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by rchaud 833 days ago
That makes it seem like YT's decision is market-driven, when the reality is it's been making losses since its inception, ads or no ads. Premium cost $9.99, then $12.99, now $14.99. Sounds like an operation that has no clue how to price for sustainability.
2 comments
autoexec 832 days ago
> when the reality is it's been making losses since its inception

They make billions in revenue off of youtube. Where did you see that they're losing money on it? I suspect that even if youtube was not profitable on its own it'd still be valuable enough for google to continue running it and that they can more than afford to keep the light on.

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jpc0 832 days ago
No we are getting to the crux of the issue, the fact that you believe Goolge, or likely any of the other Alphabet companies, are sitting on billions and they operational cost is next to nothing.

Here is the experiment I generally recommend that may help you solve this. Build a service even half as competent as YouTube and host it. Serve even one or two users a month, project your costs out to 5-10million consecutive users and exabytes of media stored and see just how astronomical that price is.

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jpc0 832 days ago
And yet this is your argument for not paying? Or just an observation because I am fine with just an observation.
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rchaud 832 days ago
What are you paying for when the price is going up 10-25% a year? Are you watching 10-25% more? No, beccause the price of YTP isn't anchored in any kind of economic reality, as 95% are watching the free version with ads or adblock. That ad revenue is what drives their strategy.

YTP is essentially a protection racket. Pay up, or the ads can get a lot worse.

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jpc0 832 days ago
Not sure about you but I got options for higher bitrate streams this year and honestly for the sheer amount of content available it is still significantly cheaper than other media I pay for.

There is a point it will stop making sense to pay for YouTube but at the current prices it isn't there, if it gets there then there will be a different conversation to be had.

The issue I see with people who are able to pay but wont pay is that Google will decide it isn't worth the overhead and we end up back with ads only and significantly more aggressive adblocker prevention mechanisms.

If you watch any significant amount of content pay for it, if you don't then an ad or two really shouldn't be an issue but then likely neither is your adblocker usage so go for it.

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