Edit: Since you guys are downvoting my post, I’ll assume my post does not belong here, because I represent a POPULAR opinion. Remember “ah yes, this is unpopular = upvote” “wait no, everyone likes nutella with butter, popular opinion = downvote”
YouTube Premium is a good deal for most regular YouTube users.
I don’t think there’s much of a debate here, yet most people seem to disagree with me
Pricing: Absolutely fair IMO. Think about other streaming services. Netflix is more expesive, even music streaming services are barely cheaper. If you can’t afford the single pricing, get a family plan, share with whoever you trust enough. How many videos do you watch in one month? How many minutes of ads is that? Likely quite a few minutes.
Who gets the money?: What did you expect? A lot of it goes to YouTube -> Alphabet/Google. Of course it does. Hosting a seemingly unlimited amount of on demand fullHD or even 4k videos and streams for a MASSIVE userbase is not cheap. Still, content creators do report that YouTube premium earnings per viewer are way more valuable than YouTube free earnings per viewer. So, I fail to see the problem.
Financially supporting Alphabet/Google: I mean, yeah, they aren’t the greatest company, I’m with you on that. If you have a problem with supporting such a company, don’t use their services. If you don’t pay for them with money, you pay with time by watching ads. If you do neither, you’re basically commiting petty theft. The victim being a “bad” company doesn’t make that better.
Using AdBlock: Like I just said, that’s petty theft and it’s not okay just because you’re doing it to a big bad company. Running YouTube costs money, if more people use it, it costs more. If nobody pays for it, it’s dead. Additionally, if nobody pays, no content creator earns money. That’s a secondary effect, as you could still pay creators directly.
Paying creators directly: If you do that, good on you, good on the creators. If everyone uses AdBlock with that, say bye to YouTube. Creators will use another hosting platform, either like YouTube (rinse and repeat) or selfhosted.
Content creators host their own content: That would be so so bad. The overlap of “content creator”, “able to selfhost” and “willing to selfhost” is small. Anyway, even if everyone pulled it off, most would go out of business for sure. Also, have fun browsing videos if everyone selfhosts. We’d need a global platform for browsing now:)
YT premium paywalls features: Yes. So? Heard of Bitwarden? People love that company for their generous services. Even they paywall features like TOTP and emergency contacts. Paywalling features is normal. In fact, it’s to be expected. Just because something was free once doesn’t mean it should still be free. Just because a part of it is free doesn’t mean everything about it should be free.
The YouTube App sucks / YT Music sucks: Nobody forces you to use it. But if you do, clearly you see some value there. Pay for it in some way if they request you do so.
Tell me why I’m wrong.
Linus? Is that you? /s
No matter how moral you think it is, simple supply and demand says that if people aren’t paying for it, that it’s not worth that much.
If you’re a creator and think your videos should be worth more then set them to premium only and/or make them only available to patreon. That’ll tell you if the market says they’re priced competitively. Otherwise they are worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them - which even for people like Linus Tech Tips is essentially nothing
I’m not sure if Linus Tech Tips agree with me, but from context, I’ll assume so. Anyway, the free market isn’t a real argument to me. All it tells me is that YouTube and most big creators have a solid business model.
My argument consists of basically two aspects:
Paying money for Youtube content is better value than watching ads for YouTube content. Your time and to an extent mental state is, for 95% of users, worth more than that money.
Not paying money and not watching ads is not sustainable and morally reprehensible. Their service doesn’t finance itself if nobody grants it any income. It they demand a compensation for their goods and services, you are to either compensate them or forego the offer. You cannot just assume that a bunch of other people compensate for the lost income through you. It morally doesn’t work like that. If you do that, you better be okay with financially stablr people stealing in grocery stores too.
I mean you can believe paying is better than watching ads for your own experience. But the morality argument about whether they make their money through ad revenue vs subscriptions is pretty dubious.
I think you misunderstood. Them making money trough straight payments AND through ad revenue are both completely fine incomes.
However, there is no morality in denying them both while still benefiting from their goods and services. You’d support my argument if it was about some local busines. For some odd reason this shifts peoples perspecives. Someone offers something and says “hey it’s not for free, but I won’t actually know if you paid or not” (well YouTube does know, but that’s secondary)… It’s not right to deny them their pay. There are no consequences to it, but you know that it’s not sustainable if everybody thinks like you.
I think you misunderstood. Them making money trough straight payments AND through ad revenue are both completely fine incomes.
However, there is no morality in denying them both while still benefiting from their goods and services. You’d support my argument if it was about some local busines. For some odd reason this shifts peoples perspecives. Someone offers something and says “hey it’s not for free, but I won’t actually know if you paid or not” (well YouTube does know, but that’s secondary)… It’s not right to deny them their pay. There are no consequences to it, but you know that it’s not sustainable if everybody thinks like you.
I think you misunderstood. Them making money trough straight payments AND through ad revenue are both completely fine incomes.
However, there is no morality in denying them both while still benefiting from their goods and services. You’d support my argument if it was about some local busines. For some odd reason this shifts peoples perspecives. Someone offers something and says “hey it’s not for free, but I won’t actually know if you paid or not” (well YouTube does know, but that’s secondary)… It’s not right to deny them their pay. There are no consequences to it, but you know that it’s not sustainable if everybody thinks like you.
YouTube is already a blackbox financially speaking. Nobody can say for certain how much money YouTube makes or loses, including YouTube/Alphabet. YouTube exists, like many other Google projects, to keep you using the Google ecosystem.
Should drivers pay for Google maps?
Should Gmail charge a fee for usage?
Should Docs charge per page?
Should free Play Store apps charge a fee?
If your answer to those questions is no yes, you’re being narrow in your understanding of why they all exist: Google wants you using free services, because it incentivizes you to interact with their profiteering systems, namely AdSense. So if that’s your interest, you might consider using social media sites integrated with AdSense so your data can be sold at a premium bundled with your account info.
If your answer to those questions is no…
You clearly know my stance about consumption of goods and services. I wouldn’t say no to that.
Alphabet is a for profit company. They have every right to be. If they do something, it’s to generate income in some way, at some point. Google Maps is here for a multitude of reasons. User data is what comes to mind. They also take sponsorship money. Be a restaurant, pay money to be on top of the “restaurants in x city” results. GSuite has a business model, the free model also tries to make you stay with Google. Of course this stuff can cost money. Of course it’s also fine if they absolutely milk you for your personal data, as long as you agree, which in the past (and future) has been a problem… not topic of the day.
If they charge money (or ad consumption) for something and I don’t feel like paying, I’m not using. This is the gist of it.
Plenty of people here actually talking about YT. Not me. I never downvote things in this community unless it’s spam or trolling.
But I’m very tempted to downvote you for stating most people like nutella with butter. I’ve never met any such person. This is about opinions, not facts, so downvoting for false fact claims is legit.
I will get to the truth of this matter
I found my self in the last few years to be an avid YouTube content consumer and I can say that yes, the premium is worth it because most of the content I consume is on the TV and I have not found an easy way to do it otherwise. I could go the piped tube route but I’ve got kids and its the only reliable way I’ve found to shield them from ads and have some kind of control to what they access etc (parental control have become really good in recent years). Sure, It’s not perfect but it’s one of the only 3 subscription I pay for (again, for the kids convenience more than anything). I wish all good content creators migrated to nebula or other similar platforms but that doesn’t look like it’ll happen anytime soon. I wish a YouTube-like fediverse would take hold and prosper but YouTube has huge momentum for the time being and, at the end of the day, servers and their operating costs are not nothing. It’s an unpopular opinion but it is valid.
