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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

I've had google music -> youtube red -> youtube music over the years which I still think is a fantastic deal in this day and age. No ads on youtube videos and an extensive collection of songs.

Life pro tip: Sign up for the family subscription at 15$ a month and create a family of 6 which I share with my friends. Less than 3$ a piece.

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It's my understanding that monetized content creators get more revenue per view from a Youtube premium subscriber than they do from a free user being served ads. The split in revenue tends to show more revenue from ads, but it's important to remember that this is likely primarily due to the ratio of premium users vs free/ad supported users.

So as a Youtube Premium subscriber, I get the benefit of no ads, and the content creator I get to enjoy gets a benefit of a little extra income from my view. Kind of a win-win, if you ask me.

(If I'm wrong about the revenue breakdown, feel free to correct me! I'm not a youtube content creator with direct access to these metrics.)

Last I heard, you're correct. I don't hear it talked about much, but I think that's because of restrictions on the content creators. But two creators I watch have both mentioned that premium views are worth something like 10-50x more than ad views.

Yeah, I don't mind supporting content creators so this is good news to hear. I actually was part of a google beta where they paid site owners based on your visits from a prepaid account but that was cancelled a few years ago.

I'm a Google music devotee (Youtube music now I guess - please stop rebranding) because it allows me to upload my own MP3s and listen to them remotely along with their normal music collection. The app sucks and I'd like to disengage from Google, but a couple hundred album uploads later and I feel pretty locked in.

I wish they would at least improve their god-awful UI. I'd even pay more if it meant basic sorting functionality of my own music library.

Interesting, I'm typically a curmudgeon with apps (I think most have terrible design) but the YT Music app is IMHO one of the best designed. It somewhat bucks the modern trend of being feature bare and lacking any settings.

It's specifically their UI when working with my own music collection that I find severely lacking. Almost as if they'd prefer I didn't use my own music uploads! I also dislike the UI/UX push towards their own content, when all I want is to search music or listen to my playlists, not "discover" things (aka the Home tab, which it always opens to by default).

Oh yes, ok I completely agree there. The UX for music uploads is atrocious. It's difficult to figure out how to do what you want without googling it, and it's never straightforward like it is for finding their content.

If you're interested in a streaming service for your own music, we're building one here: https://asti.ga

Would love your feedback!

Disclaimer: this is my own commercial service.

I'm with you. I used google music from it's initial release until they killed it. I still hate the youtube music app. STOP TRYING TO PLAY VIDEOS. I just want sounds.

I had the same feeling until I noticed there's a setting for this that will disable videos and just do sounds.

Interesting, I'm surprised they don't hit you with automated copyright claims or something. I wonder if you can use youtube-dl to help 'extricate' your library? I've used it to auto-convert my music playlists into mp3 files, and it's always worked great.

I'm the opposite. I used to love the Google Music app until 2015 or so, when they started showing combined libraries with my local files and cloud-based Play Music files. Instant delete.

I use SyncThing to share my music collection between desktop, phone, and tablet, and use VLC to play them. flac, ogg, mp3, mp4, wma, everything just works. When I add new music it propagates to all devices.

How do you keep battery use low? The default for Syncthing Android is to wake 1x per hour to try to connect to the host machine. It really eats up battery life!

SyncThing for phones? Tablets?! How have I not heard of this?

TIL

Connecting other people's Google accounts to mine in a "family" sounds like a great way for all 6 of us to randomly get permabanned and lose access to our email, calendar, and play store purchases.

We've been doing it for probably 10 years now. If I get banned, I've gotten my money's worth.

Same. The value for me is there. If nothing else to have a "window" in my cube where one monitor streams 4k outdoor videos. The tipping point for me were when visually nsfw ads popped up during these outdoor videos representing a men's deodorant. I didn't want to offend anyone and the direct content I wanted was worth paying for. I appreciate google for giving me the option of going ad free.

Wouldn't this tie your google account to 5 other people? So when one of those people get permabanned from Google you get banned with them?

We've been doing it for probably 10 years now. If I get banned, I've gotten my money's worth.

As a long time user following same path, I sincerely hope they won’t start adding ads to paid tier, like other content providers do.

Even just for me and my wife, given that we each watch about 1-2h of YouTube per day, paid subscription is a fantastic value, and I’m more than happy to pay instead of adblocking.

> I sincerely hope they won’t start adding ads to paid tier

I would instantly cancel my subscription at the first sight of an advert, and I'm pretty sure that Google understands that most people would.

Yeah they've finally beaten me. I started paying for premium this year. The level of effort to scrub ads from my "smart TV" is just so much higher than $10/month at this point, and it is completely unwatchable otherwise.

same, I do it primarily to stop the toxic adverts when my kids get on there.

YouTube has taught my 14yr old son how to code, and my 12 yr old daughter how to paint and draw with some talent.

Its worth it to me. I'd drop netflix before i dropped YT

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