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Comment by WarmWash | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that ad-blocking makes youtube the best value proposition for users. You get almost all the content of nebula, plus tons more, for free, no ads.

Don't get me wrong, Nebula is great (although yt actually has a better profit share believe it or not), but the internet needs to look in the mirror before services like it can actually compete with yt.

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This surprised me, so I looked it up. Basically YouTube pays ~55% and Nebula pays 50%.

This is complicated by Nebula's "creator owned" situation. Which is complicated [0]. It's something like:

  - Nebula's assets live in Watch Nebula LLC

  - Watch Nebula LLC is owned by 83% Standard Broadcast and 16% Curiosity Stream (CURI)

  - Standard Broadcast "is owned by 44 total people, all of whom are creators"

So it's fair to say there are creators with significant equity stakes in Nebula. It's NOT fair to assume that the 50% of revenue left after share is distributed evenly among all creators on the platform via an equity mechanism.

Of course then there's Floatplane, which is entirely owned by LMG. At least a couple years ago they targeted "a 70/30 split" but arrive there via "a fixed cost menu for features [...] based on bandwidth/maintenance costs' [1]

I'm glad YT is still sharing a meaningful amount of money with creators.

[0] https://medium.com/@cameron-paul/who-actually-owns-nebula-95...

[1] https://linustechtips.com/topic/1335443-floatplane-creator-s...

percentages are meaningless in the ad space and I think topic specific CPM would be a more meaningful comparison. Even on youtube itself things like kids toy videos can make 4x or more per 1M views when compared to a Political show or something technical.

Of cause, I assume it's difficult to compare 50% of paid subscriptions to 55% of ad revenue. I have heard that YouTubers earn per view from premium subscribers than from ad supported views.

I suspect that 50% at no risk of demonetization is quite a bit more than 55% with it for quite a significant chunk of those content creators.

> I'm glad YT is still sharing a meaningful amount of money with creators.

They're doing their best to stop sharing anything with all but the largest creators, since they keep increasing the monetisation requirements.

On Nebula even the built in ads for Squarespace are gone too. Sure you could use sponsorblock, but for me I'm happy to support Nebula as their creator netowrk are people I want to support directly with my dollars.

The problem is, google is an advertising company now the "ad-blocking makes all content free" is a temporary argument at best. At any rate, I like Nebula's curated content better than the ai-slop/clickbait slop Youtube provides.

Only pet peeve I have is... jeffiot is in Nebula, Tom Scott is in Nebula, Lindsey Ellis is in Nebula... where is f4mi????????

We shouldn't forget that Google tried to push the whole remote browser stack attestation thing (WEI). That is where they want to go. We shouldn't follow them there.

I have both, and I find my YouTube home page way more diverse than Nebula. Nebula is an invite-only clique and they invite people who look like them. YouTube, for me, has a lot more British creators, a lot more people of colour, a lot more women creators, a bigger diversity of topics and subjects, a lot more deep technical stuff. Nebula is a lot of American guys discussing movies and politics, with only the very recent addition of Token Brit Tom Scott.

I'm yet another person who only got Nebula for week-early access to Jet Lag, and I think if that particular show ever went away or took an extended break, Nebula would be struggling. I find myself watching something on YouTube most evenings, I rarely find myself on Nebula when Jet Lag isn't on.

Wasn't Abigail PhilosophyTube, a British woman, one of the Nebula founders? I guess perhaps it has changed since the early days.I remember them kicking off JT Second Thought.

I'm not saying it doesn't have any, just that it doesn't have as many. My YouTube is just so much more diverse in every way, I'm never going to get my favourite UK canal boat creators on Nebula for instance. Nebula is a narrow thing for a narrow audience that likes one specific type of online video.

My Nebula runs out at the end of the year and I'm not renewing, I'm not that fussed about seeing Jet Lag a week late, and none of the other stuff is really for me. I'll divvy up my £60 a year Nebula sub to a few creators I like.

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