Not enough people buying Premium, eh?

YouTube premium is one of the subscriptions I most often feel thankful for having. I watch enough YouTube videos that avoiding all those ads is really worthwhile, I hope that my view is worth more to the channels I watch, and YouTube music let me cancel Spotify.

I understand being pissed at YouTube and Google, but at the end of the day, of all the things I have to rage at, YouTube isn't worth it. I like it, there are creators that use it that I like, and I understand that it costs real money to run the platform.

Yeah... I pay for premium and I'm not proud of it...

I was paying for it until it got to like $16.99 on iOS. As much of an annoyance to use a work around like AD Guard. I can now afford it but refuse to give those greedy mofos a dime.

More than you think, actually. My wife recently signed up. I'm like, Babe! I already have uBlock Origin to block ads on desktop! On mobile, Firefox also blocks ads and allows listening to videos with the screen off. 😫

But, we still get ads on our smart LG TV. So. That's apparently enough to throw the money away.

Is that why I am getting about one ad for every 90 seconds of video ?

I'd try it if they finally offered us a one year subscription period here in europe. they don't. their loss 🤷‍♂️

Don't assume Google et al. will ever consider enough people buy their subscription. There's never enough money for these people.

Google asking me for €13 a month? Their empire is built upon selling user data. Fuckers should be paying us.

I was happy to pay for youtube as a service until they broke the shit out of their algorithms and started shoving ads to my face in premium. Did a chargeback and got my money back. Fuck these monkeys.

I don't care that enhanced Bitrate is premium only. I do care that you still need to click "advanced resolution settings" to access this even for premium users on mobile.

„I don’t want to watch ads and I want everything to be free.”

My brother in christ, this is not how services work.

People can’t afford yet another monthly bill.

It’s like walking in Trador Joes for snacks. Oh, hey, this is only $3! And look, this is only $5! Get to checkout: $130 please.

Seriously, that’s how this nickel and dime subscription crap works.

They finally shut off my premium account in Argentina for $3 and now I’ve been blasted with ads so much it’s unbearable. Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.

Maybe I can try again in another country but I’m pretty sure they’re wise to it and demand a card used be of the same country too.

It’s fine on my phone but on the tvs where I mostly consume it’s hell on earth!

God damn YouTube. Why do we like it so much.

uBlock Origin 🥳

That actually makes more sense to me compared to most premium features. Higher quality directly costs more money to stream.

As with most things in the modern world that have gone to shit. It is not the monetization scheme in of itself that is the issue. It is the never ending desire for more profit this quarter than last forever.

If it was acceptable to stop trying to make even more once the cost to operate is covered and some healthy profit is made predictably then a lot less people would have issues. And enshitification would slow down.

YouTube already randomly drops me to 360p on my big-ass broadband sometimes because it just feels like it. What are the guarantees YouTube Premium won't do that? ANSWER ME YOUTUBE, THIS IS CRUCIAL PRE-PURCHASE INFORMATION.

13 per month. That's over 100 per year. Did not expect it to be that expensive.

The worst part is that this doesn't seem to be some sort of better quality. All of the other qualities seem to have tanked in the past year, so at best this just restores the previous 1080p bitrate.

The 1080p non-premium looks like shit, not better than 720p. I think they reduced the Bitrate a lot and premium restors the original Bitrate.

wow, premium in the usa is expensive. it's a little under $3 per month here in india for the family plan and even that's after a recent 16% hike. the individual plan is even cheaper.

i guess these rates are in store for us as well in the future?

yt-dlp and VLC still work. I'm good.

I never noticed a quality difference on my phone due to the small screen, even 1080p to 720p wasn't bad on my 4k TV. Also, when did they change the free trial from three months to one?

I pay for premium but would love to use peertube instead since it's decentralized. It would be great to have all the people I sub to upload there as well then I'd bail.

I can do all of them already without premium.

"Enhanced" bitrate? I've heard of high bitrates, and I've heard of low bit rates, but I ain't never heard of no enhanced bitrates. Does Google know something we don't, or do they think we're suckers? (Rhetorical question, don't answer.)

I paid for premium recently which helps a bit except now the problem is a lot of the content I watch ppl are doing sponsored segments which I get but at the same time fuck off.

I just lost my premium subscription after about 2 years of paying $3/month in Argentina. Here it's $24/month (family plan). YouTube is unbearable with all the ads. Sometimes a 10-minute video has 3 as breaks. I'm only using it for precise purposes now, not scrolling and exploring, and finding alternatives as much as possible.

Friendly reminder: If you know how to use Docker, you can self host Invidious on your PC and have an experience better tgan YouTube for free.

Maybe it's more expensive in Europe, my premium is 7.99 usd