• echo64@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      out of all the subscriptions, it’s probably the best one. you can get youtube for free but either you’re gonna get ads or you’ll block them, and the creators you like will start seeking other forms of revenue that are just as/more annoying, or just quit.

      yt-premium makes youtube an actually nice experience and keeps money flowing to creators. There’s a limit to how much that nice-experience is worth but it’s better than paying for netflix, and a bunch of netflix execs get paid, and the creators don’t. then the show you like is cancelled and removed anyway.

    • zefiax@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I primarily watch YouTube on tv, it is my most used video streaming platform, so yes I do. As does all my friends.

    • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I do. I watch a ton of YouTube. Revanced and NewPipe are rad but there’s no effortless way to have an adfree experience on the TV.

    • skates@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      Yeah, got YouTube music after they shut down Google play music. All my friends dog on me for not having Spotify but not having ads on iOS is so nice. I tried it once without youtube premium subscription and idk how people can sit through advertisment hell for every video.

      Also having the creators I watch get a larger share of the YouTube money pie cause I watch them as a YouTube premium sub is a nice feeling too.

      That being said though, I’m on a family plan and not this specific plan that got its price raised (although I’m pretty sure the family plan prices have also gone up recently if I remember right).

    • lancemate@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Out of all the streaming services I pay for I get by far the most value out of yt premium, I probably spend 10x longer watching yt vids compared to movies and TV shows, and it has a dedicated music app that links nicely with my android auto.

    • fne8w2ah@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 years ago

      OP here. I do in fact confess that I share a YT Premium subscription with a friend, though I myself eschew the bog-standard YT apps with those patched using Revanced Extended just because of long-standing QoL issues on said regular apps.

    • Chozo@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Subscriber here. I use YouTube pretty much all day long. I usually have it playing something for background noise while I’m working. I’ve got a family plan with 4 other people on it, who all also get the benefits of ad-free viewing.

      I also use YouTube on several devices of my own. TV, PS5, phone, tablet, three laptops… Trying to manage adblockers on all of those is such a pain in the ass. I’ll never go back to troubleshooting Pi-holes and adblockers and adblocker-blocker-blockers. It’s an objectively worse experience having to manage all sorts of goofy tools that keep getting circumvented by Google every week.

      Also, the content creators I watch get paid for my views. I spend hours watching these people’s content, so making sure they’re getting paid means something to me.

    • dmtalon@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I do, and YouTube is my primary Media consumption for both video and music.

      That said, I have the family plan which went from $15-23 back a few months ago and it was difficult to keep. I actually cancelled it and used Spotify and some of the available ad-blocking apps, but ultimately didn’t like Spotify, so I came back.

      If it were to go up again anytime remotely soon I’d be gone.

    • Nick@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I have one through my legacy Google Play Music subscription. I get YouTube Music and YouTube Premium for $7.99/month

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      People with overpaid white collar jobs do that plenty and there are plenty of them who will pay probably up to $50 a month or more. Youtube is already testing predatory measures to make chrome users ditch adblockers by giving out warnings to people who use them. Many more will go Youtube Premium in the near future because of such measures and Youtube will keep ramping up prices of course.

      • zefiax@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        So you are pissed off that people are actually willing to pay for service? Youtube hosts millions if not billions of videos and streams them to billions of users, dozens of times a day and they do all this essentially lag free. That infrastructure is not cheap.

        Additionally youtube actually shares their premium revenue with content creators allowing people to actually make a successful living with their creative pursuits and you control how that revenue is shared by which videos you watch.

    • BroederJakob@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      YouTube has the creators I actually want to support. I don’t mind paying for all the hours of content I’m getting for it

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I did, sorta.

      I subscribed to Google Play Music All Access from day 1, because (at the time) it was like Spotify but also allowed me to upload my own music. I added a family plan when that became available for my friends/family who wanted it as well, and was grandfathered into that price when GPMAA eventually turned into YouTube Music, which was also bundled with YouTube Premium. Ad-free YouTube isn’t something I specifically sought out but it was bundled into a service that I was using as a perk.

      I kept that subscription going at the grandfathered rate until I got an email from Google one day informing me that they were increasing the price, which was last October, and would only allow me to keep the grandfathered cost for an additional 6 months before hiking me up to the new price. That would bring me from $14.99/mo to $23.99/mo, so I said “fuck that” and canceled. The service only got worse after they killed GPM anyways.

    • yesterdayshero@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I do! Would probably give up my Netflix subscription before YouTube to be honest. As a family, we spend more time using YouTube than most other streaming services.

    • Skellybones@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I want to but the price is to high for what they’re asking for. I could have gotten myself a subscription for crunchy roll or Netflix with the money they’re asking

    • weasel5053@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yep. I watch more YouTube than TV. Once you get a curated list of channels set up, YouTube is great. And I don’t like ads.

    • Dasnap@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I pay ~£1 a month for it by ‘being Argentinian’.

      This is on top of already using ReVanced and SmartTube because I actually use the download feature of YT Music.

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I used to when I used have it when subscribed to Google Music—which was amazing but then they tried to replace it with YouTube Music and yet another big amazing Google product died—and there was no point anymore.

      I’ve considered it to stop ads on the TV app, but always thought it wasn’t worth it. I can’t even be bothered ad-blocking the network to include the TV, so raising cost of Premium now may as well make the product cease to exist in my mind.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      They started blocking users with advanced adblockers completely in some places. It’s expected they’ll roll out that policy in most countries. Prepare to either ditch Youtube completely, watch dozens of ads as well as sponsored segments every couple of minutes (because why would Google pay content creators who make them a huge pile of money by providing content for free adequately, right?) or pay hundreds of dollars a year. Even then they might start showing you some ads because why the hell not? Big tech stole the internet from us and now they’re banking in on it big time. Needlesly to say this is not a sustainable business model, but since when did that ever bother mega corporations?

      • daniskarma@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Unless they put YouTube content behind a paywall there will always be ways to block ads.

        Probably that would be their future take, free 3 minutes of the video, if you want more… pay.

        And then will the era of pirating and downloading YouTube videos begin.

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      2 years ago

      Personally, I like it when the content creators I spend time watching get paid for their work.

      • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        So pay them directly or through other platform. Why would you pay them through Youtube rather than Patreon when using Youtube Premium is going to make them get a lower share of what you paid?

        • Chozo@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          My resources are limited. I’d love to support them all in more direct ways. And a few of them, I do support outside of YouTube from time to time, as well. But I only have so much money to give, and there’s so many creators whose works I’ve benefited from. It’s the most conscientious use of my limited expendable income.

  • flossdaily@lemmy.world
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    I pay $22 per month for the family plan because I don’t want my kids or my folks to have to be constantly inundated with ads. And I enjoy being and to play free music that is exactly the songs I want.

    I was really upset when they raised the price on me, and kicked me off the grandfather plan. But in the end I decided it was still worth it.

    But what the real cost to Google is here is that they have evaporated my loyalty and good will. I now see them as a company that will squeeze me when they know they can get away with it, and that my loyalty and being an early adopter means nothing to them.

    That will definitely affect every future buying decision I make for future products and services.

    • bloopinator@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yeah I love Youtube Premium on the family plan. People on the internet act like there’s no benefit to it as long as Adblock and Youtube Vanced exist. Meanwhile I have an iPhone, smart TVs, and my whole family does too. My nieces and nephews don’t have to get bombarded with ads, and that’s well worth it to me. But the way they silently jacked the price up $5 per month was a total dick move that I’m not happy about. If they keep pulling this shit, it’s only a matter of time before I find another solution.

    • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      I had that for $14 a month and they were going to raise it to $22 so I said bye just at the perfect time since ReVanced released it’s manager to install.

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    2 years ago

    I don’t have the money to sustain the “everything is a subscription” simple as that. So adblockers and piracy is the only way to get media content.

    I still go to the cinema, but some cinemas over here are already experimenting with subscriptions.

    • bloopinator@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Software subscriptions are what really bums me out. Back in the day you could just buy your software and have it forever. Now Microsoft Office is a subscription, Adobe Photoshop is a subscription, and so much more. Nothing pisses me off more than when I install a basic app on my phone and find out it’s actually a subscription app.

      Literally the only major software I can think of right now that isn’t subscription based or insanely expensive is Apple’s Final Cut Pro at $300.

      • basskitten@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        “buy your software and have it forever” was not really true other than in the very early days. everything that was in active development like office, photoshop, all the pro music software i used, was updated regularly and had an upgrade cost. my music app had a paid upgrade every year like clockwork for $150. it was essentially a subscription in all but name. yeah i could stop paying and stay with the last version forever but operating system and hardware advances would make it so those versions would stop running on newer machines eventually.

      • Spyro@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Fortunately Microsoft Office isn’t fully subscription yet, but with how much they’re pushing Office365 it’s not too surprising that people don’t seem to realize this. You can still buy a permanent license from MS directly (with some digging around to get to the correct page) or from 3rd party websites. Only downside is it locks you into the current version of Office, but for the average user (me) that’s not too much of a big deal - I can’t recall them releasing any major must have features over the past 10 years.

        • LonelyWendigo@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          If you’re going to all that trouble, why not try some open source alternatives next upgrade before shelling out for another license? You might be surprised how narrow the gap between Microsoft and libre office options has become.

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      2 years ago

      A single ticket to my local movie theater costs $16.50 for an adult ticket to a typical movie. That is already more expensive than a month of unlimited Youtube premium, even at the inflated price.

      Video streaming is a consumable product. What model would you prefer. Ad supported is still available. A la carte is reasonable in theory, but doesn’t seem like it would work well for a site like youtube (even though youtube does have some a-la-carte offerings such as movies)

      We used to have a movie subscription service around here. It failed because it was essentially sellings dimes for nickels.

  • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    We believe this new price reflects the value of YouTube Premium

    I disagree. YouTube offers nothing without the content creators. While reason I ever started using it because TotalBiscuit made a good case for it. But I have to say, while they keep jacking up prices I don’t feel like I’m getting anything more. I never asked for YT Music and would gladly take a discount to have it removed.

    Keep fucking around and find out Google, I got no issues going back to ad blockers. Whole reason I got premium was to support those I watch and all I ever hear is how Google is fucken them over.

    • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I mean, if you actually care about the content creators, YouTube premium is almost universally praised for paying content creators considerably more than ads do.

    • gendulf@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I disagree. YouTube offers nothing without the content creators.

      While yes, they depend on the creators, many of those creators would not make any money without a platform like YouTube. I don’t like the price raising, but YouTube stores your videos for free, and makes it easy to monetize content.

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    2 years ago

    They gave me 3 months free and it was just the same broken website without ads.

    Youtube is completely broken. The algorithm doesn’t even auto play undiscovered music or videos. It’s just serving me the exact same videos I already watched. It used to be a really fun and good service that was free and now you get shit and have to pay for it.

    Why would anyone pay for that?

    Is anyone running the company or are they all just doing drugs?

    • Jakeroxs@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      My wife and I watch certain YouTubers more then we watch TV, and use a TV to do it, so it’s pretty nice not having any ads and we don’t really rely on the algo at all.

  • Ovec 🐑@lemmy.world
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    I’d rather have a cheaper version premium just for Youtube without ads though. I’ve heard there is or was Premium Lite in some countries, but not where I’m from. I don’t need Music, I already pay Tidal for that.

    Or is YT Music with Premium so much better than the free one? When I cancelled my Spotify and were looking where to move to, I gave the free YTM a try. It would be two birds with one stone - YT without ads and a replacement music streaming service. But I just hated the whole experience. The UI, that my music “follows” get mixed with YouTube subscriptions, and that it always plays a video with every song.

    • Hipstershy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 years ago

      That’s why I got Nebula. It’s not everyone I watch on YouTube, but it’s a lot of the best people, and they get a much, much larger amount of revenue from me specifically than they do from even YouTube Premium at a better price since you’re not also paying for YouTube Music on top of it. I was a devoted Google Play Music All Access listener, but true to form Google forgot about it and then replaced it with a worse service that costs more money. Spotify and Nebula as separate subs is as close as I’m going to get to the old school GPMAA/YouTube Red bundle and I don’t have to give a penny to Google for it

  • Dave@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I really wish they’d drop the YouTube Music aspect of this and just do an ad-free YouTube sub. Happy to pay content creators for their work; less happy to give Google money for a music platform after what they did to Google Music.

    • Saneless@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I’m the opposite. I’m still grandfathered into the $7.99 Google Music sub, which turned into YT Music + YT premium. The cheapest music service with basically free YT premium is nice

      I wouldn’t pay more though

      • Concetta@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 years ago

        You should verify you’re still at that rate, looks like other people started getting warnings a while ago that it’s going up.

      • Dave@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        It’s probably improved a lot since the early days. I remember it being significantly worse than the Google Music it was replacing.

        • Saneless@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          It still is in parts. Still takes a few extra taps/screens to get to playlists

          They are least stopped the practice of just starting a song when you went into a playlist.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I like YouTube music though? I refuse to give Spotify money because of Joe Rogan, and if you’re a classical music lover YT is just better.

      • Dave@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        That’s cool. I’m not saying they should only offer it without YT music, just that they should offer an alternative way of supporting YouTubers without buying a service you don’t need.

          • Dave@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            They actually did a trial of such a sub in various Scandinavian countries, cost about five quid a month or so, which is entirely reasonable. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere.

    • CylonBunny@lemmy.world
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      Switched over from Spotify after they went too hard on Joe Rogan, so I never used Google Music. I like YouTube music. That said, they’ve just started adding podcasts - really hope they don’t go the way of Spotify.

  • Smex@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    My adblockers are holding steady with a 0% rise! I still ain’t paying!

  • codanaut@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Google’s really been on one lately. They’ve also been laying off staff, increasing ads while trying to ban ad blockers from YouTube, raised the pricing of workspaces yet again and closed the unlimited drive storage loophole. Removed photos from the album archive thingy. And I feel there’s been a few other things within the last couple months I’m forgetting.

  • WhiteHawk@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Increasing the price of a service that is already piss-poor value for your money is incredibly smart. Who the hell is gonna pay 14$ per month just to get rid of ads?

    • lyam23@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It also includes YouTube Music. Yes, I know, many will say they value proposition it’s still poor even with that. Honestly it’s worth it to me. I subscribe to the family plan because we watch a lot of YouTube and listen to a lot of music. No ads plus unlimited music for 4 people is worth it to us.

      • MeltedLiquid@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Yeah same here, I use the hell out of my Youtube Premium. Though the biggest feature lately has been 0 ads on content, as the majority of my video streaming is from Youtube.

      • Hung_Like_Hodor@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Same I get a lot of use out of the family plan. My group of friends just exchange various family plans to save money. I take care of YouTube, another friend Spotify, etc. I absolutely hate ads and can work around them but still like supporting my favorite channels. I’ve been on YouTube for well over a decade and is pretty much my main video entertainment, so well worth it.

    • soulifix@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      People who’re gullible. I’m sure Twitch thought the same thing when their subscription service is exactly the same thing. $12 a month, just to remove ads. On top of them assuming you have Prime too, which is $15. So they want you paying $27 to get rid of ads.

    • garretble@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I will (and do currently). I watch a bunch of YouTube on my TV through an AppleTV, and it’s the easiest way to get no ads and also support the people I watch.

    • doggle@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I suspect that most existing subscribers won’t even notice that the price is increasing and will keep letting it charge them anyway. AOL still makes money this way.

      And not everyone is as savvy to set up an ad blocker, especially on mobile.

      As for value, that’s always subjective. There are probably people who would argue that is more than worth their money. Not me though.

  • BaldrOdinson@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Lol. Theres already no way I’d pay for YouTube premium. Raising the price more and more just entrenches that more and more.

    • Techmaster@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Exactly. If you want me to subscribe, lower the price! Don’t these corporations do some kind of analysis, where if you lower prices, you get more subs and more money…or raise prices, less subs, and overall less money. The soda companies are the same way. It used to be $3 for a case of soda, now it’s $7+. I’ve noticed that since they did that, the soda aisle at my local grocery stores is about half the size it used to be.