I have noticed that my recommendations seem to be getting worse lately, but unsure if that's a flaw in the algorithm or because I've spent years draining the backlogs of the channels I follow.
On Android, I'd just use Newpipe[0] which I absolutely loved; they kept up with Youtube's breaking changes (usually a day-of debug build until the fix reached the main release), and it was such a nice and out of the way music player with everything you could want. (Adhoc playlists, great functionality for queue next/queue, really intuitive UI, backgrounding, etc)
On iOS, I wasn't really able to find an equivalent besides side-loading modified Youtube.app clients to enable the basic features I'd want (all of which are locked behind premium normally). Even with the premium features unlocked, the Youtube app really doesn't behave like an iOS app should, and it's significantly worse than Newpipe in my opinion.
So I'm just curious what about Premium is worth it for you and what it brings that justifies being a subscription. If the answer is just "it's the only option", I get it, can't really argue with that, but really hoping there's something I'm missing that makes Youtube Premium more palatable.
It allows me to pay for a service that I use and I know costs money to run - for a reasonable fee (although it just went up in price and is less reasonable now), given how many hours our family watches per month on YouTube.
Creators still get paid from YouTube premium views, and some creators see better revenue from that than from YouTube ads. I like supporting the creators I watch. I refuse to participate in regular ads. Sponsored segments are (barely) tolerable and skippable.
I run an ad blocker and try to provide compensation to the sources I consume regularly. Patreon, news subscriptions, YouTube premium, etc. So just blocking ads through Newspipe or similar but still consuming a lot of video - doesn't feel right to me.
As a user of a piece of software, it's very difficult to even use the darn thing :) Finding new channels is really tough even when logged in and letting the algorithm work for awhile. So for me it fails to bring me new stuff to check out, it fails as an application in terms of usability and features, and for the few channels I am willing to follow, I'm a lot more comfortable just contributing on Patreon.
That basically leaves Youtube with the server costs, and yeah, that's not something to scoff at and it's not something I expect Alphabet to pony up for.
But for me, the terms and conditions for all that isn't worth paying a subscription to Youtube for; the app barely keeps feature parity with contemporary apps, Youtube itself is pretty poor at getting me new stuff to watch, etc. I'd really rather just go back to smaller, multiple platforms and iTunes like purchasing.
I've just personally crossed a threshold where I can't avoid the fact I use enough of it that I should be paying for it. I'd like to think I'd just boycott it entirely if I decided it was too expensive. Not sure if that'd be true in practice. I'd definitely boycott the official app, though - the experience is pretty bad.
Historically, I've avoided using a non-official app due to some questionable distribution methods for some of them, and due to not wanting to anger Google into shutting my account off for non-supported access. The latter is why I no longer use Google search nor Gmail anymore.
Just because I technically could get something equivalent for free, doesn’t mean I necessarily want to.
I’m fortunate enough that the monthly subscription isn’t exactly breaking the bank, so it’s a good way to support the content I enjoy, and is more realistic and affordable than subscribing to dozens of Patreons.
I also do the majority of my viewing on my TV via Apple TV (and previously the built in TV apps), so the options for third party alternatives are very limited even if the above were not the case.