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Comment by nomorewords | Hacker News Reader

I think that the issue people are having is that (a large portion of) the content on YT also does sponsorships. Also, 'like and subscribe and bell'. So you might pay for YT, but I don't think that the quality of the service improves that much (say like Spotify).

Until YT improve their algorithm and stop with the arbitrary 10m time marks for monetization, I think YT is going to have a problem with people seeing a premium variant as a good option opposed to just adblocking.

I get that the counterpoint to my point is that YT isn't paying that much and that people are free to do whatever in their videos, but that doesn't make it less annoying. Spotify doesn't pay great, but I don't have to hear a band saying 'buy our tshirts!' after listening to a song/album.

I think that the many community scandals, coupled with the, what I view as, changes in monetization strategies has put YT in this position.

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> I think that the issue people are having is that (a large portion of) the content on YT also does sponsorships. Also, 'like and subscribe and bell'. So you might pay for YT, but I don't think that the quality of the service improves that much (say like Spotify).

To expand on what you said, a large proportion of YouTube's content is just clickbaity garbage as well. The whole platform is designed, from the ground-up, as a mechanism to shove intrusive ads in your face. Simply removing the ads and putting in a subscription fee doesn't address a lot of the other noxious effects the ad-centric focus has had on the content environment, the UI, the recommendations, etc.

I would much rather subscribe to the YouTuber offshoot services, like CuriosityStream or Dropout or Nebula. They have a clear offering and the services are designed around a clear subscription model.

I pay for YT Premium, and it really is a lot nicer than ad-supported YT (without an adblocker). In-video sponsorship messages can still be annoying, yes, but at lesat they're fairly skippable. And despite all Google's other misdeeds, they hardly have primary responsibility for YouTube's in-video hustling. If they rolled out a way to make it easier for viewers to skip in-video sponsor segments then uploaders would be very unhappy.

What YT could do is to have content creators mark those sponsored blocks and autoskip them for paid subscribers (with monetization cut of course). It's in their best interest to make paid experience good and keep people around.

Ideally they could also offer paid content hosting so organizations like Blender or hospitals could host ad-free content and pay for the hosting/bandwidth costs directly.

Why is the latter ideal for anyone? Right now people just use Vimeo for that. And it’s not ideal for YouTube because they make money by serving ads. They are a business. They are not just trying to cover their costs of delivering content.

Agreed, but I think as a principle, I would want YouTube to dictate less on how I can monetize my video. If I am influential and brands want to do product placement with me, it should be upto me.

The ideal scenario is, YT takes a fee like they do with Premium for hosting and discovery. The content creator can choose to take a cut if he wishes or can just do his own monetisation. It is upto him, whether he does no monetisation, puts merchandise links in description or outright shows the product in between a video. YouTube can make other integrations for content creators to monetise but they should have freedom of their own as well.

The good thing about competition is, if some content creator is being obnoxious with promotions or product placement, users can find someone who is doing a better job.

In the past some YouTubers have noted that they get more dollar return from a premium viewer watching their video than an ad one, so content creators can choose to forego on promotional placements and compete on a better experience.

I think it could be cool if YT started their own Patreon. Anyone who is a 'member' of the channel, for some basic tier fee even, should not even get the plug as part of the video, or at least have that part skipped by default.

This would be a step closer to like someone else here mentioned YT being the intermediary between the companies and the creators and taking a cut from that as well.

There are channel memberships, but their main offering is access to members-only content.

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