6 ms·

Mate if you get so much value from YouTube that you'll jump through these hoops just to use it without ads, why not just subscribe to premium? Personally it's

by mvdtnz 3y ago

Mate if you get so much value from YouTube that you'll jump through these hoops just to use it without ads, why not just subscribe to premium? Personally it's by far my most bang-for-buck service.

karmasimida 3y ago
Yeah, the amount of effort and money spent to maintain such system is easily more expensive than just do the subscription at this point Yeah, you might be losing the game, you are winning the game as well.
Diti 3y ago
I don’t know about OP, but, personally, the reason I don’t subscribe to premium is because they get aggressive on ads on purpose (waves of unskippable ads followed by a YouTube Premium subscription request the day after), which I believe is a dark pattern. I would have been okay with paying for a subscription if it was to support the website or its creators – but I take manipulation attempts very badly.
- epgui 3y ago
  +1 I wouldn’t even notice the subscription costs, but at this point Google has only succeeded in alienating me. I have disproportionately negative feelings about this.
  - throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
    If you had willingly jumped from ad block to premium any time in the last 5 years would you still feel alienated? Reacting to google blocking ad-blockers as a reason not to subscribe to premium is just rationalizing not paying creators for content. I personally don't even remember what ads are like on Youtube and have zero idea how they've changed since the Youtube Red days.
    - depereo 3y ago
      I had Red through my google play music subscription but then they turned music into a YouTube nonsense app that removed features I liked and tripled the costs. I'd subscribe to YouTube premium if it didn't bundle a music subscription and associated cost.
      - Thorrez 3y ago
        >tripled the costs. According to this article, when Youtube red was introduced in October 2015, it was $9.99/month. It's now $13.99/month. That's a 40% increase. If you adjust $9.99 in October 2015 for inflation to September 2023, it's $12.93/month. So inflation-adjusted, the price increased 8.2% from 2015 to now. https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-free-offline-paid-subscription-service https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-f... https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9.99&year1=201510&year2=202309 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9.99&year1=201... Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Youtube.
        SoullessSilent 3y ago
        Your calculation doesnt take into account increases in income. As mine has not increased since before 2015 then that would still be a 40% increase to me.
        Thorrez 3y ago
        Are you interested in * Increases in income of the population then vs now, which would be good for comparing the economy then vs now (e.g. median income then vs now) * Increases in income following cohorts, which would be good for see how on average individual people's income has risen due to both the economy and gained experience (e.g. 25 year old in 2015 would be 33 now, and thus likely make more money both due to population-wide changes (e.g. inflation) and due to having more work experience) * Increases in income of a few individual people (the example you provided) For the first one, this page[1], says that in 2021 dollars, the median US household income was $68410, and in 2022 (also in 2021 dollars) it was $74580. So adjusting those back to their in-year dollars, that would be $61,426.62 in 2015[2] and $86,662.50 in 2023[3]. So adjusting the Youtube Red/Premium price change, to those numbers, results in Youtube Red/Premium decreasing price by 0.7% once adjusted for the US population's medium household income. For the second one, I think adjusting for that would should the price decreasing even more. Because each individual person's experience increases, so you would expect an individual's income to increase more than the population's income. For the third one, I don't see how it's useful to look at a few examples. One person's income might have doubled, showing the Youtube Red/Premium dropped drastically in price. Another person's income might have halved, showing Youtube Red/Premium increases drastically in price. Another person might have become unemployed, showing Youtube Red/Premium's price increased by infinity %. Another person might have gone from unemployed to having a job, showing Youtube Red/Premium's price decreases from infinity % of income to non-infinity % of income, so basically a decrease by inifnity %. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N [2] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=68410&year1=202103&year2=201510 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=68410&year1=20... [3] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=74580&year1=202103&year2=202309 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=74580&year1=20...
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Premium does support creators. Views from premium subscribers are worth significantly more than views from freeloaders.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    Most creators have to get sponsors because youtube is very unreliable with what can be monetized, what can't, unblocking stuff after fake reports and so on.
    - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
      Regardless, YouTube Premium puts way more money in creators' pockets than ads and is more reliable.
      - copperx 3y ago
        If that is so, YouTube should incentivize creators to promote YouTube premium instead of them having to advertise for dubious VPN services.
        Thorrez 3y ago
        >instead of them having to advertise for dubious VPN services. Do you think Youtube wants creators to do that? Youtube doesn't get a cut of that revenue, whereas Youtube does get a cut of regular Youtube ad revenue and Premium revenue. Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Youtube, and am just speculating here.
        justinclift 3y ago
        > Do you think Youtube wants creators to do that? Perhaps Google should think upon how things ended up this way then? Like, there are some pretty clear problems with Google's approach to (at least) YouTube, and they don't seem to really want to fix them...
- nodja 3y ago
  I have a tiny channel that posts long (3-4 hours) gameplay videos and premium is 80% of my revenue. I do have mid-rolls and unskippable ads turned off, but in my experience those would only increase my ad revenue by 10-20%, i.e. premium would still be ~77% of my revenue. For reference the average view duration for my videos is ~25 minutes (premium pays by total watch time). https://i.imgur.com/wqE2QJ2.png https://i.imgur.com/wqE2QJ2.png
vluis 3y ago
I think I've more than paid off my YT usage with how much personal data google has stolen/misused from me over the years.
Triphibian 3y ago
Content on YouTube is shaped by the incentives Google sets on the platform. So what we get, mostly, is junk that best sells ads, best gets clicks, eyes, attention etc. etc. Just like TV was before pay cable came along. Notice how TV got better when you just paid HBO to show you good shows? Paying Google to watch YouTube without ads is like paying ABC to watch The Bachelor without ads. The content is still trash.
- gs17 3y ago
  I think they used to (or maybe still do?) have Premium-only content. But it's no one's motivation to pay up.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  If the only content you find on YouTube is trash that sounds like a you problem. My feed is filled with high effort content.
  - Triphibian 3y ago
    I have found quality content. Notice how the people who work hard to make content outside YouTube's incentives need an external Patreon to fund their work? Why should I pay to fund the Mr. Beasts while the quality creators have to find funding outside the system? Also: I am sure you've seen it -- a creator you like or admire starts succumbing to the incentives, making sillier and sillier thumbnails or "experimenting" with shorter content. Of course there's great stuff on YouTube, but they exist on YouTube despite Google's best efforts to coarsen them.
    - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
      The money you pay for premium goes directly to the people you watch. Don't watch Mr. Beast and he won't get your money.
mortenjorck 3y ago
What I don’t understand is why YouTube is going to these lengths to penalize ad blockers when they still gate Premium behind a bundle with another service nobody wants. They even trialed an unbundled Premium in Europe two years ago, but never did anything with it: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-lite-pilot-benelux-nordics-experiment-ad-free-subscription https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-l... One can only conclude that some executive at Google is still dead-set on making YouTube Music happen, and YouTube Premium will continue to suffer as a result.
- recursive 3y ago
  I didn't realize you music was a thing until I got it with premium. And I'm glad to have it. It seems pretty good.
- kervantas 3y ago
  > They even trialed an unbundled Premium in Europe two years ago, but never did anything with it. Oh, they did something with it – cancelled it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-lite-subscription-discontinued-retired https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-...
emodendroket 3y ago
I could probably be convinced to pull the trigger for ten bucks a month. For $15 it feels like I should put up with the ads.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Can't subscribe to premium without getting and using an account first.
harimau777 3y ago
Personally, my biggest issue with YouTube ads are how many of them are for transphobic propaganda. Paying for premium would just be rewarding them for profiting from hate speech.
- aaaao 3y ago
  Sounds good to me, how do I get those ads instead of all the ones trying to sell me stuff. Either way I'm pleased to hear that people are getting the message out.
Mawr 3y ago
I don't want to pay for what I don't use. I want a simple no-ad plan that I can share with my partner. I don't need and don't want to pay for Youtube Music, more than one other person, offline videos, etc. I would also be incentivized by the ability to control how much of my money goes to each creator.
lithos 3y ago
It's more about enjoying the challenge and nerdiness of defeating an anti-adblocker at this point, I would imagine. Also worth mentioning that Google's ad service is such a security vulnerability that even the FBI recommends an ad blocker. Google is fully in the right for blocking ad blockers, banning users, or whatever. Might even end up having some profitable years for those bans.
justinclift 3y ago
To avoid giving an evil, untrustworthy corporation money?
cuddlyogre 3y ago
I have no faith that they won't soon start pushing ads on paying subscribers and start offering a premium plus subscription to be ad free again.
Randomizer42 3y ago
[dead]
asdff 3y ago
Well, I do need $15 a month more than google needs it. Seems they aren't hurting for money either, they just want ever more of it. Between that overt greed and the psychological manipulation you have to go through in viewing ads otherwise, I find the whole thing a bit distasteful and not worth playing the game as it is. If I'm able to install tooling to bend the rules of the game ever so slightly in my favor for once in this modern world, that's whats going to happen. Letter of the law be damned.
nirav72 3y ago
Good luck getting support from google/youtube if you have issues with your premium account. Like a friend of mine who recently decided to setup a family group on his google account, so he can include immediate family members in his household so they can access youtube via premium family plan. Nope. He got a message saying he can only switch to a new family group once every 12 months. He spent a day looking around trying to figure how to get support from an actual human being at google to resolve the issue. No luck so far. In the end, he cancelled his youtube premium.

by mvdtnz 3y ago

Mate if you get so much value from YouTube that you'll jump through these hoops just to use it without ads, why not just subscribe to premium? Personally it's by far my most bang-for-buck service.

karmasimida 3y ago

Yeah, the amount of effort and money spent to maintain such system is easily more expensive than just do the subscription at this point Yeah, you might be losing the game, you are winning the game as well.

Diti 3y ago

I don’t know about OP, but, personally, the reason I don’t subscribe to premium is because they get aggressive on ads on purpose (waves of unskippable ads followed by a YouTube Premium subscription request the day after), which I believe is a dark pattern. I would have been okay with paying for a subscription if it was to support the website or its creators – but I take manipulation attempts very badly.

epgui 3y ago
+1 I wouldn’t even notice the subscription costs, but at this point Google has only succeeded in alienating me. I have disproportionately negative feelings about this.
- throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
  If you had willingly jumped from ad block to premium any time in the last 5 years would you still feel alienated? Reacting to google blocking ad-blockers as a reason not to subscribe to premium is just rationalizing not paying creators for content. I personally don't even remember what ads are like on Youtube and have zero idea how they've changed since the Youtube Red days.
  - depereo 3y ago
    I had Red through my google play music subscription but then they turned music into a YouTube nonsense app that removed features I liked and tripled the costs. I'd subscribe to YouTube premium if it didn't bundle a music subscription and associated cost.
    - Thorrez 3y ago
      >tripled the costs. According to this article, when Youtube red was introduced in October 2015, it was $9.99/month. It's now $13.99/month. That's a 40% increase. If you adjust $9.99 in October 2015 for inflation to September 2023, it's $12.93/month. So inflation-adjusted, the price increased 8.2% from 2015 to now. https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-free-offline-paid-subscription-service https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-f... https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9.99&year1=201510&year2=202309 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9.99&year1=201... Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Youtube.
      - SoullessSilent 3y ago
        Your calculation doesnt take into account increases in income. As mine has not increased since before 2015 then that would still be a 40% increase to me.
        Thorrez 3y ago
        Are you interested in * Increases in income of the population then vs now, which would be good for comparing the economy then vs now (e.g. median income then vs now) * Increases in income following cohorts, which would be good for see how on average individual people's income has risen due to both the economy and gained experience (e.g. 25 year old in 2015 would be 33 now, and thus likely make more money both due to population-wide changes (e.g. inflation) and due to having more work experience) * Increases in income of a few individual people (the example you provided) For the first one, this page[1], says that in 2021 dollars, the median US household income was $68410, and in 2022 (also in 2021 dollars) it was $74580. So adjusting those back to their in-year dollars, that would be $61,426.62 in 2015[2] and $86,662.50 in 2023[3]. So adjusting the Youtube Red/Premium price change, to those numbers, results in Youtube Red/Premium decreasing price by 0.7% once adjusted for the US population's medium household income. For the second one, I think adjusting for that would should the price decreasing even more. Because each individual person's experience increases, so you would expect an individual's income to increase more than the population's income. For the third one, I don't see how it's useful to look at a few examples. One person's income might have doubled, showing the Youtube Red/Premium dropped drastically in price. Another person's income might have halved, showing Youtube Red/Premium increases drastically in price. Another person might have become unemployed, showing Youtube Red/Premium's price increased by infinity %. Another person might have gone from unemployed to having a job, showing Youtube Red/Premium's price decreases from infinity % of income to non-infinity % of income, so basically a decrease by inifnity %. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N [2] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=68410&year1=202103&year2=201510 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=68410&year1=20... [3] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=74580&year1=202103&year2=202309 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=74580&year1=20...
mvdtnz 3y ago
Premium does support creators. Views from premium subscribers are worth significantly more than views from freeloaders.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Most creators have to get sponsors because youtube is very unreliable with what can be monetized, what can't, unblocking stuff after fake reports and so on.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    Regardless, YouTube Premium puts way more money in creators' pockets than ads and is more reliable.
    - copperx 3y ago
      If that is so, YouTube should incentivize creators to promote YouTube premium instead of them having to advertise for dubious VPN services.
      - Thorrez 3y ago
        >instead of them having to advertise for dubious VPN services. Do you think Youtube wants creators to do that? Youtube doesn't get a cut of that revenue, whereas Youtube does get a cut of regular Youtube ad revenue and Premium revenue. Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Youtube, and am just speculating here.
        justinclift 3y ago
        > Do you think Youtube wants creators to do that? Perhaps Google should think upon how things ended up this way then? Like, there are some pretty clear problems with Google's approach to (at least) YouTube, and they don't seem to really want to fix them...
nodja 3y ago
I have a tiny channel that posts long (3-4 hours) gameplay videos and premium is 80% of my revenue. I do have mid-rolls and unskippable ads turned off, but in my experience those would only increase my ad revenue by 10-20%, i.e. premium would still be ~77% of my revenue. For reference the average view duration for my videos is ~25 minutes (premium pays by total watch time). https://i.imgur.com/wqE2QJ2.png https://i.imgur.com/wqE2QJ2.png

vluis 3y ago

I think I've more than paid off my YT usage with how much personal data google has stolen/misused from me over the years.

Triphibian 3y ago

Content on YouTube is shaped by the incentives Google sets on the platform. So what we get, mostly, is junk that best sells ads, best gets clicks, eyes, attention etc. etc. Just like TV was before pay cable came along. Notice how TV got better when you just paid HBO to show you good shows? Paying Google to watch YouTube without ads is like paying ABC to watch The Bachelor without ads. The content is still trash.

gs17 3y ago
I think they used to (or maybe still do?) have Premium-only content. But it's no one's motivation to pay up.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
If the only content you find on YouTube is trash that sounds like a you problem. My feed is filled with high effort content.
- Triphibian 3y ago
  I have found quality content. Notice how the people who work hard to make content outside YouTube's incentives need an external Patreon to fund their work? Why should I pay to fund the Mr. Beasts while the quality creators have to find funding outside the system? Also: I am sure you've seen it -- a creator you like or admire starts succumbing to the incentives, making sillier and sillier thumbnails or "experimenting" with shorter content. Of course there's great stuff on YouTube, but they exist on YouTube despite Google's best efforts to coarsen them.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    The money you pay for premium goes directly to the people you watch. Don't watch Mr. Beast and he won't get your money.

mortenjorck 3y ago

What I don’t understand is why YouTube is going to these lengths to penalize ad blockers when they still gate Premium behind a bundle with another service nobody wants. They even trialed an unbundled Premium in Europe two years ago, but never did anything with it: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-lite-pilot-benelux-nordics-experiment-ad-free-subscription https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-l... One can only conclude that some executive at Google is still dead-set on making YouTube Music happen, and YouTube Premium will continue to suffer as a result.

recursive 3y ago
I didn't realize you music was a thing until I got it with premium. And I'm glad to have it. It seems pretty good.
kervantas 3y ago
> They even trialed an unbundled Premium in Europe two years ago, but never did anything with it. Oh, they did something with it – cancelled it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-lite-subscription-discontinued-retired https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-...

emodendroket 3y ago

I could probably be convinced to pull the trigger for ten bucks a month. For $15 it feels like I should put up with the ads.

mcpackieh 3y ago

Can't subscribe to premium without getting and using an account first.

harimau777 3y ago

Personally, my biggest issue with YouTube ads are how many of them are for transphobic propaganda. Paying for premium would just be rewarding them for profiting from hate speech.

aaaao 3y ago
Sounds good to me, how do I get those ads instead of all the ones trying to sell me stuff. Either way I'm pleased to hear that people are getting the message out.

Mawr 3y ago

I don't want to pay for what I don't use. I want a simple no-ad plan that I can share with my partner. I don't need and don't want to pay for Youtube Music, more than one other person, offline videos, etc. I would also be incentivized by the ability to control how much of my money goes to each creator.

lithos 3y ago

It's more about enjoying the challenge and nerdiness of defeating an anti-adblocker at this point, I would imagine. Also worth mentioning that Google's ad service is such a security vulnerability that even the FBI recommends an ad blocker. Google is fully in the right for blocking ad blockers, banning users, or whatever. Might even end up having some profitable years for those bans.

justinclift 3y ago

To avoid giving an evil, untrustworthy corporation money?

cuddlyogre 3y ago

I have no faith that they won't soon start pushing ads on paying subscribers and start offering a premium plus subscription to be ad free again.

Randomizer42 3y ago

[dead]

asdff 3y ago

Well, I do need $15 a month more than google needs it. Seems they aren't hurting for money either, they just want ever more of it. Between that overt greed and the psychological manipulation you have to go through in viewing ads otherwise, I find the whole thing a bit distasteful and not worth playing the game as it is. If I'm able to install tooling to bend the rules of the game ever so slightly in my favor for once in this modern world, that's whats going to happen. Letter of the law be damned.

nirav72 3y ago

Good luck getting support from google/youtube if you have issues with your premium account. Like a friend of mine who recently decided to setup a family group on his google account, so he can include immediate family members in his household so they can access youtube via premium family plan. Nope. He got a message saying he can only switch to a new family group once every 12 months. He spent a day looking around trying to figure how to get support from an actual human being at google to resolve the issue. No luck so far. In the end, he cancelled his youtube premium.