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Comment by ZaoLahma | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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