It will mean minute physics will get very little and any random let's play will get a lot more.
If you pay for views rather than duration you incentivise short videos, if you pay for duration you incentivise long videos.
If you go for duration the risk is that you have lots of long easily made videos getting money instead of short hard to make videos. Is that going to harm more things than paying for views?
I think I'd rather have a 10 minute lets-play earn 10x more than one minute physics video than have a playlist of the ten funniest 6s cat videos earn 10x more than one view of minute physics.
Also, I probably watch hundreds of hours of youtube every month so the amount that ends up at each channel will be extremely small 5.50 / monthlyHours * oursPerChannel isn't going to be very much in the end.
The biggest winners are going to be MCNs (Multi Channel Networks, which most Let's Plays are part of) which take another 20-30% of the revenue generated by each of their partnering channels.
If you want to support single channels, something like Patreon is still going to reign superior in terms of actual money received at the other end.
Well yes, as I say it's a tradeoff. A 10s video of a cat falling off a chair takes less time and money to make than any of those.
YouTube will take an ad fee anyway, and the current option could stay as the default ("I don't care about any channel in particular, I just want no ads!").
And I actually like to incentive short videos because that way I get the info I want faster.
Ah yes, now this is quite an important distinction. If it's my $10 split over what I watch, then that's different to splitting everyone's money globally.
I thought it was the latter from this part of the story:
> Subscription revenues will be pooled, with partners receiving 55 percent of the total. Individual partners' cuts will be apportioned based on how much time their viewers spend watching their channels, though
However, I'd like to see something that more clearly defines what it is.
I think one big issue either way is that watching a video doesn't define how much value I derive from it, and the value is what I personally want to incentivise. One five minute video of a random lets-play is not equivalent (to me) to a five minute smarter every day video, even though both would get one view and 5 minutes of watching time from me.
That's not very easy (except perhaps for let's plays where the persona is amusing)
I'm not sure how this would work when sharing profits between people.