It increased a couple months ago to like $25 CAD lmao. Still worth it, though. I watch so much YouTube.
It’s weird how people are fine paying for Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, Twitch, etc, but draw the line at YouTube, the platform that has infinite more content and actual value.
It’s still less than my parents pay for satellite. Also comes with YouTube Music if you wanna ditch Spotify. Kinda a 2 in 1 deal.
I’d pay money to break my Youtube addiction completely to be honest. There is good content, but I don’t like the way it’s served. Not just ads, but recommendations. I don’t get addicted to Netflix in the same way, though I do sometimes binge watch shows. Certainly wouldn’t pay for Youtube, and if they made it impossible to watch for free without ads by preventing ad blockers working I think I’d rather just quit entirely and pay for Nebula, since it focuses on the kind of content I value more and don’t get as addicted to watching.
What? millions and millions of people? Do you realize not everyone lives in a city? Satellite TV is insanely popular in Canada. Every single provider offers it.
They have WISP and Starlink also. Both using satellites.
Not sure why you think a satellite is some ancient technology lmao. It’s the norm outside of cities.
I’d pay 5$ a month just for YouTube, I don’t want all the extra bullshit. YouTube doesn’t produce any content themselves, they don’t have to hire actors writers and make big budget movies.
They are literally just hosting content and paying creators cents. Yet they want to charge Hulu / Netflix money.
Gtfo with that. I cancelled Netflix earlier this year because it was getting too expensive as well for what it was providing.
It’s weird how people are fine paying for Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, Twitch, etc, but draw the line at YouTube, the platform that has infinite more content and actual value.
I see your point, but I think there’s a psychological reasoning behind this.
YouTube in its early days ONLY had a free option whereas services like Netfix have always only had a paid option.
YouTube in its early days certainly had a ton of ads, but they were non-obtrusive. Things like banner ads and ads on the side of the video. Then slowly, they added in-video ads. Iirc it started out only as a single pre-roll ad, but in its current form it has devolved into multiple pre-roll ads and an ungodly amount of imcredibly jarring and obtrusive mid-roll ads that violently break up the content you are consuming. YouTube then has the gall to say that if you want to consume the platform how you used to, you have to shell out money. YouTube hasn’t added anything with its subscription service. Instead it wants you to pay them money to return the service to the usability it had prior.
Discord Nitro has a subscription feature that ads something. They didn’t take away say, the ability to voice chat, and lock a feature it used to have for free behind a paywall.
We can also examine Spotify with this. Unlike YouTube, Spotify has always had both a free tier and a paid tier. The free tier has between song ads and the paid tier has always had no ads. It’s less jarring to have to pay for something if it has always been there. Imagine also if Spotify started putting ads in the middle of a fucking song and forced you to pay to remove them even though there never used to be ads in the middle of a song.
Tl;Dr - A twofold issue. 1. YouTube sort of shot itself in the foot in a way by not starting out with a paid tier. 2. YouTube did not really ad anything with premium, but instead is making you pay to use the service as you used to be able to for free. Obtrusive in-video ads are cancer and one of the worst types of ads.
The only thing worth a YouTube premium subscription is probably the higher bitrate formats if you download/archive all the videos you care about. Latest version of yt-dlp gives you access to those (except the highest audio quality format, I think it was 256kbps AAC), but this will probably be patched sooner rather than later.
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.
I’d be willing to pay for a few subscriptions if I didn’t feel like subscription services are trying to gouge me left and right. I miss the days when subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify gave me access to 90% of content online.
Contrast this with Steam, which gives me centralized convenience, seamless updates, online sync, achievements… No wonder that’s where I spend almost all of my entertainment money these days.
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.
This right here is one of the biggest reasons I turned to exclusively open source software, cuz man the amount of internal rage I feel any time I have to log into software is unreal, like I open the software I want it to just go
“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.
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.
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.
Why would you? Google still tracks the shit out of you even with premium, so you’re still the product, you’re just paying for the privilege of them collecting your data instead of blocking it with Adblock.
I’d consider premium if it wasn’t so absurdly expensive for what it is. So instead I use uYou+ on mobile and uBlock origin+SponsorBlock in browser. I’m a member of my favorite channels to support them, fuck YouTube/Google.
I cancelled yt music subscription today after hearing about the price increase. Musi is a much better iOS app than yt music anyway bc the interface is simpler and it actually lets me play all the music while yt music is like you can’t play this song right now due to copyright.
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.
Yeah basically the same. The video thingy only does it when the song is not available on YouTube Music and it’s playing a video.
Which honestly is the only thing why I switched to YouTube Music, on Spotify if the song isn’t there that’s it, but YouTube music there is always a user or band uploaded video.
When is available there is switch to choose if video or music and well on the phone you can always use the audio only option as you can do with YouTube.
The rest the same as you said it.
How is this any different than what most people pay for both another music service and another video service? It’s about half the cost of other music + video services (when combined), even with the increased pricing over the years. I’ve been paying for YouTube Premium since the awkward Google Play Music transition and it’s a bargain, especially when I had my student discount at like $4.99 a month.
I feel like this is the best money in streaming. I mostly watch you tube, and primarily on the tv and phone in the app. Frankly I would prefer to have much more of the internet paid for with you know money instead of ads and not use a blocker.
You tube music also has a much better algorithmic playlist than Apple Music.
That’s great for now. Scale that up to billions of videos and that won’t be sustainable. Video hosting, especially at the scale that youtube does it, is incredibly expensive.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
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It increased a couple months ago to like $25 CAD lmao. Still worth it, though. I watch so much YouTube.
It’s weird how people are fine paying for Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, Twitch, etc, but draw the line at YouTube, the platform that has infinite more content and actual value.
It’s still less than my parents pay for satellite. Also comes with YouTube Music if you wanna ditch Spotify. Kinda a 2 in 1 deal.
I’d pay money to break my Youtube addiction completely to be honest. There is good content, but I don’t like the way it’s served. Not just ads, but recommendations. I don’t get addicted to Netflix in the same way, though I do sometimes binge watch shows. Certainly wouldn’t pay for Youtube, and if they made it impossible to watch for free without ads by preventing ad blockers working I think I’d rather just quit entirely and pay for Nebula, since it focuses on the kind of content I value more and don’t get as addicted to watching.
Because you can always just use adblock… for free
See my comment here: https://lemmy.ml/comment/1807420
Ad block isn’t really a solution.
Who in the actual fuck still uses satellite? Are they also still on dial-up? Do they have a rotary phone at home in lieu of cell phones?
What? millions and millions of people? Do you realize not everyone lives in a city? Satellite TV is insanely popular in Canada. Every single provider offers it.
They have WISP and Starlink also. Both using satellites.
Not sure why you think a satellite is some ancient technology lmao. It’s the norm outside of cities.
I’d pay 5$ a month just for YouTube, I don’t want all the extra bullshit. YouTube doesn’t produce any content themselves, they don’t have to hire actors writers and make big budget movies.
They are literally just hosting content and paying creators cents. Yet they want to charge Hulu / Netflix money.
Gtfo with that. I cancelled Netflix earlier this year because it was getting too expensive as well for what it was providing.
I see your point, but I think there’s a psychological reasoning behind this.
YouTube in its early days ONLY had a free option whereas services like Netfix have always only had a paid option.
YouTube in its early days certainly had a ton of ads, but they were non-obtrusive. Things like banner ads and ads on the side of the video. Then slowly, they added in-video ads. Iirc it started out only as a single pre-roll ad, but in its current form it has devolved into multiple pre-roll ads and an ungodly amount of imcredibly jarring and obtrusive mid-roll ads that violently break up the content you are consuming. YouTube then has the gall to say that if you want to consume the platform how you used to, you have to shell out money. YouTube hasn’t added anything with its subscription service. Instead it wants you to pay them money to return the service to the usability it had prior.
Discord Nitro has a subscription feature that ads something. They didn’t take away say, the ability to voice chat, and lock a feature it used to have for free behind a paywall.
We can also examine Spotify with this. Unlike YouTube, Spotify has always had both a free tier and a paid tier. The free tier has between song ads and the paid tier has always had no ads. It’s less jarring to have to pay for something if it has always been there. Imagine also if Spotify started putting ads in the middle of a fucking song and forced you to pay to remove them even though there never used to be ads in the middle of a song.
Tl;Dr - A twofold issue. 1. YouTube sort of shot itself in the foot in a way by not starting out with a paid tier. 2. YouTube did not really ad anything with premium, but instead is making you pay to use the service as you used to be able to for free. Obtrusive in-video ads are cancer and one of the worst types of ads.
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Firefox+UBO and Revanced users: Oh no… anyway…
The only thing worth a YouTube premium subscription is probably the higher bitrate formats if you download/archive all the videos you care about. Latest version of yt-dlp gives you access to those (except the highest audio quality format, I think it was 256kbps AAC), but this will probably be patched sooner rather than later.
And also the music streaming service you get alongside it, and seamless downloads on mobile, and background playback on mobile, and…
That’s pretty much implied in my message with the 256 kbps AAC which I believe is what youtube music is using (format id 141).
Downloads and background playback on mobile is already possible,
Whatever I don’t even care what you guys think anyway, I gave my opinion, you don’t like it, that’s fine.
First they try to block ad blockers, now they milk their users even more. Who didn’t see it coming? I guess people will just pay up.
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.
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.
It’s like what cable networks did back in the day, if you want to view a channel, subscribe to it. We have come full circle.
Good lord they are going to put ads again in streaming services aren’t they
They already have.
Where? Haven’t seen one on Amazon prime, Netflix or HBO yet
netflix has a plan with ads! https://help.netflix.com/en/node/126831
amazon uses prime video as a hook to get you to sign up for prime membership (which itself has been steadily increasing in price).
i’d be shocked if HBO didn’t introduce an ad-supported price tier at some point in the future. that totally seems like zaslav’s MO.
Peacock, Paramount+, Hulu, and YouTube TV all have ads or ad plans. Some even just have ads on popular shows no matter the price you pay.
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I’d be willing to pay for a few subscriptions if I didn’t feel like subscription services are trying to gouge me left and right. I miss the days when subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify gave me access to 90% of content online.
Contrast this with Steam, which gives me centralized convenience, seamless updates, online sync, achievements… No wonder that’s where I spend almost all of my entertainment money these days.
By the time steam chokes and shittifies we are all doomed
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.
This right here is one of the biggest reasons I turned to exclusively open source software, cuz man the amount of internal rage I feel any time I have to log into software is unreal, like I open the software I want it to just go
“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.
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.
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.
Don’t these companies realise they’d have far more subscribers if they weren’t so fucking greedy… Newpipe & Libretube ftw👍🏼
Depends on what metric you game. They can show the $/subscriber chart and it goes whooo
Subscribers
Oh so you were using YT premium before the increase?
🤔…No…its always been overpriced…
Why would you? Google still tracks the shit out of you even with premium, so you’re still the product, you’re just paying for the privilege of them collecting your data instead of blocking it with Adblock.
I’d consider premium if it wasn’t so absurdly expensive for what it is. So instead I use uYou+ on mobile and uBlock origin+SponsorBlock in browser. I’m a member of my favorite channels to support them, fuck YouTube/Google.
This feels like they are trying to recover revenue lost from the NFL Sunday Ticket deal they made.
I’ve also noticed now that the video quality option on some accounts requires YT Premium to watch in 1080 60
I cancelled yt music subscription today after hearing about the price increase. Musi is a much better iOS app than yt music anyway bc the interface is simpler and it actually lets me play all the music while yt music is like you can’t play this song right now due to copyright.
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.
Yeah basically the same. The video thingy only does it when the song is not available on YouTube Music and it’s playing a video.
Which honestly is the only thing why I switched to YouTube Music, on Spotify if the song isn’t there that’s it, but YouTube music there is always a user or band uploaded video.
When is available there is switch to choose if video or music and well on the phone you can always use the audio only option as you can do with YouTube. The rest the same as you said it.
So I have a question for YouTube Premium haters:
How is this any different than what most people pay for both another music service and another video service? It’s about half the cost of other music + video services (when combined), even with the increased pricing over the years. I’ve been paying for YouTube Premium since the awkward Google Play Music transition and it’s a bargain, especially when I had my student discount at like $4.99 a month.
Who tf is actually paying for YouTube premium?!
I do as well. It includes YouTube kids and I get music.
I do since YouTube music is included and dislike Spotify UI.
I do. I watch a lot of YouTube videos, I hate ads and use YouTube music as my primary source of music.
I feel like this is the best money in streaming. I mostly watch you tube, and primarily on the tv and phone in the app. Frankly I would prefer to have much more of the internet paid for with you know money instead of ads and not use a blocker.
You tube music also has a much better algorithmic playlist than Apple Music.
I agree completely but you won’t get much support on this site as people don’t think about how things can cost money to run.
Which is weird considering how the fediverse is paid for at the moment appears to mostly be people paying out of their own pockets.
That’s great for now. Scale that up to billions of videos and that won’t be sustainable. Video hosting, especially at the scale that youtube does it, is incredibly expensive.
Still a good value compared to Netflix tbh