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Comment by ijhuygft776 | Hacker News Reader

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.

> 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...

no. YouTube Premium does not block sponsored content.

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.

ditto for me. word for word.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

They think Youtube is going bankrupt

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

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