[pja]

I wonder if there's a good reason why Google doesn't offer a subscription option for YouTube alone? They tried it once (YouTube Red) some time ago & dropped it fairly quickly.

Totally uninformed speculation: maybe they found that it was their most profitable viewers that were paying for YT Red? Which in turn would mean that any subscription program would be a net loss over relying on ads for income.

You could just say "charge more" of course, but maybe that higher charge is more than those customers are actually willing to pay for YouTube?

Which in turn would mean that ads will always be more profitable than subscriptions for Google.

In this model YouTube Premium, which includes Music, might be sufficiently expensive that it ends up profitable overall thanks to the bundling of YT & Music together.

[ThatPlayer]

It could be an agreement with the music labels because plenty of people will use YouTube for music even without using the separate youtube music webpage or app.

[pja]

Yes, good point: that could also be a good (legal) reason for the bundling of YT Music with no-ads YouTube.