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I also block ads - BUT I do go pay for services that I use daily and get benefit from. Otherwise, the sites that I love would go away because it's not sustainab

I also block ads - BUT I do go pay for services that I use daily and get benefit from. Otherwise, the sites that I love would go away because it's not sustainable to employee people to write code and run servers without some sort of revenue.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
I paid for YouTube for a few months, even though I run everything through pihole, but found that I didn't get enough value to justify the cost. They're essentially charging 80% surplus to tack on a poor man's version of Spotify. I also don't get any other improvements to the service. If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. So many small QoL improvements that would make a huge difference but instead they're too busy removing voting buttons and testing obnoxious autoplay thumbnail ads.
- asdff 3y ago
  You should be able to get api access with youtube premium
- s17n 3y ago
  Hm, I have the opposite point of view: I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify when Youtube gives you the same thing for the same price and throws in ad free youtube at no extra charge.
  - asdff 3y ago
    I'm thinking about making the move off spotify. Does youtube premium let you locally download music?
    - gretch 3y ago
      Yes it does. Source: I just tried it on my phone right now. platform - iOS (don't know about others). Also, possibly not possible for all songs or countries in the world.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    > I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify Maybe the force feeding of obnoxious podcast hosts actually attracted some users?
    - tough 3y ago
      A lost occasion to also blame advertising
  - Macha 3y ago
    Really the only reason I used Spotify over YouTube Music at all was that I could use my own clients with Spotify, but once Spotify killed that it was over to YouTube music for me for my streaming usage (though I buy a lot more downloads these days than my peak spotify usage days). YouTube Music doesn't have third party clients either, but with that selling point removed, ad-free youtube was a better add-on than anything spotify offered.
    - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
      I was a mopify/mopidy fan for a while but my installation fell over about a year ago and I never returned to fix it - does that no longer work at all with Spotify APIs? If so, that's definitely a huge downside to Spotify (though I have no idea if it's possible with YT music).
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    I use Spotify because I don't want to pay any money to Google. Although I did subscribe to Google Play Music, and it was great, until they killed it. And that was it for me and Google.
    - dabluecaboose 3y ago
      Curious if you found another viable alternative. Ive gone over to using Plex/Plexamp for music sync/cloud play and its been pretty okayish on the whole. Biggest issues are my server strength and internet connection
      - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
        I really mainly use Spotify because of the combination of its library size and ease of availability / accessibility. (Although John Zorn's catalogue remains an elusive beast) I use LMS for my small, curated personal music library, which is great: https://github.com/epoupon/lms https://github.com/epoupon/lms
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    It mostly boils down to the algorithm for me. I tried YouTube music for a few months and it felt much more spaghetti-at-the-wall than Spotify. My opinion is that this is because of the way that Spotify applies algorithm and curation in a highly unified way. Spotify Radio, Release Radar and Discovery playlist are just wonderful. Right down to the ordering of the lists it accounts for broad tastes, current personal trends, building accessible gateways to new genres and so on. YouTube Music felt a bit like the video algorithm. "You watched a Minecraft video? Prepare for the avalanche of tenuously related but quite obnoxious Minecraft content"
    - utucuro 3y ago
      This is was weird to read... I was a Spotify user for a rather long time, but realized that instead of getting better, recommendations got worse, ultimately becoming quite repetitive. I've since ditched them, now using Deezer. The difference is like day and night - with Deezer, if I want it to generate a playlist based on a particular song, I actually get a playlist of songs which are similar to the one I chose and not just the popular songs of bands similar to the band of the song... As for Discover Weekly, it was the worst offender, rehashing stuff Spotify knew I had listened to.
      - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
        That is strange as it's not my experience, but I don't know how the algorithm functions internally. Sadly we are at the whim of it's hits and it's misses. I am however left to assume, based on Spotify's broad success and appeal, that it hits a bit more frequently than it misses.
- kroltan 3y ago
  Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or gradual rollouts! I have had the "continue playing from another device" feature for a good couple months at least, and it is clearly labeled as a "Premium" benefit. Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the video that was playing on the other device shows up paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can see a desktop screenshot. https://i.imgur.com/Leq2cJs.png https://i.imgur.com/Leq2cJs.png You could view this cynically as paying to be a lab rat, or you can also take it at face value.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    >Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or gradual rollouts! Good A/B testing only works if you're measuring for the right things. When you get into the realms of "engagement is down but revenue generated is at $X" and X meets a goal, you're doing it in bad faith. Given that a big fat ad thumbnail is a pre-selected item that fills half the screen on the YT TV client, we are left to assume that engagement resigned from Google a while ago. >Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the video that was playing on the other device shows up paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can see a desktop screenshot. This doesn't work at all for me TV -> TV. TV -> mobile device also does not work. I'd be interested to know, if you do try this with TV, whether you can get it to work.
    - kroltan 3y ago
      If I ever get the chance to try it I will attempt to tell you the results, but don't hold your breath. I don't know anyone with smart TVs who would also be okay with me spending an hour messing up their settings to log in with my account. > Good A/B testing only works if you're measuring for the right things. When you get into the realms of "engagement is down but revenue generated is at $X" and X meets a goal, you're doing it in bad faith. Sure, and that doesn't stop people from doing it anyway. Pointless mass-gaslighting, but it makes you look busy.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of content on YouTube you can watch without ads? > If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other feature needed to open the wallet.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    > What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of content on YouTube you can watch without ads? To restate what I already said: will I pay to remove ads? Yes. Will I pay the price they're asking when I compare to the value and quality of service / UX other services I pay for? No. > Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other feature needed to open the wallet. You're wrong, but I don't need to justify it, I stated why in the original post. There's no need to be stubborn about it.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      I think this is one of the biggest sales problem for any online service. People will not think about the actual value proposal, but instead compare it to things that are extremely free or cheap. Pay for Fastmail? Why would I when Gmail is free? Pay for Kagi search? Why would I when Google is free? Pay for a newspaper subscription? Why would I when they want the same monthly price as Netflix, and I watch Netflix every night. My question is why do you compare? Just because both things are on a computer or telephone screen? I've never heard people compare with other things they purchase. Why would I pay for this cup of coffee when I get 15 minutes of use from it, when there is so much free content online? Why would I pay for this restaurant meal when I get several months of entertainment on Netflix for the same price? People will agonize for weeks over a $5 or $10 subscription, but outside of the digital they won't think about spending the same amount on parking, a pint of beer, etc. Since we have the idea that everything on the computer should be free, we get upset over the slightest annoyance and cancel/decide not to continue the service. But is that rational? Like people are itching for the slightest excuse to not pay. YouTube has an enormous amount of entertainment and also educational content, like videos on how to fix things that have personally saved me at least hundreds of dollars. It's a great value IMO.
- Hextinium 3y ago
  I was at first super confused by this comment, because cross play has been a thing for at least a year or two without YouTube premium. You just have to enable YouTube history and it will populate across devices. I know a lot of people disabled YouTube history because it tailors the experience but it's a fair tradeoff for continuity.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    YouTube history is not the seamless experience that I get from literally every other content provider charging even less money than they do. Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer, Spotify etc. all give me access to continue the last thing I was watching with a click, or even do so automatically (or have the option to). Some even have a "switch to room" function which is further empowering. Having it hidden three menus away is archaic and not the 'continuity' I'm looking for. It's a small thing but it's a) painfully simple to implement and b) one of many of these kinds of small usability gripes that make it a lesser experience.
- crashingintoyou 3y ago
  > If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. What specifically are you looking for? e.g. was watching a video on my computer, powered that off, opened youtube on my phone and the video I was watching was most recent thing in youtube history there with my position in the video tracked. Similarly I can use my phone or laptop to control Youtube on my TV. Seems like what you're looking for is already mostly here. (I've been a Youtube Premium subscriber for the last year or so thus far).
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    This is the inconvenient version of what I want that takes several menu navigations to achieve it. 'Continuity' for me means a seamless experience. For example, Netflix used to be one click and is now two or three clicks which I find to be a worse experience. The _perfect_ version of this for me would be a "Send to device" function to send from TV to TV in different rooms. Even being able to do a quick switch via my phone as I'm in transit (like I do with Spotify) would be a worthy middleground.
soligern 3y ago
It’s not just established companies that you know to subscribe to. How does someone set up a new company or start selling a new product without advertising. People that are perfectly reasonable about some things can be so short sighted out how society even works.
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
Yeah. I'm not about to pretend I have a right to get content for free, so if the site offers a paid option to remove ads that I find obnoxious I'll take advantage of it.
- tacotacotaco 3y ago
  I might consider paying for premium if this wasn’t Google we’re talking about, which I imagine is tracking your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads.
  - amf12 3y ago
    > I might consider paying for premium if this wasn’t Google we’re talking about, which I imagine is tracking your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads. So basically, you won't pay for premium because Google makes money by serving ads, but you also use an Adblocker (assumption)?
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    Agreed. It's association with Google makes it get less appealing to support.
- convalescindrey 3y ago
  Sadly, a Youtube Premium subscription only removes the ads. They still collect all the data about you. Remember that you are not just paying with ad eyeballs, but also with your data. When what where how much you watch. That's nobodies business. I'd pay for not having this be in somebodys DB, ready to be exploited (and/or leaked).
  - amykhar 3y ago
    But, they kind of HAVE to keep the data about your comments and watch history so that you have access to it. They definitely shouldn't sell it though.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago

I paid for YouTube for a few months, even though I run everything through pihole, but found that I didn't get enough value to justify the cost. They're essentially charging 80% surplus to tack on a poor man's version of Spotify. I also don't get any other improvements to the service. If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. So many small QoL improvements that would make a huge difference but instead they're too busy removing voting buttons and testing obnoxious autoplay thumbnail ads.

asdff 3y ago
You should be able to get api access with youtube premium
s17n 3y ago
Hm, I have the opposite point of view: I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify when Youtube gives you the same thing for the same price and throws in ad free youtube at no extra charge.
- asdff 3y ago
  I'm thinking about making the move off spotify. Does youtube premium let you locally download music?
  - gretch 3y ago
    Yes it does. Source: I just tried it on my phone right now. platform - iOS (don't know about others). Also, possibly not possible for all songs or countries in the world.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify Maybe the force feeding of obnoxious podcast hosts actually attracted some users?
  - tough 3y ago
    A lost occasion to also blame advertising
- Macha 3y ago
  Really the only reason I used Spotify over YouTube Music at all was that I could use my own clients with Spotify, but once Spotify killed that it was over to YouTube music for me for my streaming usage (though I buy a lot more downloads these days than my peak spotify usage days). YouTube Music doesn't have third party clients either, but with that selling point removed, ad-free youtube was a better add-on than anything spotify offered.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    I was a mopify/mopidy fan for a while but my installation fell over about a year ago and I never returned to fix it - does that no longer work at all with Spotify APIs? If so, that's definitely a huge downside to Spotify (though I have no idea if it's possible with YT music).
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  I use Spotify because I don't want to pay any money to Google. Although I did subscribe to Google Play Music, and it was great, until they killed it. And that was it for me and Google.
  - dabluecaboose 3y ago
    Curious if you found another viable alternative. Ive gone over to using Plex/Plexamp for music sync/cloud play and its been pretty okayish on the whole. Biggest issues are my server strength and internet connection
    - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
      I really mainly use Spotify because of the combination of its library size and ease of availability / accessibility. (Although John Zorn's catalogue remains an elusive beast) I use LMS for my small, curated personal music library, which is great: https://github.com/epoupon/lms https://github.com/epoupon/lms
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  It mostly boils down to the algorithm for me. I tried YouTube music for a few months and it felt much more spaghetti-at-the-wall than Spotify. My opinion is that this is because of the way that Spotify applies algorithm and curation in a highly unified way. Spotify Radio, Release Radar and Discovery playlist are just wonderful. Right down to the ordering of the lists it accounts for broad tastes, current personal trends, building accessible gateways to new genres and so on. YouTube Music felt a bit like the video algorithm. "You watched a Minecraft video? Prepare for the avalanche of tenuously related but quite obnoxious Minecraft content"
  - utucuro 3y ago
    This is was weird to read... I was a Spotify user for a rather long time, but realized that instead of getting better, recommendations got worse, ultimately becoming quite repetitive. I've since ditched them, now using Deezer. The difference is like day and night - with Deezer, if I want it to generate a playlist based on a particular song, I actually get a playlist of songs which are similar to the one I chose and not just the popular songs of bands similar to the band of the song... As for Discover Weekly, it was the worst offender, rehashing stuff Spotify knew I had listened to.
    - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
      That is strange as it's not my experience, but I don't know how the algorithm functions internally. Sadly we are at the whim of it's hits and it's misses. I am however left to assume, based on Spotify's broad success and appeal, that it hits a bit more frequently than it misses.
kroltan 3y ago
Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or gradual rollouts! I have had the "continue playing from another device" feature for a good couple months at least, and it is clearly labeled as a "Premium" benefit. Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the video that was playing on the other device shows up paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can see a desktop screenshot. https://i.imgur.com/Leq2cJs.png https://i.imgur.com/Leq2cJs.png You could view this cynically as paying to be a lab rat, or you can also take it at face value.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  >Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or gradual rollouts! Good A/B testing only works if you're measuring for the right things. When you get into the realms of "engagement is down but revenue generated is at $X" and X meets a goal, you're doing it in bad faith. Given that a big fat ad thumbnail is a pre-selected item that fills half the screen on the YT TV client, we are left to assume that engagement resigned from Google a while ago. >Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the video that was playing on the other device shows up paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can see a desktop screenshot. This doesn't work at all for me TV -> TV. TV -> mobile device also does not work. I'd be interested to know, if you do try this with TV, whether you can get it to work.
  - kroltan 3y ago
    If I ever get the chance to try it I will attempt to tell you the results, but don't hold your breath. I don't know anyone with smart TVs who would also be okay with me spending an hour messing up their settings to log in with my account. > Good A/B testing only works if you're measuring for the right things. When you get into the realms of "engagement is down but revenue generated is at $X" and X meets a goal, you're doing it in bad faith. Sure, and that doesn't stop people from doing it anyway. Pointless mass-gaslighting, but it makes you look busy.
carlosjobim 3y ago
What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of content on YouTube you can watch without ads? > If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other feature needed to open the wallet.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  > What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of content on YouTube you can watch without ads? To restate what I already said: will I pay to remove ads? Yes. Will I pay the price they're asking when I compare to the value and quality of service / UX other services I pay for? No. > Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other feature needed to open the wallet. You're wrong, but I don't need to justify it, I stated why in the original post. There's no need to be stubborn about it.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    I think this is one of the biggest sales problem for any online service. People will not think about the actual value proposal, but instead compare it to things that are extremely free or cheap. Pay for Fastmail? Why would I when Gmail is free? Pay for Kagi search? Why would I when Google is free? Pay for a newspaper subscription? Why would I when they want the same monthly price as Netflix, and I watch Netflix every night. My question is why do you compare? Just because both things are on a computer or telephone screen? I've never heard people compare with other things they purchase. Why would I pay for this cup of coffee when I get 15 minutes of use from it, when there is so much free content online? Why would I pay for this restaurant meal when I get several months of entertainment on Netflix for the same price? People will agonize for weeks over a $5 or $10 subscription, but outside of the digital they won't think about spending the same amount on parking, a pint of beer, etc. Since we have the idea that everything on the computer should be free, we get upset over the slightest annoyance and cancel/decide not to continue the service. But is that rational? Like people are itching for the slightest excuse to not pay. YouTube has an enormous amount of entertainment and also educational content, like videos on how to fix things that have personally saved me at least hundreds of dollars. It's a great value IMO.
Hextinium 3y ago
I was at first super confused by this comment, because cross play has been a thing for at least a year or two without YouTube premium. You just have to enable YouTube history and it will populate across devices. I know a lot of people disabled YouTube history because it tailors the experience but it's a fair tradeoff for continuity.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  YouTube history is not the seamless experience that I get from literally every other content provider charging even less money than they do. Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer, Spotify etc. all give me access to continue the last thing I was watching with a click, or even do so automatically (or have the option to). Some even have a "switch to room" function which is further empowering. Having it hidden three menus away is archaic and not the 'continuity' I'm looking for. It's a small thing but it's a) painfully simple to implement and b) one of many of these kinds of small usability gripes that make it a lesser experience.
crashingintoyou 3y ago
> If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. What specifically are you looking for? e.g. was watching a video on my computer, powered that off, opened youtube on my phone and the video I was watching was most recent thing in youtube history there with my position in the video tracked. Similarly I can use my phone or laptop to control Youtube on my TV. Seems like what you're looking for is already mostly here. (I've been a Youtube Premium subscriber for the last year or so thus far).
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  This is the inconvenient version of what I want that takes several menu navigations to achieve it. 'Continuity' for me means a seamless experience. For example, Netflix used to be one click and is now two or three clicks which I find to be a worse experience. The _perfect_ version of this for me would be a "Send to device" function to send from TV to TV in different rooms. Even being able to do a quick switch via my phone as I'm in transit (like I do with Spotify) would be a worthy middleground.

soligern 3y ago

It’s not just established companies that you know to subscribe to. How does someone set up a new company or start selling a new product without advertising. People that are perfectly reasonable about some things can be so short sighted out how society even works.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago

Yeah. I'm not about to pretend I have a right to get content for free, so if the site offers a paid option to remove ads that I find obnoxious I'll take advantage of it.

tacotacotaco 3y ago
I might consider paying for premium if this wasn’t Google we’re talking about, which I imagine is tracking your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads.
- amf12 3y ago
  > I might consider paying for premium if this wasn’t Google we’re talking about, which I imagine is tracking your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads. So basically, you won't pay for premium because Google makes money by serving ads, but you also use an Adblocker (assumption)?
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  Agreed. It's association with Google makes it get less appealing to support.
convalescindrey 3y ago
Sadly, a Youtube Premium subscription only removes the ads. They still collect all the data about you. Remember that you are not just paying with ad eyeballs, but also with your data. When what where how much you watch. That's nobodies business. I'd pay for not having this be in somebodys DB, ready to be exploited (and/or leaked).
- amykhar 3y ago
  But, they kind of HAVE to keep the data about your comments and watch history so that you have access to it. They definitely shouldn't sell it though.