I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.
(The * was because it was on YouTube, not TV)
For example, imagine there are only three YouTube channels out there, The Spiffing Brit, Pewdiepie, and MrBeast. There’s $1,000,000 USD remaining in the pot for the month (or pay period, I’m not sure how regular the payouts are) after YouTube takes their cut. In sum total, YT Premium subscribers watched 100,000 minutes of content: 50,000 minutes to MrBeast, 40,000 minutes to Pewdiepie, and 10,000 minutes to The Spiffing Brit. The payouts would be calculated using:
revenue_share_ratio = sum_channel_premium_watch_time / sum_global_premium_watch_time
channel_premium_payout = global_premium_payout * revenue_share_ratio
So:
MrBeast: revenue_share_ratio = 0.50 = 50,000 / 100,000 channel_premium_payout = 500,000 = 0.50 * 1,000,000
Pewdiepie: revenue_share_ratio = 0.40 = 40,000 / 100,000 channel_premium_payout = 400,000 = 0.40 * 1,000,000
The spiffing brit: revenue_share_ratio = 0.10 = 10,000 / 100,000 channel_premium_payout = 100,000 = 0.10 * 1,000,000
A bit of a contrived and simplified explanation I’m sure, but as far as I am aware the formulae they use to divvy up the money between creators is as straight forward as it gets. Money out per creator = global money in total * (creator minutes total / global minutes total)
- Relatively similar offerings of music, at least when it came to my tastes. I have a wide variety and some weird stuff in there, but both worked for me to find whatever I thought of.
- Relatively similar price ($10 Spotify vs $12 YT), so I knew I needed at least some extra value from YT to justify
- YT Premium not only gives me YT Music, but also HASSLE FREE ad-free YT. What I mean is -- I don't have to manage extensions for web youtube and apps for Android or iOS or using NextDNS or a pihole or something just to get "ad free" from YT. It just works. Not having ads, and not having to CARE is a big value add for me. This alone is well worth $2 a month just in the time it saves me dealing with it.
- YT Premium USED to be Google Music, which I loved the UI of way more than Spotify. I am still VERY upset at YT Music since it's objectively worse than Google Music in every way, but it's still the same goddamn company
- AT THE TIME, I was having serious issues getting Spotify to play music from cache. Even if I cached, it would still default to streaming it as long as I had data. This resulted in huge data usage each month. I am SURE this is fixed by now. But this went into the calculus for me at the time.
Would I move over to Spotify? I think the things that would push me back would be an increase in YT price, a further degradation in YT Music UX, some new killer feature Spotify has/gets (podcasts aren't my thing)
This was a VERY long answer which can TLDR to "Having ad-free YouTube + Music all at once for $2 more was well worth not having to give a crap about all the infrastructure needed to block ads across all my devices forever."
Youtube music is not great, but its "free" to me.
It’s probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music, but if you’re going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and are able to endure the weird UI… Then it might save you a small monthly fee you’d otherwise pay to competing services.
It’d never survive in the market as it’s own service, and it’s clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google Music.
I have no idea who decided this thing was a good idea.
I remember Google Music being pretty good, but YouTube Music seems good enough
YT music, for me at least, not perfect but better than the two by far. I still keep spotify sub because sometimes we share playlists in office etc.. not sure I'll extend to be honest. YT Music on the other hand, especially in car is essential.
Sound quality not good enough? You know Apple Music supports lossless up to 24-bit 192kHz, at no cost, right?
Just what are you talking about?
Yt music also supports tapping the side of the screen to jump forwards or backwards in 10 second increments. Seems like a trivial feature, but holy shit I have needed it my entire life. The ability to both rapidly and finely adjust the time is huge when listing to things like live shows that are a 2 hour video.
Crazy but I don't think I have ever had a program or hardware player that could do both. Always either fast forward/rewind or trying to finely slide a slider.
Not a spotify fan either, but there's practically no upside to switching.
but the reality is that you're losing spotify radio and recommendations, and replacing it with youtube music's radio stations and recommendations. and for me, i found that spotify introduces me to a lot of new and interesting music that i wouldn't otherwise find, and youtube picks a dozen songs every month it wants to play, and regardless of what station i choose it plays those same songs.
for me, i'm currently paying for both because i like youtube premium, but the music offering doesn't replace spotify.
Disable Settings > Recommendations > Show your liked music from Youtube
Enable Settings > Data saving > Don't play music videos
Thanks though. Maybe some day they'll put in some effort.
If your tastes are more eclectic this can be a really big thing actually -- the music streaming services are largely similar in what they do and don't have, which leaves out a LOT of stuff, and finally things vanish off of streaming all the time. Individually-uploaded youtube music-in-a-video on the other hand is astonishingly durable.
Totally agree about the UI though, and they also suck on royalty payouts -- only Spotify is worse.
Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$ family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when YTM rolled out.
While unlikely, I have been hoping for some sort of "we changed our mind" PR statement from Google on this before we switch to a family Spotify come April.
The price hike doesn't hurt on our monthly finances, but considering the 12 month cost vs features compared to Spotify... it does hurt. Why pay more for less.
Like others are saying, the no ads Youtube is fantastic. We do use adblockers on all of our devices, but it's hard to do on Google Homes, casting to Chromecasts, and Youtube Kids.
I am prepared to go Firefox + Ublock/Brave on my Android phone if I do go Spotify though....
I'm currently still on the original $7.99 plan. Any tips on how to do the upgrade to the family plan for $14? I've wanted to do that for a while but not give up my grandfathered price. The price they show me for the family plan is $22.99.
Makes the price low enough to beat the hassle of various ad blocking methods across many platforms and devices.
But I think it's short sighted and selfish to not pay for something like YouTube that you use and get value out of every day, when you can afford it. Either pay for it and support it or don't use it at all.
Second, the features of YouTube revanced apps also just simply surpasses official app for me anyway:
- My phone has 1440p HDR display and YouTube official app just doesn't show me above 720p60 for 60fps videos while in the past it could. And it put me in an awkward situation: for under 60fps and for HDR 60fps videos, it can show up to 2160p and 2160p HDR 60 fps like normal. The only videos that cannot go over 720p60 fps are the normal 60fps ones. I don't know what the actual bug they are introducing there. YouTube revanced extended works flawflessly.
- I can hide the sections I don't like (news, shorts, suggestions for me, mix playlists, the ending overlay at the end of videos... and many other things).
- I can swipe on the screen for brightness and volume.
- I can add the copy buttons that copy the video link AND the timestamp quickly, really convenient for me.
- And many more that I'm lazy to type on phone.
Those small features (except the first one) look like something I would laugh at but one by one they surprisingly enhance my experience with YouTube app a lot.
I hope whoever takes it over creates an ad free plan that doesn't bundle music into it. I hate that all of these tech companies are taking the cable route they all rallied agains and bundling everything.
I would pay a substantial premium for an option to filter promotions out of videos. I would even pay to just never get promoted videos in my steam.
The option to pay for no ads doesn’t exist, today, although it would be easy to ad. Instead, you get to pay to remove one advertiser, and not all the others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs
Should it not let me see a product review if it was sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control?
Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else would tell you that you drew it wrong.
Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start and end. They even show them on the timeline, although they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most replayed"… presumedly because of everyone skipping the ad, losing their place, and then having to step back to try to find where the content begins again.
Here's how this could work. I would pay an additional $10/month for YouTube Scarlet. Content creators would have three options -- declare that their videos have no sources of revenue outside of YouTube revenue; provide start and end time stamps for any external-revenue-generating segments; or do nothing.
For my $10/month, videos in the second category would skip their promotion. In exchange, some portion of my $10/month would go to the video creator, just like ad/Premium revenue does today, and the metrics on number of videos where this segment was skipped would be made available in analytics for sharing with sponsors. Finally, I'd have access to a user preference to suppress videos in the third category for appearing in recommendations, ever.
Does this deal with every case? No. Would it make YouTube more pleasant for me and potentially others who share my values, without impacting current regular and Premium users, and with a neutral or positive impact on content creators? I assert yes.
Yes.
If it's a negative impact on the businesses who promote videos, how can you say your idea doesn't impact content creators?
Promoted businesses currently pay based on (an estimate of) the number of views that the video will get. This would trivially adjust to paying based on the number of views that the sponsorship within the video gets -- that's why I mentioned the requirement to make this available through analytics. If the cost per view stays the same for sponsors, they're now paying for a self-selecting audience of people who are not actively bothered by their ads. (I doubt I'm the only person who, if I as going to pay money for a VPN, would choose literally anything other than Nord VPN just as petty "revenge" for how much of my life they've wasted.) If this slightly-reduced audience does not sufficiently eat their marketing budget, they can find new creators to sponsor.
For the content creators, presumedly the target amount paid directly per skipped ad would be chosen to slightly exceed the expected payout of showing the ad. This is the same conceptual model Premium uses today. So even though the sponsor may be paying them for a 9.5 M view video instead of a 10 M view video -- the payout should more than cover the difference.
I agree that these marginal wins run into systematic concerns if more than, say, 5% or so of users start opting out of embedded advertising this way. But besides being incredibly unlikely -- what would it say about the business model of embedded advertising if 5% of YouTube customers were willing to pay to avoid it!?
A sponsor pays $10,000 to a content creator.
And then, they get zero views of their embedded ad in the video.
They got literally nothing for their $10,000 investment.
And let's say, for the sake of argument, that YouTube does not pay $10,000 for the same video, or ones like it.
Now, the content creator gets less money than they would have before.
It's almost like content creators have already done this calculus, and concluded that the best way to create content is to promote things.
It's funny to me when someone is like, "Why doesn't YouTube do X," and then they answer their own question, but then they still act like it's weird that YouTube doesn't do that thing.
What I'm proposing is exactly, 100% symmetric to how advertisers who pay Google for YouTube ad placement are already treated -- they pay for views, and YouTube can and does choose to not show those ads to some users, those who pay for Premium. Is that unfair for the ad buyers? Sure, if you squint right… but they're not being deprived something they paid for, they're just not being offered the option to put in ads in front of that particular market.
Before Youtube Premium, I would have said the same thing about blocking first-party ads in YouTube. It was weird they didn't do that thing. And then they did it. So now it's not weird I guess?
This can't be right, I've seen many videos from creators that say the opposite, it is a fixed amount per contract which can be one or more videos. Maybe it is different with creators that have more than 1M subscribers.
If the sponsorships bug you that much, use sponsorblock.
The original comment was proposing a new product, at a higher price point to reflect its higher costs, that /does/ cater to this expectation.
Everybody wins. (Yes this doesn't work for heavily integrated sponsorships but it'd still get most of them.)
I do think, though, that if the best answer to "YouTube doesn't let me do <x>" is "pay an alternate service provider instead," it might suggest a market opportunity for YouTube to provide the same service with much less friction.
[1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...
... and you get cost of living salary increases at the same time, right? Sadly a market oriented economy just doesn't work this way.
It's the major reason why I'm still subscribed.
(I.e., you can't use uBlock Origin or youtube-dl on mobile devices and TVs easily, and that's the way they want it.)