Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not served for free (even if Google is not short on cash)
Serving content over the web assumes that the content will be downloaded by a browser for rendering. Control over what and how that content gets rendered is controlled by the user. I think this aspect made, and still does make in the present tense, the web what it is. That's why the browser is called a user-agent--an agent that acts on behalf of the user.
YouTube could also move to another protocol, or develop a proprietary one to protect its interests. Otherwise it feels like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
But what about the creator's expectation to get paid for their hard-earned views, to then pay for the gear purchased and the production of the entire video, including team members?
If you're really anti ads, don't take the content for free, find another piece of content that answers your ad-free philosophy.
YouTube has every right to create a proprietary YouTube client (which they do on mobile devices) and prevent browsers from accessing it. Don't serve files to my browser if you don't want me to use them.
Creators, for better or worse, are putting themselves at the mercy of YouTube, as serfs to feudal lords. I'm sympathetic, and happy to pay (and do) for your goods directly, but don't complain to me if your lord mismanages your affairs.
Even TV users had VCRs to save content "offline".
Definitely not illegal to do so, so do as you please, but don't turn yourself into a white knight by some mental gymnastics with the sementics behind what a user agent is. You want to enjoy the video without ads, regardless of the consequences on the creator who made that video — and accessorily, the service hosting it and streaming it to you!
Google is in the process of breaking this deal themselves - they're now adding ads to videos which users did not opt to monetize, and they're keeping 100% of the revenue. Taking the content for free, if you will.
Remember, forcing you to watch ads means it's not free - it's you trading irreplaceable moments of your life for something. Unless your time is worth absolutely nothing, ads are extremely expensive to you.
Try running a hosting platform yourself and you'll quickly see just how crazy expensive bandwidth is. It's just ridiculous to expect that someone will 100% subsidize your video bandwidth for free.
This is begging the question that hosting non-monetized content is actually a net loss for YT. I'm saying it's actually not, instead the aggregate volume of free content keeps viewers on the site longer, and the higher viewership numbers result in a significant net profit.
More likely, YT decided that this arrangement, while profitable, wasn't making enough money for them, and because they must show their investors ever-increasing profit margins they decided to mildly poison their user experience in exchange for higher profits.
That's hard to believe, from my POV. Way before the Viacom lawsuit, and even before it got bought out, YouTube (the startup) was notorious for its sky-high burn-rate: serving video is not cheap. I don't think any reasonable person thought Google spent billions on YouTube without intending to recoup the costs (Google was already serving ads by then).
0: https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2009/3/YouT...
1: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/infog....
Also Premium views are worth more to content creators than ad supported views, so it does help the people you love to watch. Not as much as through something like Patreon obviously, but it's a bit unreasonable to support every creator that way.
One channel I really like I have the youtube membership and pateron subscriptions. It's a UK true crime podcast that does every recording with professional camera and audio in a recording studio. Seems like it's expensive to do and I get a lot of entertainment out of them so seems fair to help them out a bit more, especially since most of their videos probably get demonetized.
About Premium generally, if you can afford it and you are considering it, there is no reason to hesitate. I say that both as a channel owner and as someone who pays for Premium every month. You never see an AdSense ad again, and you make that happen while still supporting the channels you enjoy. Pretty win-win, IMO.
Two things that most people don't know about Premium:
1. On a per-view basis, Premium views are actually 'worth more' than ad-watching views. We're talking tiny fractions of a cent, but they add up.
2. Most so-called "demonetized" views remain eligible for Premium revenue.
if the creators only get 1c/month from my premium and google get the lion's share I'll continue to block ads and support via patreon/merch instead
How much of that money is just paying for music licensing I don't want or need?
It sounds like the answer to that is “very little” since you mentioned fractions of a cent per view. So if I watch a few dozen videos from a single creator in a month, can I safely assume they’ll get a couple cents that month from me?
I get that it adds up, otherwise the creators wouldn’t bother creating for the platform, but I’m not sure that helps me justify paying Google another $11.96 a month.
* I don't want a music subscription service, and I don't want to pay for it. * That price is the same as an actual full video streaming service like Netflix, but I get no new video content for my money. * Premium does remove the user-hostile block on background audio playback on iOS, but does not remove other user-hostile behaviour like blocking the iOS system wide Picture in picture from working.
I am extremely skeptical of the revenue sharing with creators that I like, and would rather give money to them in some direct way than trust google not to give my money to random music artists / their pockets.
The price is a joke, at least 4x what is reasonable. I shall continue using Firefox and uBlock Origin to get 100% of the features I want for free.
If I log into YouTube, that requires me to be logged into Google everywhere and I do not want that at all. The only solution is to use Firefox containerization or use separate browsers or separate browser profiles for things and I'm not going to do any of those because all of those options are annoying to me.
If my ad blocker stops working on YouTube and/or if they require me to login, I'll simply stop visiting YouTube. There's plenty of other things to do!
It's closed down now due to internal politics.
You can use Firefox Containers to sandbox Google logins.
Alternatively, you can use a different browser when accessing Google-owned websites.
You can also see the YouTube creators who have BAT accounts set-up.
I do pay for YT premium family as well as I don’t want other family members to see ads.
Regarding FF profiles - if using more than one at a time, you need to set the others to -no-remote, and then opening links only ever opens up in the main windows. In chromium browsers when opening outside links whatever browser profile that had focus last opens the links).
1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially given point 2 below.
2. YouTube is extremely untransparent about revenue sharing, so it feels like I'm paying Google, not the creators.
So give me more transparency and take a smaller cut, and I'll be happy to disable my ad blocker and start paying membership.
Agreed. If we look at the Bandcamp model, they only take 10% to 15%, and that's still high compared to Patreon.
So, regardless of YouTube's cut, it's much more valuable to the creator, and valuable to you (no embedded ads). Win win, at least until an alternative arises.
The kind of people with disposable income to give for paid subscriptions are far better targets for nearly all adverts, since they are far more likely to buy the premium products that have a far larger and budget, and therefore give the creator more per impression.
I don't think YouTube reveals to creators enough information about which audience members generated which revenue for them to make that connection.
A simple google search revealed the following topical article.
https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/totalbiscuit-youtube-red-p...
The relevant quote: “... a Red view is on average worth 20x that of a normal ad view.”
Another youtuber i follow recently said that this is still true today.
I love supporting creators via Patreon. I hate feeding a giant that will any day turn against both creaters and viewers.
Not sure if I'm rationalising or defending creators.
If a service wants to ensure viewers pay, it would be easy enough for any organisation with the resources to offer large-scale video hosting in the first place to put the content behind a paywall and earn revenue actively from giving access to that content. That way, access without paying would be more difficult and, in most places, probably illegal.
But these services typically don't do that. Why? Presumably they have made a decision that offering the content openly is in their interests, even if they then have to rely on passive revenue channels such as ads, affiliate/referral payments, or promoting associated brands.
In that case, I don't think they have much right to complain when a lot of people access the content they make freely available in legal ways but without contributing to indirect revenue streams when they have no obligation to do so.
You can't be serious with this comparison. Patreon's bandwidth, storage, and processing needs are a rounding error compared to youtube, even after adjusting for the number of users.
Considering how much more complex and expensive video hosting is, and everything else YouTube offers, I don't think a 45% cut is unreasonable. In fact YouTube does have direct paid channel memberships (which is a much closer business model to Patreon), and for that they take 30%.
YouTube is offering up the tech behind streaming the videos, the storage, the bandwidth, the development work on both the client and server ends, and the ongoing payment processing. As well as the audience install-base. And this isn't a situation where the end users are paying for the software via buying hardware from Google (Pixels being the exception) like it would be with just an app store. YouTube provides far more than anyone else. And they make the money to do so via advertising. You're paying the money in place of YouTube's revenue stream in addition to the money going to the creators.
Patreon is mostly a payment processor and gatekeeper. They don't host videos or provide any of the other services mentioned above. To host videos, the creator pays another provider like Vimeo $84 a year for 5GB/week in uploads to $600 for unlimited video uploads. Live streaming is $900 a year.
I would rather pay them nothing and complain how much someone else is takin as well.
My right to decide what my purchased computer does trumps YouTube's right to make a few cents by showing me ads.
Please don't; this gives money to (and thus rewards and encourages) advertisers; use something like http://youtube-dl.org/ instead.
And the fact that even with premium, PiP on iOS is still deliberately broken on web & in their app.
And also, stop user-hostile behaviour on iOS to block OS level features (PiP, background audio) from working, even if you pay up.
I would rather block ads and use Firefox exclusively than pay that much for a still-compromised experience.
Even if you pay for premium, you'll still get sponsored ads in the content.
That, or they could pay content creators fairly so that they don't have to shill for NordVPN in every video they release.
> pay content creators fairly so that they don't have to shill for NordVPN in every video they release.
I'm with you on that.
SponsorBlock does it, and Google could make it part of their policy for content creators to mark sponsored ad segments in their videos so that they can be skipped.
If Google did try to automate it, you can be sure that people would just move to integrating the sponsorship into the content. Those are the worst kind of videos and I don't want to encourage more of them.
Sure, you can do it (piracy is okay too) but let the creators support themselves somehow.
I know Cobra Kai started out that way, but has now been solved off to Youtube as they abandoned that model.
They certainly don't mention exclusive content as a region to pay for Premium.