I have YT Premium and I really don’t mind paying. I watch a LOT of YT and making sure the creators I follow get paid for their work is important to me.
People will say the amount they get paid is miniscule but I’d say it’s better than nothing when you use an adblocker. Plus I also get YT Music.
Ever since I unsubscribed, I get at least 1 pop up a week begging me to come back.
If you wanted to keep me, Google, you should have done a better job of remembering what “grandfathered plan” means.
I honestly think that YouTube has to embrace something similar to what Twitch does with subscriptions to specific content creators where they get around 50% of the subscription cost. I personally don’t value YouTube Premium because I know nothing goes to content creators except for the fact that it covers ad revenue income without showing ads.
It sounds like you might be misinformed - a YouTube Premium subscriber watching your YouTube videos is worth, IIRC, 5 to 10 times more than an ad supported view for the content creator. I know a number of content creators have indicated as much for years - I wish I could cite a specific WAN Show episode from Linus Tech Tips who I’m certain has talked about it many times.
I found this clip of Linus talking about it, but no concrete numbers: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MDsJJRNXjYI&t=420
Actually it’s quite the opposite, some of my friends are considering buying YouTube premium and even people on the other social media sites are advocating it as the “only good subscription”.
Not gonna lie, I have cut a bunch of subscriptions but youtube premium is the one I tried to cut and couldn’t fucking do it. Even before the ad block debacle. It was impossible to block ads on mobile (where I spend most If my youtube time) . I tried new pipe but that experience honestly sucked. THE ADS ARE FUCKING ABSURD. Like literally unusable fucking garbage. I’ve had premium for years and got spoiled I guess but if I couldn’t afford premium youtube would go into the graveyard of the 2023 internet enshitification along with Netflix and reddit. Even $30 a month for my family is worth it. It is 90% of my entertainment now that reddit is gone.
It sucks because it is a synthetic, created need. That ad revenue doesn’t go to creators, they have their own ads. The need for youtube premium is purely due to their extortion. But I submit, they win. Clicking a video you want to watch and seeing those yellow hash marks on the time bar makes me want to put my head through a wall and youtube premium makes all that anger just… not be.
I’ve been going with no ads on mobile for years and years now. It’s been painless with Vanced and now its successor ReVanced. Unlike with YT Premium, ReVanced also has the added bonus of SponsorBlock. It just makes modern YouTube so much better and is entirely free.
Downside is yeah it won’t work on iOS… Tbh, it’s one of the main reasons why I refuse to buy an iOS device. I can’t fucking stand in video ads.
