
YouTube Red is live - rayalez
http://youtube.com/red
======
reddotX
"YouTube Red is not currently available in your country."

~~~
Nux
You can try Youtube-Dl - also gives you adfree and offline. :-)

[https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

~~~
ics
Someone could (I think) write an extension to prefetch Youtube video links,
download with youtube-dl to /tmp, and then re-embed the local file when you
visit the page. Could be tuned to waste less space or use AWS for quicker
download speed.

~~~
gizmo686
That sounds unnecessarily complicated. You should be able to write an
extension that simply bypasses the Youtube player (possibly looking at the
youtube-dl source to figure out how to find the video file itself).

~~~
ics
"Bypass the Youtube player" is what I meant, but reasons to use as is: its
interface is simple, it's maintained (this is a hack, why trouble yourself
when youtube breaks things), and you won't have to read this:
[https://github.com/rg3/youtube-
dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/ext...](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-
dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py)

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jeanlucas
"YouTube Red is not currently available in Brazil."

 _sigh_

~~~
JTon
Nor Canada _sad-trombone.flac_

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kyzyl
Flac? Let's not get our hopes up too high before it's even available in our
country ;-)

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jonknee
Interesting nugget: $9.99 a month unless you buy it through the iOS app and
then you'll pay $12.99 a month. Google is making that Apple Tax quite clear.

~~~
lbradstreet
Isn't that against AppStore rules? It used to be that you couldn't charge a
different price for an equivalent purchase.

~~~
jonknee
I assume you can't mention it in the iOS app (it says $12.99 there, no mention
of $9.99), but it mentioned in an email I got from YouTube:

[http://i.imgur.com/90fJxMS.png](http://i.imgur.com/90fJxMS.png)

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untog
Interesting that Google Play Music subscribers get this for free. IMO it's a
huge mistake on Google's part to make them separate yet somehow intertwined
memberships - Google Music is the same price as Spotify, but this is a huge
extra that many people won't realise they have.

EDIT: I'm not saying that tying them together is bad - quite the opposite -
that having them as separate subscriptions that are also the same subscription
is weird.

~~~
Roodgorf
Maybe it's an attempt for the YouTube Red developers to boost their out of the
gate numbers?

~~~
ewzimm
It seems like it must have something to do with different departments tracking
revenue, but the way this is being rolled out is pretty strange. There's no
mention of it anywhere on the YouTube homepage, so you would have to search
for it specifically, and it's not even the top result on Google when you
search for "youtube red." To know that you have access to Google Play Music,
you have to scroll all the way down to FAQ point 5. Maybe the subscriptions
were integrated recently and the administrative barriers to approve new
marketing materials prevented them from being ready for launch. But I can only
speculate.

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eatonphil
It is super frustrating that they hold out on being able to continue playing
music while the screen is locked, etc. so that they can monetize it like this.

~~~
kyrra
I was trying to think as why they did this. At first I thought it may have
been licensing related, but I'm guessing that's not the case. I primarily
think is that you will be able to bypass visual aspect of ads if your screen
is locked. It could also just be that they want to "create value" with the
subscription.

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uvesten
Still the "content providers" feel that region locking is the way to go. Yay,
future!

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tucif
Does anyone know how is the interaction with the Chromecast Youtube app queue?

When I have friends over we use the youtube app to queue videos for the
Chromecast, if one of us has the Red subscription I would expect no adds, so
what will happen if a friend with no subscription queues a video? will it
display ads?

~~~
rtkwe
I think the Chromecast uses whatever account the person casting is logged in
with, things casted to other people's chromecasts show up in your history, so
I'd expect to see ads if the person casting doesn't have Youtube Red. Also I
don't see or recall associating the Chromecast with any Google accounts during
setup so I'm not sure they have that information to make the link to allowing
all videos played through a particular Chromecast to use the Red of the owner.

Mostly guessing though until someone tries it.

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tvladeck
there is a lot of frustration that it launched only in some countries and not
in others. i see why that would be a bummer, but is it reasonable to expect
that they should (in some vaguely moral sense) launch everywhere in the world
at once?

~~~
kyrra
The more countries you add the longer it would push out the launch date.
Youtube Red required content owners to sign the new contracts to allow for ads
free + offline play. Trying to get this done at a world-wide scale will be
much more time consuming compared to going country-by-country and getting the
required rights and contracts to launch this service. So they either have to
push out the release date or do what they did.

 __The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of Google.

~~~
tvladeck
i totally agree! not sure if it came through, but this is exactly the tradeoff
i was hinting at

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searine
Why pay for features that should be free, and are free with 3rd party tools?

~~~
JohnTHaller
To support content providers for one... as opposed to just mooching. Now
viewers have a choice... watch/listen to ads and get the content for free or
pay a small monthly fee and get your music and videos ad-free.

If you object to seeing ads and were using an adblocker, you now have a
legitimate way of compensating the creators for the content you are enjoying.

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r0fl
YouTube Red is not currently available in Canada.

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AndyMcConachie
Can someone sell me on this?

Why would I want it when I already download all YT videos without ads before
watching them already?

~~~
untog
You are a very atypical user if that is the case. So maybe Youtube Red isn't
for you.

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Y-bar
YouTube Red is not currently available in Sweden.

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ChildOfChaos
I guess people at Youtube HQ spent to long reading Youtube comments and
assumed everyone that usues the service is stupid and would pay for a bunch of
pointless crap.

""Scare PewDiePie" is a reality horror series that puts the most popular
YouTuber PewDiePie, also known as Felix Kjellberg, into terrifying situations,
inspired by video games. "A Trip to Unicorn Island" is a movie that follows
YouTuber IISuperwomanII, also known as Lilly Singh, on her world tour. "Sing
It!" is a scripted series about a fictional vocal competition from the Fine
Brothers, who are famous for their "Kids React to..." videos"

What!? Who is going to watch this!?

~~~
untog
_What!? Who is going to watch this!?_

Well, 300,000 people have already watched the trailer for that PewDiePie thing
since it was posted a week ago, so...

