If they really make it possible to view youtube ad free, it will be huge. At least for me. The advertisement based internet drives me crazy, on a philisophical and practical level. I would sign up for a subscription immediately.
Oh really? How about every other site on the net you visit? nytimes? buzzfeed? facebook? other-random-content-site? You're telling me you'd rather pay for each and every site you visit? If not, tell me how else they can make money without ads?
I'd also waste a lot less time on random stuff if I had to pay for it, so I'd be more productive and make more money!
I find the whole "internet ads are bad" argument silly and specious at best - I don't care that Amazon shows me pictures of wallets I might want to buy if that means a poor kid in Eastern Europe can read CNN or BBC news for free.
I do care when any third party knows where I've been, what I am interested in, and otherwise monitors my activity.
Like everything, it's a tradeoff. However, I acknowledge my primary concern is myself -- if not tracking me costs other people a slight chance at an opportunity, I'm must conclude to not include that in my calculus. (In fact, it would be to my advantage if I believed it were a zero sum situation.)
It doesn't make sense to pay off each individual site, when the ad content they display is from centralized sources.
The sites could get a portion of that subscription revenue, by reporting the users who visit their sites who are ad-free subscribers. (Otherwise the ad-free subscribers get to use the individual sites without generating any ad revenue for those sites, while all the subscription revenue goes only to the ad agency). Sites whose content inspires their users to pay not to see ads should be rewarded for that.