• Blackout@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I would dump Netflix before cancelling YT Premium. Everything on Netflix I can stream for free from pirate sites to my TV. YouTube actually has tons of informational and educational content and a premium subscription lets me support it without the ads. I probably watch YouTube twice as much as all my other vid subs combined.

          • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I’ve been so annoyed with the ads that I’ve started to go elsewhere for instructional content.

        • Humanius@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m technically still sharing a Netflix account with my parents, though I rarely use it at this point.
          Whenever I want to watch a movie, and I check Netflix, they don’t have it. (It’s worth pointing out that I’m not in the US)

          In contrast, YouTube Premium gives me pretty much exactly what I seek from it. Videos from channels that I follow, but now without ads.

      • persolb@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Ditto. It is my most used subscription.

        I watch more YouTube than cable (never) or Netflix (maybe one binge a month).

        I use it for music in the car and at work.

        I play audio from some sciencey channels while I try to goto sleep.

        I’ll probably keep paying. I do get value out of it.

    • echo64@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

      • Riptide502@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I fee like premium is really the only way to make youtube more sustainable for content creators and the platform alike. However, youtube has currently deemed that demonetized videos should lose all youtube premium revenue. That’s incredibly stupid.

        Imagine if premium revenue went to creators you watched, regardless of monetization status. Premium subscribers would be highly sought after for content creators, since it’s a more reliable revenue source that gives them the freedom to make what they want. It’s good for YouTube/google too because thats less reliance on advertisers.

        It could use some adjustments, maybe taking some inspiration from patreon.

        • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I fee like premium is really the only way to make youtube more sustainable for content creators and the platform alike.

          I really don’t see how, unfortunately. You give Youtube the money and they decide what to do with it and they won’t do it in a remotely fair way because they want profits for themselves. There are many better ways to support content creators directly than over whatever Youtube decides to pay them at any given moment. Most content creators know that of course and are already linking to other services that you can use to help them out. At least for as long as Youtube allows it…

          • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            When I signed up for premium half of my bill went to creators based on my watch time. I don’t know the current split, but I do know LTT has said quite a few times that premium actually pays out a lot to channels.

            YouTube could claw that back at any point, obviously, but right now it seems fair

        • xts@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Personally I become a member of the channels I’d like to support or join their Patreon if they have them and then use AdBlock+SponsorBlock and uYou+ on mobile.

          If you pay for premium Google is still collecting all of your data and using it for their own gain. Why support them at all?

          • echo64@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            someone’s gotta do the hosting part, honestly that’s pretty difficult and I can’t see anyone else being able to make a youtube other than google. The platform itself does have value. I don’t think that value is 45% of the money but it’s not a case of they shouldn’t make any money.

            • xts@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Their yearly revenue has increased by $20B over the last 5 years alone, let’s not pretend YouTube is hurting for money here.

              And other video platforms do exist and are successful. I think more people would consider premium, myself included if three things were different.

              1. The price. Over $10 a month for no ads is insane. If it were $4.99 a month I probably would have it and not care. I hardly even remember that I pay for Plex pass each month. I don’t want or need YT Music, make a separate plan.

              2. Paywalling old features like being able to watch videos with your screen off on mobile. Most videos where it’s just a person taking and there’s no on screen content worth watching is perfect for that. But they removed it as a free feature locking it behind premium. That and being able to throw the app into the background and have the playback continue. I mean come on…

              3. Screwing over the creators. YouTube, much like Reddit, has taken the thing that made the platform what it is today, that being the content and those who generate it, for granted. The whole adpocalypse and constant demonetization of videos for stupid reasons is getting old. Things might be a bit better now? But I support most of my favorite creators off platform through Patreon or whatever so they get what they deserve and aren’t shafted by Google being full of greedy fucks.

              So yeah, really it’s YouTube shooting themselves in the foot. It’d be very easy to get tons of people to sign up for premium but they’re choosing profits over people. We all know how that works out.

              Google can go fuck itself. Ever since they removed the “don’t be evil” slogan they’ve been doing a great job of being shit.

              • echo64@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Just to be super clear. There are other video platforms, and they are not successful, and not one of them could scale to youtube scale. And any that did would likely act similarly.

                There is value in the content delivery platform we call youtube, value for consumers and creators. As I said originally There is a limit to how much value there is, which might not match what they currently take.

                But to say vimeo? Could serve as a youtube replacement. It’s just silly.

              • focusedkiwibear@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                that argument of ‘they have money’ doesn’t make fucking sense lol. them having money has zero to do with them asking for payment in exchange for a service like every other company out there. the fuck does their bank account have to do with the costs of hosting millions of videos for millions of viewers? bupkus - that’s what.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        Yea I’ve been kinda watching youtube through this whole social media moment, suspicious that they’ve successfully taken a middle road here that will probably last. Ads and profiteering? You bet … but it seems that there’s a monetisation model for “creators” that kinda works (though I’m not sure at all about that). And so, for anyone that actually wants to make any sort of living doing the creative stuff that the rest of us lurkers want to consume, the inevitable question of how do you live within capitalism seems to have an answer of some sort in youtube while all the other platforms perhaps don’t have healthy or appealing answers.

        As for the fediverse, I think there’s a massive opportunity for donations and crowd funding to become a much more central and normal aspect here so that making some sort of living by contributing to and being a part of this space is actually viable. Even some sort of subscription model for platfroms that are essentially non-profit creator-driven would make a lot of sense here.

        That’s a problem that goes beyond any single platform though, and at the moment, cross-platform or fediverse-wide work seems to be lacking behind a little bit.

        • echo64@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          it’s cool how the tradition of only reading the first half of the first sentence is alive and well on lemmy too.

          • Gutless2615@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            As is apparently the misplaced opinion your bullshit is worth reading or responding to in full. People use yt-premium to block ads. Creators are going to survive or not on the platform not because someone uses an ad blocker.

    • SirFredman@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I do, you get Youtube Music as well and no ads, which is a great combination.

        • Anemia@lemmy.world
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          Now i haven’t been subscribed to spotify since at least 2015 so things may have changed but when i’m controlling someone elses phone with spotify i pretty much always prefer it to youtube music which has been my main player pretty much since it launched (i wont change for as long as i have yt premium though :p).

        • miku@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I use Youtube music and I think it is inferior to Spotify. Offline music is much more seamless, music quality is superior, shuffling a playlist is easier, recommended music is better, dedicated desktop app, and more. The only reason I use YouTube music is because there is more selection.

          I’m not sure about Apple music though since I never had an iPhone.

        • radix@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I moved to YouTube Music from Spotify and I really miss being able to move the songs around in a playlist on the mobile app. I used to spend a lot of time curating playlists where order mattered (I might avoid having two songs back to back that are the same tempo/vibe, or I might tell a story with the progression of songs in the playlist).

          I’m also annoyed by the fact that sometimes YouTube Music will hang forever on a blank loading screen instead of accepting that there’s no connection and sending me to my downloaded songs. I don’t know if Spotify does better about this because I never had Spotify Premium.

          However, one good thing about YouTube Music is that you can find covers and unofficially released songs much more easily. I search for covers often, to see how others might interpret a song I like.

        • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Is it better than Google Music was? Cause I had that for years and swapped to Spotify when they first announced they were axing Google Music to combine it into YouTube Premium.

      • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        YouTube music is pretty great. I’ve got it through revanced so it’s free, but being able to find random playlists is a huge plus.

    • EeeDawg101@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I do… family plan so split the cost with the fam. I find it worth it. But the price increases are certainly concerning. If it keeps going up I’ll drop it.

    • zefiax@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

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

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      Yes, a family plan makes it cheaper. You won’t see any ads on your devices, from your TV to your PC, and you can listen to YouTube videos even when your phone is locked. It also includes YouTube Music. It’s a great deal, and I’m not sure why some people don’t see it that way. Sure, you could get a different YouTube client for your phone, install an ad blocker on your PC, block ads on your router to get rid them on your smart TV, and listen to music on Spotify for free. But the value of a good service is that you pay a reasonable amount of money and get all these features without any additional work on your part.

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      1 year 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.

    • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • fne8w2ah@lemmy.worldOP
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      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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      1 year 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.

    • pacoboyd@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I actually dropped my other subs (Netflix, Deezer) in favor of the YouTube family plan. My kids watch a ton of Minecraft vids and I don’t really care to have them digesting all those ads. My wife also uses it a lot and I get a music service that just works with all my casting devices flawlessly.

      I also love the ad free experience when I use a how to video etc.

    • dmtalon@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • skates@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year 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).

    • narnach@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      I strongly dislike ads, but want to support good platforms and content creators. I eagerly waited for it to become available in the Netherlands back when it was still called YouTube Red. I subscribed the day it became available.

      Ethical ad free YouTube: you support creators and the platform that hosts them, much better than through ads.

      Too bad most videos now feature sponsored segments so creators are effectively double dipping in my premium support and advertiser money. That is honestly more annoying. I have more respect for creators who have Patreon and don’t feature sponsored content.

      • Anemia@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I couldnt agree more. The money has to come from somewhere and i’m not watching any ads so it’s the obvious solution. I frankly just use sponsorblock so it autoskips the sponsor spots. But the whole thing is just absurd tbh.

    • Dasnap@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • Nick@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

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

    • totallyahuman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’ve had it for a few years. I watch a ton of YouTube via Chromecast. I also use the music service every day. For me it’s a good value.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Question for you: I looked into trying this approach myself, but Google would not accept my non-Indian payment information.

        As it happens, they also refused to take my payment information when I visited Argentina and Turkey, too.

        How did you do it?

        • Calvin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          I used my credit card (Visa by Klarna) and it worked just fine. But it’s been a while since I’ve been there, maybe they changed something?

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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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      1 year 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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      1 year 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

    • Pablo@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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

    • cloudless@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yep, Family Plan here as well. It’s 4+1 of us, we all watch YT pretty much continuously at different age levels (two adults, one teenager and one preschooler), and since there was one extra seat left grandma also got ad free experience on her mobile. All 5 of us are also into different kinds of music so having access to YT music is also huge plus. The only other subscription I don’t mind paying for is Amazon Prime, for obvious reasons. Netflix, D+, Apple TV+ and such got the boot long time ago, with no plans to resubscribe any time soon.

    • weasel5053@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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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      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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        1 year 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.