this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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They should fucking do an experiment - 2€/$ a month for an ad-free subscription and 3€/$ a month for higher video quality+no ads subscription. I would fucking pour my money into it.
Oh wait, that would not solve lack of sponsorblock. I guess I am not interested then...
They literally had that experiment with Premium Light. €6 for ad free watching, it was all I needed. But they literally sent out a mail they were stopping this tier right before they started implementing more anti-ad blocking measures.
Oddly enough, the "lite" subscription was introduced in some other countries during the time they shut it off in the launch countries.
I wonder if they're testing willingness to spend using the cheaper sub, then pulling it if it turns out people are likely to buy the pricier plan once the lower tier isn't available anymore?
I had the light subscription for over a year, not planning on paying for useless stuff like the music stuff though. Had it through a family plan years before and it was laughably bad compared to Spotify.
I'm personally a fan of YT Music, glad we've got some options though!
Not a penny to those bastards. Should YouTube and Google along with it rot to hell, I don't care. Maybe we'd finally get better alternatives running at full capacity.
And who will pay for those?
This is basically Nebula lol, minus the video quality tiering
Nebula can only afford to do that because basically nobody who subs to nebula actually watches the videos on it. They did a video about their revenue model and people treat it as a way to support the creators, not to actually watch content
Could Nebula work as a Patreon-competitor. Patreon as a company is totally fucked iirc - the investors are treating the company like a piggy bank, which is a shame because it is easily a profitable and viable company.
Nebula is pretty awesome and the type of content is great. I miss some light entertainment content though, so the network effect is at work. Still, nebula is the only streaming platform I'd consider subscribing as their policy is great and they do provide good value.
I'm not really certain what value nebula provides other than some creators uploading occasional content exclusively on nebula. Without nebula they'd just... Upload it to YouTube, which is free, so I'm not sure what the difference is
Meh I had nebula a couple years ago and it had some missing features and fairly poor depth of content. The same few bits constantly being pushed. I'm hopeful it improves but I wasn't using it.
They'd absolutely 100% be losing money with a $2 ad free tier. Ads make significantly more than that per user per month. Same with your """solution""" for higher res video. Bandwidth is goddamn expensive.
I agree, but they'd get a large number of users to subscribe.
And then maybe they wouldn't complain when they raised the price to $3. And a few months later maybe $3.50. Then $5.
A few years ago, people wouldn't have paid over $15 for a standard Netflix tier without 4K. But the way to boil a frog is to make them nice and comfy in lukewarm water, then keep increasing the temperature slowly... So even if they lose money, maybe a low price for the ad-free YouTube could make sense, from a business perspective.
Every time Netflix rises prices it makes it to the news (let alone all the drama on twitter/reddit/etc), I don't know what frog boiling you're talking about.
Yet they keep posting more and more profits. Subscriber count has only increased despite the content being lower quality and prices being higher. The fact that we don't like them increasing the prices doesn't mean it isn't working for them.
I'm not arguing it will work forever, but for now, it's been a viable strategy.
Plus, no way would it ever stay at that price. Nothing ever does. The only service I pay for now is spotting, and that's just to have ad-free music on my half-hour drive to work.
I completely agree the price is far too high.
I actually do subscribe but only because I get a deal through my mobile network that, long story short, cuts the price by two thirds.
I can’t understand their pricing policy at all. And they’re doing a terrible job at explaining their cost basis if it’s actually what it costs to serve video to us (highly doubt it).
Linus Tech Tips did a nice video on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDsJJRNXjYI
But it should not be done by LTT, but by Google.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=MDsJJRNXjYI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.