
An inside look at YouTube’s new ad-free subscription service - jonathansizz
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-free-offline-paid-subscription-service
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sageabilly
This service seems squarely aimed at mobile users- blocking ads and allowing
YouTube to play in the background are two functionalities that are already
enabled on desktop (with the addition of a browser-based adblocker). I'll be
honest, it took me a minute or two to wrap my head around paying money to
block ads on YouTube since I already do that with a browser extension.

Is YouTube really that popular on mobile? With Netflix and Spotify already
having mobile apps I don't see many people paying $10 a month for the ability
to skip ads and play YouTube music in the background. And as for "exclusive
YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same monthly fee as Netflix
and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete with Orange is the New
Black or House of Cards.

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krstck
> And as for "exclusive YouTube content" it makes zero sense to have the same
> monthly fee as Netflix and somehow think that PewDiePie is going to compete
> with Orange is the New Black or House of Cards.

The (mostly teenage) audience for Youtube celebrities is _massive_ , and is
probably mostly invisible to you if you don't know any kids. I don't know
whether they'd be willing to pay for a subscription service, but regardless of
whether you think Netflix is higher quality than Youtube, there are _many
millions_ of people who get their entertainment mostly just from Youtube.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and I weep for a generation raised on LolCatz and FailzTeenThrob

~~~
Someone1234
And your parents weeped for a generation raised by MTV. It is very easy to
mis-characterise and or dismiss the younger generation's content, it is also
ironic as your parents and their parents did exactly the same thing.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
You missed by about 20 years, but yeah. And no, I watched the same things as
my parents on an old B&W TV every evening. This fracture has not been going on
forever; its not healthy or natural; its only happened since TV hit the
mainstream. For the first 1M years we all heard the same stories; we shared a
culture.

~~~
wmeredith
Gonna need a citation there, buddy. Before TV it was radio, before radio it
was movies, before movies it was Balzac, and so on and so forth...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So the slide goes a few more decades? I agree, that's probable.

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mrwizrd
Google should consider lumping in membership of Contributor in with YouTube
Red for the $10 a month fee. That would be a great product - (Google) ad-free
web plus ad-free YouTube that works in the background on mobile devices and
offline (as long as you download the video first).

I'd be more likely to pay for that than the two services separately. This
feels a little too close to the scenario where you're paying every advertising
network in the world a subscription each month.

[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)

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skrause
My main question is: How is my money distributed? If I only watch a single
video in a given month, will that creator get my $10 (usually called
"subscriber share model") will my money go into a big pool which is
distributed equally by clicks, in which case the creator of my favorite video
will get almost nothing?

~~~
tehstone8
I wonder the same thing. My assumption is that it will (unfortunately) be
similar to Spotify's model. Distribution of those subscription dollars will be
based on total views platform wide rather than on your individual views. So
even if you only watch videos from one channel, they will only get a piece of
your $10 proportional to their total views among all videos on Youtube. Who
knows though, being a Google property, it wouldn't surprise me that they have
a more complex algorithm.

~~~
bpodgursky
If the payment is proportional to the view distribution among Youtube Red
subscribers, I'm not sure whether the methods would work out very differently.

Actually I guess one way it could get skewed if the viewers of one channel on
average watch more/fewer videos than the population at large. Hopefully they
figure out how to weight the value of a given minute of "view time" for fix-it
videos etc vs music videos which are running in the background.

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hoopism
My nieces love pewdiepie... Easy xmas gift.

I watch a few short series on youtube while working... it's a fine medium for
content. 10 bucks seems steep to me... but I also don't pay for cable.

I can see this working.

~~~
abalos
The best part is that it's wrapped in with Google Play Music. So I don't have
to pay anything extra for more stuff? Works for me.

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ohthehugemanate
I guess I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about this. Youtube
is going to the cable subscription model. Hooray?

Everyone knows that the next few years is about consumers "cutting the cord"
from cable bundles so they can pay the same amount for bundled streaming
services. So Youtube is joining the list of paid streaming services. Not
surprising, or exciting.

Everyone already seems to acknowledge that paid streaming services will go the
same way cable TV went: first you're paying for no ads, but in a few years
you're paying with ads, too. This goes beyond "not exciting" and right to "bad
for consumers."

The only big question for me is, if "information wants to be free" really is
baked into the digital world... who's going to do to Youtube, what Youtube did
to cable TV?

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mc32
Brand's complete quote is more illustrating of the dilemma:

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable.
The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other
hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is
getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against
each other"

~~~
dingaling
> On the other hand, information wants to be free

The original context of this axiom was that information will tend towards
making itself free of confines, not cost.

The free-beerness is a consequence of this liberation, not the goal.

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MattGrommes
What are they going to do about the ads creators do inside their videos?
Unless they ban "This video is supported by..." type content inside videos
there will still be ads, just not Youtube separate ads. And banning those ads
will probably end many channels who rely on them to make up for Youtube's
pretty lousy ad pay-out.

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mcintyre1994
I signed up early for Google Play Music and got it at £7.99 instead of £9.99 -
if they keep that price and add this I think I'll be pretty pleased.

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Kristine1975
The ad-free Youtube service I use is called youtube-dl.

~~~
j_s
With first-class Windows support; impressive!

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

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digitalengineer
>"I make a little bit of money from ads, not much, but something," she
recently explained. The real money these days is in product placement" Why
doesn't Google just buy [https://famebit.com/](https://famebit.com/) ?

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wesd
How does this subscription affect content creators on youtube who monetize
based on ads?

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maskedinvader
They will be forced to share the subscription revenue as per tech-crunch [1].

1\. [http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-
but-b...](http://techcrunch.com/video/youtube-red-strips-out-ads-but-bullies-
creators-into-deals-crunch-report/519176342/)

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amelius
Google should remove ads for people who upload videos that generate a lot of
traffic. That way, you can fight ads by generating more ads yourself :)

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wildpeaks
Sounds like a consequence of Youtube not being able to purchase Twitch

