YouTube Says It Has More Than 100M Premium and Music Subscribers | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Says It Has More Than 100M Premium and Music Subscribers

variety.com

25 pointsmfiguiere89 comments

Youtube is my most used streaming service, and I really like supporting creators in really niche interests. I'd cancel all other streaming services before YT premium.

I do wish their TV app wasn't a steaming pile of trash though.

At one point I was explaining to a friend what they had done "wrong" when trying to use the YouTube TV app, walking them through a bug involving multiple UI steps and how I worked around it.

Stepping back for a moment and assessing how much expertise I had developed in a skill that shouldn't exist, I realized I needed to get rid of my "smart" TV. I haven't had a TV in my house in years now.

I use the app on my xbox, if you have a game system that might be a better option than the one supplied with the tv.

YouTube premium in India costs about 129rs / mo ($1.5) with a three month free trial and has no ads and free youtube music.

I think it may be more expensive in US.

Good lord, my price is €12.99 /month (Germany). I guess that's what Google calculates as the purchasing power parity exchange rate, but credit to them, at least they're taking that into consideration.

I feel like that's fine, honestly. They've probably done the math and found it's better to sell YouTube Premium for a dollar in India and get a bunch of Indians on the service than to charge $25 or whatever everywhere and end up getting almost nobody over there.

I pay $23/USD/mo for the family version in the US.

I bought a year long subscription for 1,159 INR which is $14. But I feel they will increase the price soon.

I don’t need the Youtube music but just want to get rid of ads.

Here in Europe it is €11.99, so about 13 dollars a month.

Not all of Europe! It's about 3 USD in Ukraine, for example.

Interesting, I assumed the prices would be the same or at least roughly the same in whole of Europe! My price was in Finland.

And 15,90 CHF (18.56 USD) in Switzerland (for one person).

Steam and other digital service providers always have really high, or the highest prices in Switzerland.

One of the little-noticed features of YouTube Premium is is comes with a rotating library of studio films that are available for free. I didn't realize this for years until recently when I wanted to watch Iron Giant, and it popped up as being on YouTube. These are "free with ads" to signed out users or non-subscribers, but for subscribers there are no ads. The catalog is pretty small but changes frequently and it's a decent perk.

Are these surfaced someplace in the app or on the website? I just poked around the app a bit and didn't find them.

They are really buried! The only reason I noticed it is that Google's search page for films shows streaming services where the film is available, and in this case it said it was on YouTube for free, which is unusual.

On the web, they are here https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront?bp=ogUCKAY%3D

They've added more than 20 million subscribers since their last update in Nov 2022. It looks like their war on ad-blockers is paying off.

I still don't get any ads.

More like, Google's effort to corner the "Smart TV" market is paying off, where there are no adblockers and the system is locked down.

Can the piHole help us eliminate bandwidth wasting ads on TV's?

https://pi-hole.net/

My smart TV blocks ads: I have SmartTube installed on it. It skips sponsor segments too!

YouTube Premium is weird because most people have the idea that YouTube should have "free", yet YouTube's content library is vastly superior to any single streaming platform in terms of breadth/freshness.

i tried to subscribe to the family plan, but YT says that we can't because we have google workspace accounts.

...so back to blocking ads, i guess...

I got super angry over that years ago when I tried to use my Workspace account with Nest.

I had to create a separate Google consumer account in the end to work around that. It was really frustrating, and I'm still upset about it.

Incredibly annoying. I have Google Fi and a year of free YTP, which I attached to a free gmail account, which is not fun because I have all my subs and history on the workspace account... and there's no way to transfer subs/history. There are projects to do it but they are 1) old and 2) work by "watching" all the videos! Crazy.

It's clear Google allows export of user's YT data only to satisfy some checkbox somewhere. It's not at all useful.

We ran into that as well, it's such a weird restriction, because I can sign in to YouTube with a workspace account perfectly fine.

Workspace is for corporate/enterprise not consumer, so it makes sense to not allow family plans.

Years ago, it was just called Google Apps and was for bringing your own domain. It was even advertised as something that would be good for family usage. And in the legacy GSuite migration debacle a couple years back, they acknowledged that there are legacy users that were/are using it for families and that it would continue to be free (after months of uncertainty).

I have considered paying for YouTube Premium for the family, but I can't unless I create dual identities for all my family members and have them use both accounts on all their devices.

It is NOW, not when many of us created these accounts ages ago. (We were paying customers back then too!) Back then, you paid Google to use your own domain and to unsubscribe to data collection, I think.

YouTube Premium costs more than Amazon Prime & Netflix.

But YouTube does not create any content, and you only get YouTube music as a perk

I probably spend more time watching Youtube each month than other platforms, and my wife watches a ton of vlogs. Perhaps we are atypical, but in our case, Premium is a good value.

Netflix and Amazon are playing a different game than YouTube. They are playing the "we own (exclusive) rights to this or that content and sell access to it" game, which YouTube is not necessarily. The former platforms also didn't start out with their own production companies, but eventually needed them in order to synthesize more exclusive content.

YouTube does not have a content quantity problem, if anything it has too much content which makes discoverability challenging (vs. the curated libraries of Netflix et al.)

I subscribe to all three and YTPremium is not more expensive than either. USA user.

> YouTube Premium costs more than Amazon Prime & Netflix.

In Norway:

Yt premium 119nok/m

Amazon prime 14.99 usd ~ 156nok/m (listed as "plus tax, which would be another 25% vat - but I don't think that's right)

Netflix 720p 89nok/m

Netflix 1080p 109nok/m

Proper Netflix 159nok/m

So... No?

Where I live, YouTube premium costs €5 more than Prime & Netflix

YouTube creates content in the sense people upload videos with the sole intention of the royalties payment.

Of which I believe they give back nearly half of adrev to.

Without those payments many creators would not exist.

I don't really understand this comment, basically no part of it is true.

for the price of a music streaming service, you get a music streaming service _and_ ad-free video. it's a fine deal even if YT music is not as good as alternatives. and you're putting your money where your mouth is regarding ads and internet monetization.

YouTube is outrageously expensive relative to other streaming services, especially considering it does no content production itself. I'm honestly rather surprised that many people pay their full price. For my wife and I it would be $23/mo.

youtube funds content production

they sign streamers (and probably channels) with exclusivity contracts that are worth millions.

they will give ad money to anyone that uploads content that meets advertiser criteria. they fund Mr. Beast's million dollar videos even if they aren't doing it from the traditional means of budgeting a project before it is released.

they tried their hand at the traditional route funding original TV shows and such, but it didn't really pan out how they liked.

all things considered, they probably spend far more on content production than any other platform.

> they probably spend far more on content production than any other platform.

Back of the envelope:

- YouTube ads revenue $9.2B / quarter [0]

- Subsciption revenue $15B / year (this submission), let's guess 80% YT Premium -> $3B / quarter

- YouTube revshare is 55% to creators

=~ $6.5B / quarter or $26B/year paid to creators

Netflix spends between $14B-$17B/year on content, depending on if you count it on an amortization or cash flow basis[1], and expect it to go down by 25% next year[2]. Disney spent $15B / year on non-sports content in 2023[2].

So yeah, not only is what you're saying true, but it's probably not even close. It's plausible that in 2024 YouTube's content spend will be more than Disney's and Netflix's combined.

[0] https://abc.xyz/assets/95/eb/9cef90184e09bac553796896c633/20... [1] https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2023/q4... [2] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/dis...

Can also add that Youtube is essentially paying out residuals on all their streaming content, something other platforms are absolutely terrified at the possibility of

Funding original content is not the same as revenue share.

Sure. It's arguably even better for the creators, because not only are they getting paid more but they're keeping all the rights to the content. Most of that content would not be getting created if YouTube wasn't there to serve the videos, bring the audience, and make sure the creators are getting paid for it. (To the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year, not just small change.)

Why is funding original content the critical part of the value proposition, while making sure that the people creating content are compensated for it is worthless?

> all things considered, they probably spend far more on content production than any other platform.

And honestly half of it is a cesspool. I may be subjective, but then again I'm not the target audience for Mr Beast or any other similar Youtuber or streamer or whatever.

Is that not also true for other streaming platforms? There's a ton of low-budget junk on the biggest streaming platforms.

Netflix has done some really low effort shows, like "Is it cake", or just low quality drama disguisted as home improvement, like "Hack it" or "Tiny House Nation".

I dunno what they are thinking, but surely it has to devalue their brand and consumer conception of a fair price for the service?

Sure they fund "some" content production but the end of the day I'd rather just contribute to the creators I care about directly and pay a reasonable price for YouTube. In the mean time I'll stick with the free version.

I watch YouTube way, way more than any other of the streaming services we pay for (my wife watches those). If it were just me, I'd ditch all of them except YouTube Premium, no question.

YouTube does pay some content creators some amount of money, and doesn't enforce draconian policies around cross promotion of Patreon or other competing paid content platforms.

I would pay for YouTube over Netflix/HBO/Hulu/Disney/Spotify/etc. More value.

It'll be one fewer when my subscription runs out!

But I guess at 100M adding a -1 doesn't really do much. Sounds like Google will be fine.

I put all that money into Patreon and other donations.

Both come with Google Fi, the cell service.

Which has probably kept me from comparison price shopping cell service quite so hard.

That sounded like an amazing deal, but it's a promotion. Google Fi offers 1 free year of YouTube Premium if you have an Unlimited Plus plan for a year.

Exactly this. And if you have a Google Fi family plan it's per user.

I wish that were true for all customers. I've had Fi forever and the only thing I get are good deals on phones every so often.

Why should someone pay for Youtube music when all songs are basically already free?

I have YouTube Premium because I want ad free videos, and 90% of my YouTube views are done on an AppleTV. With that, YouTube Music comes bundled. I don’t care about YouTube Music, I think I tried it one time for about 10 minutes. If I could get ad free YouTube without the music service for less money, I do that in a heartbeat.

How have I only just found out that yt premium includes yt music?

I've been subscribed to yt music for years but not yt itself. And nowadays I do watch more content on yt than listen on yt music.

So it turns out yt premium is pretty much the same price and I can keep using yt music and I now also have no ads on yt itself.

That's the easiest upgrade I've ever made.

YouTube ran a "YouTube Premium without Music" deal in Denmark for about a year. You couldn't "downgrade" to it, nor did they really promote it in any way. In the end they just went "Well, guess no one wants that" and cancelled the program. It was basically impossible to buy, of cause it failed.

I would have preferred Apple Music, or some other service, because the YouTube Music interface is apparently heavily inspired by Snapchat and impossible to navigate. But given the racket Google runs, I'll just live with YouTube Music, because I'm not paying for two music services.

This is disappointing to hear. I remember reading about that deal and was excited for it to be available to me.

I pay for Apple Music. It annoys me that I pay for two services, but I really didn't like YouTube Music in my brief interaction with it. If I want to get down to 1 music service, I think I'd sooner drop YouTube Premium. I've been thinking about doing that just to stop me from going down so many rabbit holes on that site. I waste way too much time there.

I pay for both Spotify and YouTube Premium. I'd love it if I could save money with just YT (which I mostly get to watch things like tutorials without commercials, and my wife watches a ton of vlogs), but it lacks a few things I use (like the ability for our Echo devices to "play {song}" via voice)

I'm surprised it doesn't work with Echo devices, you'd think someone would have made a program that fixes it. It works fine with google devices, although it's algorithm sometimes pulls up playlists instead of individual songs, or songs that contain a lyric with the song you specified instead of a less popular song that is actually named what you specified, if you aren't specific.

> I have YouTube Premium because I want ad free videos

Does it block sponsored content too? With extensions, you can block both ads and sponsored content.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

Just ads, not sponsored content, but those extensions you speak of aren't a thing on the AppleTV. I can see were the popular parts of the video are, usually just going to the next spike will be the end of the sponsored segment. I haven't found it to be a big deal. The ads, that abruptly interrupt the video, and make you wait for several seconds before you can skip (if you can skip at all) are the things that bug me the most. Sponsorship are minor in comparison. Plus, the better YouTubers will work it into their content, so I may not want to skip it.

no. YouTube Premium does not block sponsored content.

ditto for me. word for word.

Nothing is free. If you enjoy the hard worked output of musicians then you really should contribute something back to the system which supports them and allows the delivery of their creativity to your ears.

Youtube pays 2/10th of a penny (on average) per stream to artists (and most platforms pay more)

https://virpp.com/hello/music-streaming-payouts-comparison-a...

I expected this reply and it's good to debate the fairness of platforms towards artists, but I don't really want to get into that.

My point is that if you're freeloading music then the artist gets precisely 0.00 which is less even than the worst platform.

It's a pitiful amount.

I listened to 7000 tracks last year (I think that's well above average), so if that had been on YouTube it would have given $14 to the artists.

People used to spend more on music, even if they only bought a couple of CDs a year.

I would have to do more research to confirm, but I believe the platforms pay the artist for all streams, not just premium ones. In that case, you’re only stealing from the platform.

Again to clarify I'm also referring to the listener who uses some means to download the content locally to consume and therefore doesn't rely on any platform to use the content.

Ok, much of the conversation in this thread revolves around accessing streaming services via adblockers rather than downloading files.

Fair. To be honest I'm only half paying attention here sitting in the pub doing open mic

Is that for streams to free users or premium ones?

That's unclear. Playing any recorded music typically requires a license fee to be paid even when it's "free" to the listener (for instance, the radio or a public venue)

Spotify pays based on payments from Premium users, as well as ad revenue. I presume others have similar arrangements.

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/

A good way to do that is through donations.

How do you donate to a 80's hair metal band?

If someone isn't around to collect the proceeds of their work anymore, it should go into the public domain.

I guess it's not free, I use electricity, electronics, etc...

Songs are free but not ad-free.

They are with an ad blocker

Without YouTube Music you get ads and the apps will pause if you turn off the screen.

There are ways around this (eg Orion on iOS) but if you're getting premium anyway you get Music bundled.

It's funny, the videos continuing to play when the screen is off, is actually a non-feature for me most of the time because it makes using the back button to get away from a video link you clicked on impossible, you end up having to click back 2-3x and then still hit the x on the little embedded video. The music is already a separate app, they should allow you to disable the background play in the normal app and have it enabled on the music app. Which maybe they do now that I think about it, but I believe when I had checked previously it was a universal setting tied to your google account, not the apps.

If you don't want Firefox to pause the video when you turn off the screen, just switch to desktop mode. Also... you should use something like Newpipe instead...

Firefox on iOS is pretty lame. No ad blocker and no extensions.

Desktop mode on Android's Firefox doesn't require extension... if it's not available on I-Phone, it might be soon because I think that they are starting to allow alternate browser engines.

Sounds like a great reason to not use iOS.

Nah, Orion for iOS works great with built-in ad blocking and Firefox+Chrome extensions support, and the satellite SOS helps my family with peace of mind (I had to be helicoptered out of Nevada a few years ago). It's is way less bulky and less expensive than the inReach I used to carry.

They think Youtube is going bankrupt

don't underestimate how many customers don't know this and prefer convenience instead.

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