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Comment by wat10000 | Hacker News Reader

I realize it’s anathema to a lot of people, but you could just... pay for stuff. YouTube has an ad-free premium option.

While I do agree with you, I am a bit concerned about the recent developments with "paid, but still has ads" subscriptions and how Youtube might slip towards such practices as well as soon as they have a large enough number of paying customers. Their premium might suddenly not be so... premium.

And then you cancel. I did that with Amazon, will do it with others when I start seeing ads.

I totally get it. That said, YouTube premium is worth every single penny and has only gained features over time; no other subscription I have comes close in terms of value.

With respect to that, YouTube premium has been around for over ten years, the majority of which I've been a subscriber because adblocking on Apple TV (my primary YouTube experience) is far too much of a fuckabout for me to willingly engage in it, and they haven't yet done it. I think Google is well aware of the fact that Premium with ads is an utter non-starter as a product. What would you even be paying for then? This isn't like TV+ or Prime where you have exclusives, almost everyone who posts to YouTube would happily jump that ship given enough reason to.

And while there are still ads (sponsored segments) I personally have less problem with those since those are substantial money for the creators I enjoy, and a lot of the ones I watch actually manage to make them pretty funny. And hell, a couple I've even used their codes for shit over the years for. Like, an ad is an ad and some people hate all of them, but I can personally say I've engaged with ads from creators I like at an exceptional rate compared to... virtually every other type of advertising I've ever encountered.

Sponsored segments are also trivially skippable.

Yep. Most folks I follow will record ads at a different time from the rest of the video too, wearing different clothes and in different lighting. Sometimes I can be bothered to grab the remote, sometimes not, lol.

There is for certain a wide gap between a sponsored segment from the same voice and some random ad coming in and blaring over the top. For me, I can handle the narrator delivering an ad, it's the intrusive slot machine aspect of generic ads that irk me. Happy youtube subscriber here, use the music too, great deal.

Youtube is one of the platforms where I find real value, usually in making/maintaining/repairing things, being able to skip through videos to find answers without worrying about ads definitely saves me significant time and therefore money.

Yeah I balked for a long time at paying for YouTube, but in the end, I consume magnitudes more YouTube than any other streaming platform. It's my most expensive video subscription but like... I can't say I don't use it.

It’s the only one I pay for. I have Netflix included in my cell plan. Every so often I fire it up to see what they have, find nothing, and go back to the good stuff.

Have they not already with Premium Lite or whatever it is called?

I don’t see anything like that on https://youtube.com/premium

Seems to still being trialed in only a few regions. It's No ads during videos (still display ads during search, etc.), except for shorts and music videos for 6€/m. Without all the other premium features

I would guess that music producers are demanding unreasonable amounts of money per view, so carving them out of the equation is a fine trade IMO

Yes but leaving out all other features and showing display ads for a still steep price of 6€ is not so great.

I wish I could do this for Spotify. Paid plans still include ads.

They cram ads into podcast episodes which themselves also have ads, so you'll get the read ads + Spotify's local ads + Spotify laughs all the way to the bank.

I believe over time not having ads will be a thing of the past, and you'll instead pay for fewer ads. Like where else are people going to go for exclusive content?

> Spotify laughs all the way to the bank

FWIW, I don't think Spotify makes much, if any, money lol

Net profit was €1.14bn for 2024, which feels like a reasonable amount of money.

Sadly I think we're in need of the AriZona Iced Tea of streaming. A company that sells a streaming service, at a fixed price, makes a small profit and is happy with that profit.

The issue is that the current streaming services have cost billions to develop and companies and investors want that money back, times a 100. The money hasn't gone into a long term product that people will be happy with for decades, it has gone into a product that needs to return large chunk of money in a short time frame (and cover up other failed ventures).

The issue is that such a company either needs to make their own first-party content, or pay licensing fees for third-party content, and the companies those license fees are paid to are always looking to either cut out the middle service in favor of their own or increase what they're charging.

> I don't think Spotify makes much, if any, money

per their financial statements, about 150Mio in operating profits per quarter. Gross profit of 1.000Mio per quarter.

I'd like to have that kind of "not much money"

I've never heard an ad on Spotify, so this is true only for podcasts then, correct? In that case I can at least be thankful that Spotify is the worst option for listening to podcasts.

I canceled my Spotify premium subscription because they showed sponsored content in the app. Not as egregious as jamming ads in between songs, but I still don’t want to have to scroll past a “sponsored” UI element to get to what I’m actually interested in.

Moved to Apple Music and so far so good.

I highly recommend Radiooooo. They're DJ curated and very good. Dirt cheap for what you get.

Just buy the content and play it from your local devices. I use streaming simply for "auditioning" new music (and there are podcasts, YouTube channels that do that without a subscription, FWIW). I prefer then to buy the tracks from Bandcamp. Hopefully the artists get a bigger slice of the revenue that way.

I don't really listen to much Spotify but I feel like just the free plan in Firefox with uBlock Origin gave me an ad-free experience the last time I used it.

YouTube premium also includes ad-free YouTube Music. Yes there are still sponsorships in podcasts as usual, but no injected ads.

I think most people don't have a problem paying for something that gives proper added value.

But what's happening is that companies are degrading the basic experience and expecting people to either be OK with it (like Roku's increasingly intrusive ad experience) or to pay up to avoid it (like with YouTube).

Perhaps on review of specific ad presentation practices, you could argue for a degradation of experience, but showing adds more or less within YouTube to free users seems like an acceptable method of generating revenue.

As an aside, the fact that people pay for cable and still have 4-7 minute ad-breaks every 15 minutes make anything YouTube does pale in comparison.

Except for the tracking that ads use and the possibility of getting malware because they aren't curated as well as they should be.

I also don't like companies aggressively trying to get me to buy stuff I don't want. Show a static image on the right somewhere with a link. Hell, show a dozen of them. Still less intrusive than an ad that shows up while you're in the middle of a video.

But the poor ad companies are apparently on the brink of bankruptcy based on how hard they are pushing things. Just a little bit of composure or any respect for the people that they are pushing these on and I'd have a different viewpoint. But they are always all-in on this.

It's not that simple. It's common enough now to classify some ads as.... not adverts. So even if you pay for no ads, you get ads.

Completely untrue in the case of YouTube Premium. I literally haven't seen an ad for over a decade now.

Or you can opt out. Both options are equally valid.

I won't pay for YouTube because the consistency of YouTube is massively variable. Sometimes channels I watch skip 6 months between videos. When I do watch stuff its usually in the background or when I just have a few minutes spare. Spending money to fill that time is unjustifiable unless it's a really low amount, and YouTube Premium isn't low enough yet.

Oddly though, if I could buy 100 'skip this ad' tokens for $10 that I could use when I'm pushed for time, but just suffer the ads when I'm not, I'd seriously consider it.

You can, but the complaint rings hollow when we’re talking about a service with enormous amounts of actual good content, and a straightforward non-abusive paid plan. If you don’t think it’s worth it, that makes complete sense. If somebody decides there isn’t anything worth paying or watching ads and just bails out, totally sensible. But this “ads are so terrible we should just abandon the service” thing is weird here. YouTube is an example of doing it right. They use ads to support a free tier, and have a paid plan that removes them. They don’t do nonsense where they take your money and still show you ads. They don’t serve unvetted ads that infect your computer with malware or mine cryptocurrency. If people won’t even consider paying for this (not merely deciding it’s not worth it, but refusing to even consider it as a possibility) then I have to conclude that they just think they’re entitled to get stuff for free.

> but you could just... pay for stuff.

Careful... In the Kingdom of the Netherlands your comment will be considered by a court of law as aggravated assault.

Netflix shows ads to paying customers. We've seen the same playbook across a wide variety of products and services, it's only a matter of time until paying users get milked too.

When that happens, I’ll stop saying “just pay for it.” But until it does, I’ll continue paying for YouTube and being befuddled by people who get upset at their ads.

Increasingly the "basic" paid plan has ads and you now have to pay even more to not have ads. Doesn't seem like playing the game is doing anyone any favours.

Having the ability to tell a company enough is a enough serves as a ceiling for bullshit.

Where are you finding this "basic" plan? YouTube Premium has only a single tier that is completely ad-free. I hate Google as much as anyone, but shouldn't truth matter?

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