paid options into the list as quickly as possible when you explicitly asked for free stuff can't hardly help but "convert better" than letting the user truly browse through the free stuff; if so much as one person ever gives in and buys something that way, or even browses, leaves, comes back to the same screen later and forgot they were supposedly looking at free stuff and buys something, boom, better conversion rate than pure free. Doesn't take much to move the needle off of "zero". But it's still not what we asked for. (& yes, I know that it's non-free stuff in the recommendations when viewing a free option, not unfree stuff mixed right into free carousel, but I think it's fair to say customers are definitely interested in a "free only right now please" view and a good percentage of them probably think that's what they're getting when they're in the "free" tabs.)
nolok 4y ago
The whole galaxy of Prime services surrounding package delivery would never survive on its own -- or, another way to see it is that they don't have the market pressure necessary to improve/get fixed due to how they are tied to the package delivery. Prime music for the reason you give, Prime video who keeps finding way to suggest you movies you need to pay extra for (you go specifically to "free/included", you click a couple times, and you're being recommended extra costs things ...), Amazon Drive keeps your file "forever" but then no sorry we're deleting them we stop this but then wait no we're making Amazon Photos now your photos will be kept everything else deleted but wait no only some photos will be transfered ... The people managing those services are coasting on other people's success.
- patentatt 4y ago
  Agreed. I see the other 'prime' labeled services as a negative value frankly, because I know that the entire intent is to make the process frustrating enough to upsell me to their amazon branded services which are universally inferior to the other options I would have picked in the absence of the 'free' 'prime' offering. I've finally converted enough of my online shopping to target and Walmart that this is the year I'm doing away with amazon prime for good.

intrasight 4y ago

>have never been able to separate their music part They could and they should - and is simple: just remove all music from www.youtube.com. This is what they should have done when then created music.youtube.com.

nolok 4y ago
The reason they don't, I believe, is because they may lose their leader position if they do that. The reason the artists are there, and don't bite to any of the "let's push you into a separate page", is because they want the eyeballs. Youtube "normal" pages have the eyeballs. When you see how youtube "live gaming" section is failing despite being so much technically superior to the competition on the video side, I don't think the artists are wrong on that one. But yes, I agree that they absolutely should, and it would make the experience so much better ... Another exemple is how your "my subscription" page, meant for checking all the channels you're subscribed at once to not miss any content that you're interested in, becomes utterly useless once you sub to a couple decently active music channels, which tends to publish much much more frequently than regular video channels.
- intrasight 4y ago
  If by "eyeballs" you mean discovery and recommendations, I also don't see how staying on the main site helps artists. It has a crappy music experience for the consumer. And I, the consumer, generally know what I want to listen to and will search for it.
  - nolok 4y ago
    No I meant literal eyeballs, or put another way, the number of people looking at those pages.
    - intrasight 4y ago
      looking at which page?

Akronymus 4y ago

You mentioned shuffle. Youtubes shuffle is broken as hell. Constantly gets into loops of 2 or 3 videos. (Instead of actually shuffling the playlist, it sets the next video based on some criteria, so if two point at each other...)

anubiskhan 4y ago
Ah man, i hate this. It also used to (may still) randomly end the loop in the playlist and kick you to some suggested video instead. Absolutely awful UX
- Akronymus 4y ago
  The ending the loop thing is why I disabled autoplay. (I use a music playlist a lot when programming or gaming.)

kuschku 4y ago

The "play all uploads" feature actually still exists — but only on the TV app.

nolok 4y ago
Oh yes I didn't get into details but it's still there. More specifically, if you know or reconstruct the urls to it, it's there and working including videos added or channels created after the removal (probably because they don't want all those devides like the TV you mentionned not working anymore). They just removed the button on the interface, which shows it wasn't a technical need or anything like that, it was on purpose to stop people being able to enjoy that feature.

jkaplowitz 4y ago

Did they keep this feature for people who do in fact subscribe to their music premium thingy? That would be the logical approach to add another reason to subscribe. But I guess they provide an alternative way to do that for music and didn't think about the video use case. Sloppy... (Disclosure/clarification for those who know from other comments that I once worked at Google: I never worked for them in any YouTube-related role, have no inside information on this, and haven't worked at Google at all for over 7 years now. Definitely not speaking for them here.)

nolok 4y ago
No, you need to use the dedicated youtube music app (on mobile) or webpage (web / desktop).
- jkaplowitz 4y ago
  Ah. That doesn't solve it for non-music videos, I assume? Anyway, from some of the many updates in the original article, it seems they want to bring it back after fixing some technical issues, and presumably for prioritization reasons, are encouraging people who care about this to submit feedback. Not as bad as we feared.