YouTube premium is one of the subscriptions I most often feel thankful for having. I watch enough YouTube videos that avoiding all those ads is really worthwhile, I hope that my view is worth more to the channels I watch, and YouTube music let me cancel Spotify.
I understand being pissed at YouTube and Google, but at the end of the day, of all the things I have to rage at, YouTube isn’t worth it. I like it, there are creators that use it that I like, and I understand that it costs real money to run the platform.
You used to be able to play videos in the background but they removed that feature specifically to lock it behind a paywall. YouTube will never see a dime from me because of this.
Charging for new features? Sure I guess. Removing features to charge for them later? Get fucked.
You can get around this by running YouTube in the web browser on Android at least
They’re especially greedy when you consider they are not only the most profitable of all their competitors (Netflix/Disney Plus/Hulu/etc), but that they’re unique in that they’re the only one who doesn’t fund creating any content at all.
At least the other companies put tons of money producing content alongside their other stuff. YouTube just lets others do that for them and then takes all the profit.
So how does YouTube really justify their costs for premium with zero production costs and the largest profit margin?
Most other companies can be selective in what they host / stream. YouTube will host/stream anything users upload and that’s actually quite insane. Current statistics say that YouTubers upload 30.000 hours of video… per hour.
Aside from the streaming/processing, only the disk space that would need is already frightening. Most of those videos will never be seen, and no ads will be played on them. The setup needed for this is massively more impressive to me than services like Netflix.
Do you perhaps have a source for those profit margins? I really wonder if they’re already running break even.
From a technical perspective, I wonder what they do with those seldom viewed videos. Do they get stored somewhere in slower, deep storage, only to be eventually transferred out and cached when they’re actively receiving views? I imagine you wouldn’t want to waste faster, more expensive storage on something that’ll likely rarely to be retrieved.
I was paying for it until it got to like $16.99 on iOS. As much of an annoyance to use a work around like AD Guard. I can now afford it but refuse to give those greedy mofos a dime.
That is because you are paying for the premium of signing up through ios; apple takes a cut so to make money they raise the rates. It’s extremely common signing up to any service through ios, that you will be charged higher than if you went to the website on your browser and sign up for it there. First link has link to Hank Green who does a great break down and investigation but provided many more examples.
https://www.devicemag.com/youtube-premium-cost-iphone/
https://lifehacker.com/dont-sign-up-for-subscriptions-in-the-app-1850298355
https://umatechnology.org/psa-subscriptions-cost-more-when-bought-on-an-iphone/
More than you think, actually. My wife recently signed up. I’m like, Babe! I already have uBlock Origin to block ads on desktop! On mobile, Firefox also blocks ads and allows listening to videos with the screen off. 😫
But, we still get ads on our smart LG TV. So. That’s apparently enough to throw the money away.
we still get ads on our smart LG TV
That’s when I hit the mute button, hold the remote with my finger on the OK button ready to skip, and use the remote to block my view of anything but the bottom right corner of the screen. Then when I see the skip button appear, I can click it.
Recently I have discovered that I can just use the “why this ad?” menu and select “return to video”. That way you can skip any ad before the timer runs out.
It’s okay to pay for a service that you use daily.
I don’t, but I disagree it’s “to throw money away”.
Especially if you can finagle a subscription out of one of the cheaper countries, too!
Does that still work? Thought to have read here and there that Google is cracking down on that loophole? Maybe not (yet) if you are an existing ‘foreign’ sub.
Finally gave in to a 2 month free trial of YouTube premium this week. Not planning on buying into it however when the trial expires. But with the holidays thought it was a good time to accept the trial for two full months.
We csncelled all streaming and use plex but we watch too much YouTube and am tired of having to keep up with versions of pirate apps every time they break. I already deal with having to keep patching the newest youtube apk with vanced on my phone. Not gonna bother for all the other devices.
That actually makes more sense to me compared to most premium features. Higher quality directly costs more money to stream.
Even with premium they will send lower quality if they think they can get away with it, I have to change the quality on every video that plays on my tablet now: it completely ignores the preferred quality in the settings.
I haven’t noticed any issues on Firefox, can also use an add-on to force specific quality.
Yeah I sometimes switch to Firefox instead of the youtube app, but its a little bit annoying switching in and out of fullscreen and I’ve found the tap to fast forward doesn’t work consistently. I wasn’t able to find an addon for Firefox Android to force the quality selection last time I looked but maybe I need to check again.
