Is $14 dollars for ad-free, unlimited access to literally billions of videos really a steep price? Personally if I were to get rid of all but one of my media subscriptions I would stick with this one, since it's got everything - entertainment, education, inspiration, you name it.
$14 is two days worth of living in my country for your average man on the street, among many other similar places. Imagine if you had to pay $200 to watch YouTube, that's how much these services cost for us.
They refuse to correct for purchasing power parity and are left with nothing in the end. Steam seems to do very well in comparison.
(I don't watch YouTube even for free, but practically everybody I know does without paying anything, and it makes a lot of sense).
There are a lot of things in this world besides YouTube Premium, which cost $14 or more. That some people in the world are very poor is no kind of argument as to how companies should price their products.
"Purchasing power parity" is a non-concept for almost 100% of companies and products. But YouTube Premium is priced differently in different regions. Sometimes much cheaper than $14.
YouTube is 10x the quality and 10x the quantity than any other video service.
As for the ads, YouTube Premium now has built-in sponsor skip. They can't really block sponsored segments, as that is a freedom of speech issue and also something they can't easily determine. Creators can just omit that some product is sponsored.
* $0.00 plus additional risk that the author of the alternative you are using is compromised, you end up using a malicious version of that alternative, and get pwned.
Obviously for some/many, that trade-off is totally cool. But it needs to be included in the analysis, otherwise you're being dishonest.
Not to mention included YouTube Music. It's one of the few subs I pay for, because I watch a _lot_ of YouTube on the TV. And also like to have it in the background for "Podcast" style videos where the video is really only an accompaniment.
That's actually worse. They used to have a separate YouTube subscription. I don't want (to pay for) YouTube Music, because I already have Apple Music and Tidal, which I prefer.
That's extremely subjective, but I'd rather save that $14 a month towards retirement. And if YouTube was only available with ads... well, that's no videos for me, maybe for the better, I would waste less time.
That's a very generous characterization of what most YouTube content is.
My experience is that you are basically paying to remove the official ads from your disguised ads.
The various algorithm tweaks for engagement these past few years and the introduction of shorts have significantly degraded the content quality and many good channels have just thrown the towel.
Right, I want premium because it's a "fair" payment for the service I use and would help support the people who make good content, but the vast majority of those dollars go to the company who is solely at fault for encouraging and essentially requiring creators to use clickbait and fake thumbnails and put out slop every single day and never ever ever try doing something slightly different and consistently change things in ways that those creators do not want and hate. Every complaint you likely have about youtube content was forced by youtube for their own profitability. Don't like sponsorships? People mostly started seeking them out after Google cut ad payouts essentially in half with no warning. Don't like videos being way longer than they need to be? That's because youtube started paying out based on watch time instead of views and that encourages padding. Don't like censorship? It was Youtube's choice to shadowban/punish anyone who even said the word pandemic during a literal global pandemic that people probably wanted to talk about, even in passing. Buy into Youtube's new "channel member" feature in good faith? Well then Youtube changed it so that the videos that only members can watch are now shoved in front of everyone's eyeballs without your approval or desire or asking and it's really annoying to all your viewers. Don't like every video spending 30 seconds telling you to subscribe and "hit that like button" and then the fucking bell? That's because google decided that if your video didn't have a high enough click through rate, it wouldn't be shown to subscribers at all, and then introduced the bell for "subscribers but for real", and then even that hasn't really been honored. Youtube has for example suddenly decided that I should be shown low view russian language plagiarism of videos I like that have then been autodubbed back into english rather than the video from one of my subscriptions that was copied to make the russian video. How is that supposed to help anyone?
I will happily pay for youtube when they show that they want to encourage good content and help empower the people who make that good content, but Google doesn't want to do that because Mr Beast slop advertising to your kids is more profitable.
Listen, I only make about $350-$400 a week after taxes and deductions. So, yes, $14 a month is a LOT. With my income, even $5 can and does break the bank if I'm not careful. Not everyone has a SWE's salary.
It's >12x the ad revenue they bring in per monthly-active YouTube user (suggesting they'd still be happy with a much lower price), and the price has increased 75% in the last decade (compared to the 40% real inflation over that period, suggesting they intend to continue increasing the price till public backlash or other effects reduce their total revenue). Plus they're boiling the frog, slowly adding ads back in to music and shorts for premium users, and we'll see how far that initiative goes.
> Plus they're boiling the frog, slowly adding ads back in to music and shorts for premium users
Do you have a source for this?
I do value watching unlimited youtube videos without ads, but if they're gonna add the ads back in, I'd easily stop paying for the one google product I currently pay for (and honestly the only reason I haven't already done this is laziness and convenience)
It launched at $9.99[1] and is now $13.99[2] which I believe to be a 40% increase, i.e. flat in real dollars. If like most people you subscribe for a year, it's only $11.67/mo.
Is $14 dollars for ad-free, unlimited access to literally billions of videos really a steep price? Personally if I were to get rid of all but one of my media subscriptions I would stick with this one, since it's got everything - entertainment, education, inspiration, you name it.
$14 is two days worth of living in my country for your average man on the street, among many other similar places. Imagine if you had to pay $200 to watch YouTube, that's how much these services cost for us.
They refuse to correct for purchasing power parity and are left with nothing in the end. Steam seems to do very well in comparison.
(I don't watch YouTube even for free, but practically everybody I know does without paying anything, and it makes a lot of sense).
There are a lot of things in this world besides YouTube Premium, which cost $14 or more. That some people in the world are very poor is no kind of argument as to how companies should price their products.
"Purchasing power parity" is a non-concept for almost 100% of companies and products. But YouTube Premium is priced differently in different regions. Sometimes much cheaper than $14.
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A semi-successful YouTuber in a low-income country is basically an infinite money hack. Neat little form of advance scouting, like this forum.
I am not going to watch billions of Videos.
Its not entirely ad free, just fewer ads, AFAIK sponsored segments remain so there are still ads, sometimes quite lengthy ones.
$14/month is $168 an year, and if you subscribe to multiple other video services the annual total is going to be quite high.
YouTube is 10x the quality and 10x the quantity than any other video service.
As for the ads, YouTube Premium now has built-in sponsor skip. They can't really block sponsored segments, as that is a freedom of speech issue and also something they can't easily determine. Creators can just omit that some product is sponsored.
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sponsored segments are skipped with a single button push, so they are negligible. it also comes with yt music
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SponsorBlock helps with them.
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When the alternative is the exact same thing you describe but for $0 dollars, then yes.
For sure! $0.00*
* $0.00 plus additional risk that the author of the alternative you are using is compromised, you end up using a malicious version of that alternative, and get pwned.
Obviously for some/many, that trade-off is totally cool. But it needs to be included in the analysis, otherwise you're being dishonest.
Not to mention included YouTube Music. It's one of the few subs I pay for, because I watch a _lot_ of YouTube on the TV. And also like to have it in the background for "Podcast" style videos where the video is really only an accompaniment.
That's actually worse. They used to have a separate YouTube subscription. I don't want (to pay for) YouTube Music, because I already have Apple Music and Tidal, which I prefer.
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14 dollars a month for a decade is $1680.
To save $1680 I'd prefer to just use an adblocker (which I have done for the past decade)
The hacker boy one day came back from school panting, sweating and exhausted. His father asked him:
- What happened to you?
- I figured that if I ran behind the bus, I'll save the $3 dollars the ticket costs-
The hacker father smacked his son hard on the head and cried:
- You fool! To run behind a bus like that! You should have ran behind a taxi instead and you would have saved at least $50 dollars!
Then they both watched YouTube together the rest of the evening, thinking eagerly about all the juicy money they would save over the next decade.
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Yes, and you choose to risk losing the most important platform to humanity next to Wikipedia. Youtube should be a public service.
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That's extremely subjective, but I'd rather save that $14 a month towards retirement. And if YouTube was only available with ads... well, that's no videos for me, maybe for the better, I would waste less time.
Sure, and you're free to
1. Save $14 for retirement and not watch Youtube
2. Save $14 for retirement and watch Youtube with ads
3. Pay $14 a month for Youtube without ads
The only option that's not fair is expecting private companies and creators to give you entertainment and its delivery with nothing in return
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I get cat videos through messengers.
That's a very generous characterization of what most YouTube content is.
My experience is that you are basically paying to remove the official ads from your disguised ads.
The various algorithm tweaks for engagement these past few years and the introduction of shorts have significantly degraded the content quality and many good channels have just thrown the towel.
Right, I want premium because it's a "fair" payment for the service I use and would help support the people who make good content, but the vast majority of those dollars go to the company who is solely at fault for encouraging and essentially requiring creators to use clickbait and fake thumbnails and put out slop every single day and never ever ever try doing something slightly different and consistently change things in ways that those creators do not want and hate. Every complaint you likely have about youtube content was forced by youtube for their own profitability. Don't like sponsorships? People mostly started seeking them out after Google cut ad payouts essentially in half with no warning. Don't like videos being way longer than they need to be? That's because youtube started paying out based on watch time instead of views and that encourages padding. Don't like censorship? It was Youtube's choice to shadowban/punish anyone who even said the word pandemic during a literal global pandemic that people probably wanted to talk about, even in passing. Buy into Youtube's new "channel member" feature in good faith? Well then Youtube changed it so that the videos that only members can watch are now shoved in front of everyone's eyeballs without your approval or desire or asking and it's really annoying to all your viewers. Don't like every video spending 30 seconds telling you to subscribe and "hit that like button" and then the fucking bell? That's because google decided that if your video didn't have a high enough click through rate, it wouldn't be shown to subscribers at all, and then introduced the bell for "subscribers but for real", and then even that hasn't really been honored. Youtube has for example suddenly decided that I should be shown low view russian language plagiarism of videos I like that have then been autodubbed back into english rather than the video from one of my subscriptions that was copied to make the russian video. How is that supposed to help anyone?
I will happily pay for youtube when they show that they want to encourage good content and help empower the people who make that good content, but Google doesn't want to do that because Mr Beast slop advertising to your kids is more profitable.
So I pay for Nebula instead.
Listen, I only make about $350-$400 a week after taxes and deductions. So, yes, $14 a month is a LOT. With my income, even $5 can and does break the bank if I'm not careful. Not everyone has a SWE's salary.
$14 dollars better spent on liberapay
For something that was previously free with only unintrusive ads, yes.
>ad-free
hasn't been in over a year
Youtube premium is still ad-free. There is a Youtube premium lite which is kinda-ad-free-but-not-really, but the full ad-free one still exists.
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??? I've been on youtube premium / redtube since the beginning and I've been served 1 ad incorrectly in that time.
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> for ad-free
Most youtube content being disguised ads, this cannot be true.
I hate google, and I refuse to give them any money.
Thanks for paying $14/month to support my ad-free yt-dlp archive, shmuck.
Usually people who are a leech, a drain on society don't go around bragging about it, but you do you.
$14 and I still have to run several plugins just to make the site actually usable. No thanks.
It's >12x the ad revenue they bring in per monthly-active YouTube user (suggesting they'd still be happy with a much lower price), and the price has increased 75% in the last decade (compared to the 40% real inflation over that period, suggesting they intend to continue increasing the price till public backlash or other effects reduce their total revenue). Plus they're boiling the frog, slowly adding ads back in to music and shorts for premium users, and we'll see how far that initiative goes.
> Plus they're boiling the frog, slowly adding ads back in to music and shorts for premium users
Do you have a source for this?
I do value watching unlimited youtube videos without ads, but if they're gonna add the ads back in, I'd easily stop paying for the one google product I currently pay for (and honestly the only reason I haven't already done this is laziness and convenience)
> the price has increased 75% in the last decade
It launched at $9.99[1] and is now $13.99[2] which I believe to be a 40% increase, i.e. flat in real dollars. If like most people you subscribe for a year, it's only $11.67/mo.
1: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/youtube-free...
2: https://www.youtube.com/premium
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I have premium but also this app. It has SponsorBlock and better UI customization than the official one.