
YouTube's paid subscription offering takes shape - prostoalex
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/8/8371131/youtube-paid-subscription-offline-video
======
comex
Finally. Call me sentimental, but ad blocking makes me uncomfortable,
especially on a site like YouTube where most creators seem to really struggle
to earn a reasonable amount of compensation for their effort. Yet a short
while back, I finally lost patience with the ever-increasing duration and
prevalence of YouTube's video ads and installed a blocker; to me, personally,
their demand on my attention was starting to bring back bad memories of ad-
festooned TV shows and just feel truly obnoxious and disrespectful. I will be
happy to turn off the blocker and switch to paying with money, which I do not
value as much as my brain.

~~~
mattmanser
I wonder if ads will come back for the subscribers anyway, as happened with
cable. Especially once advertisers start pointing out to google that the only
people they actually want to advertise to are the subscribers.

~~~
tomjen3
If they did, why would they subscribe at all? Okay maybe they get special
subscriber only videos, but if a channel wanted that Patreon already has that
feature.

~~~
tempodox
Maybe people would subscribe so they could actually find what they're looking
for. Good luck finding a specific movie or a series episode right now. It just
doesn't work.

------
Joona
It's great, but very late. I'm unsure about the pricing - $10 is very pricey
(I pay ~$20 for internet). I would've /thought/ about it if it was $5, though,
to be fair, I'm not a huge Youtube user.

~~~
kmfrk
$10 is Netflix money. I can't really make sense of it in proportion to lack of
premium content. Especially since YouTube have been awful at stringing
together a smart way to build a station/feed to watch people regularly.

$5 would make a lot more sense.

~~~
IanCal
There is a lot of music there, the article sounds like this would be music key
+ everything else. That would make it an extra cost of $2 for all non-music
videos.

------
Animats
_" And YouTube's carrot comes with a stick — creators are required to
participate in the subscription offering, or every video on their channels
will be set to private, sources said."_

Does this mean that uploading free videos to YouTube for free viewing is dead?

~~~
Aoyagi
Isn't that a similar issue [1] to what Zoe Keating went though not long ago?

[1] - [http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-
should-i...](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i-do-
about-youtube)

~~~
tomjen3
Not really, she was required to release her entire back catalog and any future
releases too.

------
IanCal
Something particularly interesting there is the way the money will be split:

> Individual partners' cuts will be apportioned based on how much time their
> viewers spend watching their channels

This could provide a nice incentive to have longer videos rather than shorter
ones (for quick views). Particularly for full episodes of something.

I wonder if that's the route they're hoping to go down? If they had a good
selection of films & tv shows then this could be quite nice (much more so with
offline viewing!).

~~~
tomjen3
It will mean minute physics will get very little and any random let's play
will get a lot more.

~~~
IanCal
That's one side, but a very specific example.

If you pay for views rather than duration you incentivise _short_ videos, if
you pay for duration you incentivise _long_ videos.

If you go for duration the risk is that you have lots of long easily made
videos getting money instead of short hard to make videos. Is that going to
harm more things than paying for views?

I think I'd rather have a 10 minute lets-play earn 10x more than one minute
physics video than have a playlist of the ten funniest 6s cat videos earn 10x
more than one view of minute physics.

~~~
BonsaiDen
Thing is though, making one minute of lets-play costs a lot less (time /
money) than making one minute physics or crash course or you name it.

Also, I probably watch hundreds of hours of youtube every month so the amount
that ends up at each channel will be extremely small 5.50 / monthlyHours *
oursPerChannel isn't going to be very much in the end.

The biggest winners are going to be MCNs (Multi Channel Networks, which most
Let's Plays are part of) which take another 20-30% of the revenue generated by
each of their partnering channels.

If you want to support single channels, something like Patreon is still going
to reign superior in terms of actual money received at the other end.

~~~
IanCal
> Thing is though, making one minute of lets-play costs a lot less (time /
> money) than making one minute physics or crash course or you name it.

Well yes, as I say it's a tradeoff. A 10s video of a cat falling off a chair
takes less time and money to make than any of those.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Here's a way they could solve it: give ability to donate money directly to
channel(s). So let's say I want to give $1/month to MinutePhysics - I donate,
and get this channel ad-free. Or maybe I want to donate $10/month to be split
in half between MinutePhysics and Scott Manley, so I do that, but since I'm
over $10, I get the whole no-ads plan as well.

YouTube will take an ad fee anyway, and the current option could stay as the
default ("I don't care about any channel in particular, I just want no ads!").

------
jbverschoor
Next step: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/projects/singularity/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/projects/singularity/)

------
Aoyagi
But they will still track and log everything I do no matter what kind of
subscription I have, won't they. And the site won't become any less bloated.

Well, at least it's a step forward.

------
doctorshady
Or you could just use a script like youtube-dl and not deal with ads or
tracking cookies or anything of the sort. And, y'know, actually get to keep
the video.

~~~
Aoyagi
Yes, but I like to reward people whose content I consume regularly and not
everyone is on Patreon, sadly.

~~~
HappMacDonald
Changetip? Find out their email and then Paypal to them?

Seriously, I mean they have to have a path to accept money somewhere if you
wish to push money at them. Or, "You can lead a content creator to money but
you can't make them accept teh cash". ;3

~~~
Aoyagi
Never heard of anyone using Changetip and not everyone has Paypal. Also not
everyone is using their public email as their PP email.

I know some people who refuse to accept "donations" for some moral reasons
that are unfathomable to me. TotalBiscuit is one of them, actually.

[https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/maybe-subbablepatreon-
is...](https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/maybe-subbablepatreon-isnt-the-
magic-bullet)

------
tomjen3
That's a giving steep price they are demanding, good luck with that.

Netflix is cheaper and has more content of a higher quality.

------
tempodox
There was a time when search worked on YouTube. Then came Google, the world
champion of search. And search got worse and more nonfunctional by the day on
YouTube. Now they want me to believe that search will work again, after I
throw money at them? “Don't be evil” my hind foot. I already drastically
decreased my YouTube usage in the past. I guess I will avoid it entirely in
the future.

------
chatmasta
Now that ad free is premium feature, how will youtube treat ad blockers?

~~~
higherpurpose
The better question is how will Google treat adblockers in the Chrome store
(especially now that you can't install extensions from outside the store
anymore)? Google has already banned adblockers on the Play Store. I don't
think that will be an easy thing to do though, so I doubt they will actually
try that, unless they can come up with a really "good reason" to do it (the
NSA gets you through the adblocker!...or something).

