At least for me, YouTube premium does not work because I do not want Google to save everyting I watch, that's why I use it as unlogged. I already have a gmail account, I use Google search, therefore Google has already quite amount of data about me, let's just not have it my Youtube history also.

When Youtube arrived first, I had an account with some playlists, then Google decided to merge account and asked me to switch a google account in order to keep my youtube account, that was the time I decided not to have an account on Youtube and subscribtion requires an account.

Also for subscriptions generally, thing are getting wild. There are several paid video / streaming services. Just to be able to watch 3 or 4 shows requires almost being subscribed to all streaming services, which is both expensive (at least for some part of the world) and ridicilous.