[dvt]

> Seems like a lesson learned about raising money to solve something people don't care about... in this case a first-class mobile experience...

People do want a first-class mobile experience (see TikTok), they just don't want to pay a premium for it. If you charge people for something, you better make damn sure it's way better than the free alternative.

[adrr]

YouTube premium has 20mm paying users. Educated guess most of users consume through a mobile device.

Biggest issue with Quibi was lack of app for TV. They cut their TAM by only focusing on Mobile. I don’t think YouTube premium would be as popular if it was only for 1 platform.

[pavanky]

I originally got youtube premium because I was already paying for Google music.

But I'd say 90% of my youtube consumption is on TV.

[causality0]

Nobody pays for Youtube Premium because they want the exclusive content. They pay because they hate ads and Youtube gatekeeps basic app functionality behind the paywall. It's not a service it's a hostage negotiation.

[dageshi]

Based on the sheer volume of content consumed on youtube, some people might genuinely want to support the creators they watch without seeing ads. I'm forever seeing people on HN saying "just let me pay for it instead of watching ads" well youtube gave that option.

[freehunter]

"Let me pay for it instead of watching ads" is the part that's said out loud. The part that's only implied is "and stop tracking me, stop making recommendations with the sole purpose of distracting me/keeping me here longer, etc". The part that isn't said is "stop treating me like the product".

No one wants to pay for something where they're still the product being sold. Youtube Premium still has all its trackers, still recommends videos not that it think you will find interesting but that it thinks will keep you watching (for better or worse), and still feeds all of your data into the Google ads network for companies to target you on other websites.

[xmprt]

On one hand yes. On the other hand, YouTube recommendations are pretty great. The last time I went to the homepage on a fresh browser, I found almost none of the content interesting. If websites end up tracking users without sending ads and you have self control (turn off notifications and only watch for a fixed amount of time) then it's not an issue.

[therealx]

I fully agree, but I wonder what it will take to start this trend. Do any big sites allow you to pay for no tracking/not being the product?

[cambalache]

For real, imagine go to the doctor for any cause and just the day after being inundated by spam and people calling you offering health insurance.

[drusepth]

I registered a .us domain yesterday (which doesn't support WHOIS protection-esque anonymity services) and so far today I've received:

* 6 phone calls

* 4 voicemails

* 9 emails

all from what looks like companies from third-world countries offering business development services, website designs, app developers, logo design, etc, specifically asking about the new domain I purchased.

:(

[pfranz]

It's kind of a surprising amount of money, don't watch any of the exclusive content or other services, but I pay for YouTube because I don't want my kid watching ads. I cringe when he has a teacher that plays a video and pre-roll comes up (I almost forget YouTube has ads). What's really annoying is that is school's Google account doesn't have it and his personal does...so there's a bit of annoying Google account juggling.

[CydeWeys]

Why would you be entitled to any level of service for a product that you aren't paying any money for? YouTube isn't free to run. All that bandwidth, engineering work, and creator compensation don't pay for themselves. You either pay with ad views or you pay with cash. YouTube doesn't owe anyone a free experience. They could lock the entire site behind a paywall to paid subscribers only tomorrow, and thus be exactly like Netflix, Disney+, HBO, etc., and they'd be entirely within their rights to do so.

[EamonnMR]

They have a social contract with the creators: you upload content for free and users will watch content for free. If they went fully paid creators and viewers would go somewhere else in Ain instant.

[CydeWeys]

I don't think that quite represents the existing social contract with most creators. I think the practical contract is in effect "I will upload content and you will compensate me fairly for it". If a subscription-only model led to increased content creator payouts I don't think you'd see a massive exodus from the platform. Regardless, I'm sure it's in the ToS and all that jazz that any of the terms can be changed at any notice and that your only recourse is to yank your videos and take them elsewhere if you don't like how things are going.

And, interestingly, the biggest exodus I've seen hasn't been to another free platform, it's been to a subscription-only platform (CuriosityStream). The documentary-style YouTubers didn't think they were making enough money on YouTube because of how hard it is to make their content vs your typical vlogging stuff, and they know their viewers are willing to pay more to access it, so they made a pay-only streaming site to earn more money from their product.

[causality0]

I didn't say I was entitled to it. I said they keep basic functions behind the paywall. They're equally within their rights to make non-Premium viewers watch all the videos in black and white or stop non-Premium viewers from using fullscreen.

[CydeWeys]

Yes, they would be within their rights to do all of those things. And ... ?

I can't even read Washington Post and New York Times articles without paying for a subscription. So what? They don't owe anything to me for free. Thus I have paid subscriptions with them, because I value their content enough to pay for it and that's the only compensation methodology they've found to be workable.

[causality0]

"and" that's the difference between Youtube and Quibi. Youtube was built as a free ad-supported platform for users to create content and present it to each other. Quibi was built as a paid streaming service where users watch professionally produced content for a fee. The track from non-user to paid user for Youtube is completely different than the one for Quibi. Youtube Premium targeted an audience that was already there. Quibi tried to get non-users to pay for the creation of the audience. It didn't work, and it will never work. Every successful paid-only streaming service has to target an already-existing audience. Netflix used licensing to target the fanbase of a broad swath of TV and movie viewership, fans who already existed. Disney did it by owning outright a broad swath of TV and movie material.

It generally doesn't even work in other media. CD sales were built on the back of free radio broadcasts. Pay cable and satellite subscriptions targeted an audience already exposed to television through free TV broadcasts. You have to offer a fundamentally better experience, on the order of "this new thing is the only way to experience non-live music" for people to pay for it sight-unseen.

[hansvm]

They had to go out of their way to prevent videos from playing audio in the background. They're objectively gatekeeping basic functionality behind a paywall, independently of whether anyone feels entitled to those features.

[manigandham]

Features aren't decided by the effort it takes to create them but rather the value they provide, offset by the revenue they generate.

Background video lowers the value of ads which subsidizes free playback so it makes monetary sense to disable it. It's also a trivial amount of work done once.

[Dylan16807]

> Background video lowers the value of ads which subsidizes free playback so it makes monetary sense to disable it.

On the other hand, video is expensive to serve so the ad revenue per gigabyte should be higher, in addition to getting more hours of listening per user. So it makes monetary sense to enable it.

They're both valid options for making money. So it's fair game to analyze it as a matter of user preference, company preference, and level of rudeness.

[CydeWeys]

Yes, they are absolutely doing all of this, and it's entirely within their remit to do so because no one is entitled to any of it for free. Why should they offer all of their basic functionality for free if that means they're not making as much money as they could be if they charged for it instead? The only people they owe background audio playback to are those paying for it, and those people are getting it.

[hansvm]

What are you going on about? You have nearly a dozen comments where either I'm seriously misunderstanding everyone involved or you're hell-bent on believing that any description of YouTube's business practices must be a complaint that more things aren't free.

E.g.:

> Ancestor: [paraphrased] YouTube makes money by doing extra work to make a free service more painful to use and then charging to remove those annoyances.

> You: [paraphrased] What makes <ancestor> so entitled as to think that you deserve the free service without the annoyances?

> Me: [paraphrased] No, YouTube is definitely intentionally removing features from their free service and offering to add them back if you pay them. That's true whether or not anyone feels entitled to those features.

> You: [paraphrased] Well duh, it's they're right, and why should they offer those features for free in the first place?

[hombre_fatal]

It's a brilliant freemium model that still gives everyone access except those who want a bonus luxury.

You'll have to close the gap on why you think it's bad while still acknowledging that they aren't a charity instead of just leaving your point as an exercise for the reader.

So far it's like complaining that Netflix paywalls the "basic functionality" of being able to watch their videos. Or that a game demo only gives you part of a game when you actually want all of it for free.

[hansvm]

> You'll have to close the gap on why you think it's bad...

No, I don't. Whether or not I think that's bad is entirely orthogonal to what I actually said.

[input_sh]

Also the option for a picture-in-picture on a phone used to be free, then they've just decided to make it a premium feature.

Back when it was introduced on Android, it worked on YouTube just fine. Then it was intentially broken (hidden behind a paywall).

[CydeWeys]

Yes, companies purposely don't include all desired features in the free tier as an incentive to induce users to upgrade to the paid tier. And features are liable to move between tiers as they fine-tune their monetization strategy.

[ptero]

> YouTube doesn't owe anyone a free experience.

Then they should not advertise it as such. I have not looked at youtube ads for a while, but earlier it was definitely advertising "host your videos free, let your friends watch them free from anywhere in the world, yada yada".

If one advertises "absolutely free email hosting" but means "we will read your email, analyze your behavior and sell your information to those who can effectively hound you with ads", people should push back. And "it isn't free to run" is not a valid defense.

> They could lock the entire site behind a paywall to paid subscribers only tomorrow

Sure they can. But that would likely drive most customers away and be a very bad business decision. My 2c.

[ponker]

Anyone should understand that every product has a business model, and if it's being given to you for free the company is going to be making money in some other way. I do support the company having to clearly disclose, on their home page or similar, the specific ways they make money.

[CydeWeys]

Obviously if they put it all behind a paywall then they would stop advertising it as free. My point is that it's their right to do so if that's their wont, not that it would necessarily be the best business decision.

> If one advertises "absolutely free email hosting" but means "we will read your email, analyze your behavior and sell your information to those who can effectively hound you with ads", people should push back. And "it isn't free to run" is not a valid defense.

Show me a single freemium service anywhere that advertises itself using such exaggerated language.

I don't understand why people complain about free services like this. You can't eat your cake and have it too. Choose if you want the ad-supported free service or the paid service and then quit complaining about the choice you've made. You're not ever gonna get an ad-free free service that offers all the same features as the paid service. That would be corporate malpractice of the highest order; they'd have $0 revenue!

[Dylan16807]

> My point is that it's their right to do so if that's their wont

Nobody has suggested otherwise, so why do you keep hammering on this point?

> I don't understand why people complain about free services like this.

Free services are not immune to criticism.

If someone is suggesting an unrealistic business model, that's one thing. If they just say a feature is bad, there's no need to argue with them. They are not obligated to "quit complaining"!

[anoncake]

Yes, Google could charge money for Youtube. But they don't. That doesn't give it any right to expose anyone to advertising. No one forces it to give away anything for free, it does that voluntarily.

[CydeWeys]

So in your model of how the world should work, advertising is banned? Companies are only allowed to offer paid or donation-only services? And most content online ends up being locked behind paywalls as a result?

[hansvm]

Banning push-based advertising isn't without its merits. I'd be surprised if the majority of sales made via push-based advertising which wouldn't have been made in a pull-based system are actually beneficial to the end user (loosely measured by some combination of regret and opportunity cost), and a system that exists purely to extract value from the populace is not worth keeping around in my opinion, especially as a roundabout and inefficient method of payment.

I think most of the downsides would be in second-order effects (like the paywall bit you pointed out) and in effective enforcement (advertising dollars might just shift to realistic-looking review sites for example). I'm hopeful that free content would still be produced, especially given that for my own personal use I've noticed that ads correlate negatively with quality, and with a few exceptions like academic publishing all the best content is free and without ads even in today's world where it's easy to ad ads to a site.

[anoncake]

Either that or publicly funded. Giving customers the choice to opt into ads is another option – if those ads on provide value, as advertisers like to claim.

[anamexis]

No one was arguing that people pay for Youtube Premium because of the exclusive content.

Also is there anything wrong with offering a paid service which offers removing ads and getting some extra functionality?

[causality0]

Nothing at all. I'm not making a value judgment on Youtube Premium. I'm saying it's not the same class of service as Quibi and thus not a counter-example for how Quibi could/should have succeeded. They're fundamentally different things with completely different non-user to paying customer paths. Quibi wasn't Youtube. Quibi is 2013 Netflix if it didn't have any non-original content. Except 2013 Netflix wasn't dumb enough to charge you money and still show you ads.

[adrr]

It’s exclusive to YouTube. If I could pay less money for no ads on another video platform that has the same content, I would.

[CydeWeys]

What? Most video content is exclusive to a single platform already? If you think HBO, Disney+, Netflix originals, etc., are too expensive, you don't have other options there either in paying less from someone else. Why should you expect to be able to do so??

If anything YouTube is the most open platform by far, because the vast majority of the content on there is owned by the creators, not YouTube, and thus it could be on other platforms, in a way that will never happen with the paid streaming services. Indeed this is even happening with CuriosityStream.

[ramraj07]

Hostage negotiation, aka a literal gun to your head if you are annoyed by watching ads in return for a free service? Not an exaggeration at all.

[MattGaiser]

Adblockers work fine on YouTube.

[jfim]

Not on mobile, Chromecast, or TV apps.

[bigwavedave]

Ublock works just fine on Firefox mobile; all you have to do is play YouTube in the browser and not the native app. Sadly, this does not resolve the "disable playback while the screen is off" functionality.

[input_sh]

My TV is behind Pi-hole and I'm pretty sure I've never seen an ad on my TV (or while casting).

On phones... sometimes, but that's usually fixed within a day or two.

Before others crucify me for not paying for the content: I'm paying for a subscription service where most of the YouTube channels I follow mirror their content (https://watchnebula.com/). I just cut out Google as an unnecessary middleman.

[Nextgrid]

For iOS, AdGuard solves that problem.

For Android, the other comment suggests uBlock Origin which I definitely recommend (even for other reasons beyond YouTube).

[sjg007]

I pay for youtube premium because I don't want my kids to watch the ads.

[mguerville]

That's me exactly, I paid for the download feature when I use to fly a lot, now I pay because otherwise the ads to content ratio is so bad I don't even try to keep up with creators I like

[Zancarius]

> They pay because they hate ads and Youtube gatekeeps basic app functionality behind the paywall.

Ding, ding, ding! The accuracy of this statement is frightening.

I'm annoyed with YT pushing major media orgs' content out because the only reason I watch it is for the smaller creators. But the reality is the ads are annoying.

And it's worth paying for just to be able to listen to the app with the screen turned off. I've also warmed up quite a bit to YT Music even if the UI feels a bit rough around the edges (browser; mobile is OK).

But the ads? Yeah, that's a big reason.

[nullsense]

you're being downvoted, but as someone who used to pay the monthly ransom to be able to play YouTube audio in the background with the screen off, I wholeheartedly agree. I've never watched YouTube exclusive content and couldn't name anything if asked.

[scsilver]

I dont think anyone wants to watch 10-20 minute shorts made by professionals. They want 30+ or 30 seconds.

[Traster]

Every single Simpsons episode is 20 minutes, they seem to make it work.

[mgadams3]

very true. I should have been more clear that I was referring to their whole seamless profile vs landscape thing that I personally thought was silly when I tried Quibi. Seems like a good idea in theory tho