I don’t understand why anyone would pay that much for YouTube premium- isn’t it just no ads, and background play? In what universe is that worth £16/$12 a month?? You could get two “real” streaming services for that if you pushed it a little.
Installing uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock makes Youtube a much better product than simply paying for premium. If you haven't used it, SponsorBlock is a crowd sourced browser extension that identifies and skips sections of videos like "This content is brought to you by..."
I used to pay for premium and use YT Music, but after getting fed up with YTM I cancelled. I'm noticing a much MUCH better experience using UBO and SponsorBlock. Unfortunately, this setup means the creators don't get any revenue from me.
If only YouTube offered such an experience at a reasonable cost.
If there's a threat to the value proposition, it's increasingly-intrusive sponsorship messaging. But that's outside Google's ability to control.
There's no match for YouTube, as long as you are not after movies, but very broad "video" content. Nothing even close to it. 4 coffees per month so my whole family can enjoy it without ads? It's a bargain for me.