I'd pay $3-$5/mo. I watch maybe 8 hours a month.

The pricing is lesser in other countries I have seen $2-3 a month, so it is not necessary to qualify Americans/Europeans it is priced similarly across the globe .

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It is not just $12/month for YouTube that is the problem most people have to budget for all their content consumption between streaming services, sports subscriptions , music subs, newspapers you can easily spend upwards of $300/month , that is not including other productivity tools Saas you could end paying for like o365 , Dropbox and so on .

YT would be the one easiest to cut because you won’t loose access just have to put up with some ads unlike everything else .

For many not seeing ads is not worth $12 a month , for some like you the value is enormous so you see it as worth paying .

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I personally stopped paying for YT premium because I get most of the content from Nebula what I used YT for, at 1/10th the cost.

Also there is no way to disable Shorts and they won’t improve the by design poorer implementation on Firefox; both these make my experience using the platform poor even if I pay for it so I don’t bother.

We subscribe to almost every reasonable content provider and we pay about $60 or so IN SWITZERLAND, where we pay a swiss tax just because we have more money I guess. If someone is truly paying $300 they should cancel their cable subscription and subscribe to a handful of streaming services and YT for $<100. All the content you could ever watch.

A typical household with say couple of newspapers and magazines, music and audio platforms, 2-3 sports and major streaming platforms in the U.S will be in the 300 range (see below)

I have only reasonably included couple of options in each category, you could mix and match preferences and use different providers or may get deals and it is part of combo with some other plan , however you will still be in this range.

- Streaming: ($121) (Prime, Apple have other uses bundled, Disney is undroppable if you have kids)

    - Disney+ (ESPN, Hulu, Disney) - $20 
    - Netflix - $16 
    - Paramount+ - $12 
    - Max (HBO) - $20 
    - Peacock (NBC) - $10 
    - Apple Tv+ (via Apple One ) - $23 
    - Nebula - $5
    - Amazon Prime $15

- Sports: ($33) ( or any other 2 sports )

   - MLS - $13
   - NBA - $20

- Music/Podcasts: ($50)

  - Spotify(podcasts,list: $10
  - YT music: $15
  - Audible: 15

- Newspapers/ Magazines: ($65)

  - NYTimes ( or main newspaper) : $16
  - Bloomberg/FT ( or business daily): $25
  - Economist/New Yorker (or other long form magazines): $20

Total: $269

On top you could be paying for

   - any game network subscriptions like PlayStation Plus maybe $20-40
   - one time purchases for movies/ games etc in addition to Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+ plans when they not included perhaps another $100 every month
   - cable/internet/Mobile plans which are another ~ $200 easily
   - Patreon/ podcasts or other creator specific subscriptions 
   - other personal productivity apps you may pay for (o365, Dropbox, email etc) maybe another $100

Final total: $700 / month on just subscriptions and licenses

Holy, I just pay HBO and Apple Music.

Is this really the middle class U.S family reality?

I don't know anybody with three newspaper subscriptions

You don't anybody who consumes from three pay walled platforms or they don't pay for it and instead use archive.ph or similar ?

I would think my family having access to read good quality journals rather than get their news and analysis just from social media or click bait content farms is worth $50 / month ?

I know only 2 top quality newspapers not behind a paywall : Aljazeera and The Guardian, both while have decent American coverage or not amercian. Perhaps you can also include NPR, BBC and few other high quality news sources that are still free but are not newspapers.

Every high quality news source even news agencies like Reuters[1] are now behind paywalls.

[1] Associated Press is still free, given their non-profit status hopefully will remain so.

I remember something about Aljazeera around ten years ago where Aljazeera America (AJAM) was remove from cable TV networks in the US. Something to do with their affiliation with middle eastern countries I think. I’m not sure that’s enough reason to dismiss them completely.

Anyway, what you say makes sense, but I just don’t think many people drop $50/month on that stuff. They don’t see the value, and continue to feed Facebook.

Al Jazeera is Qatar government funded akin to BBC.

They came to prominence when Bin Laden used to give them recorded tapes and interviews post 9/11. They have comprehensive and deeper coverage on topics and geographies [1][2] where western news orgs won't focus.

Beware though, they have biases too like everyone, particularly on covering Qatar and Middle East. The government funds them as tool of geopolitical soft power by creating an honest dependable news, no different from UK with BBC but without the colonial undertones, on average with global topics they are a solid source.

[1] In particular areas with some Muslim population, i.e lots of Africa, East Asia etc

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_effect

150+ Million Americans subscribed to Prime AND also Disney+ has similar numbers, so if you don't have either, you are likely a outlier.

How could you not have Disney+ if you have kids ?

Netflix is at 75M Americans paying for it (and many others sharing), typical family definitely has more than just Apple Music and HBO

Yeah basically every time I see these threads I don't understand do these people think that running YouTube costs no money ?

~15€/mo and my family doesn't have to watch ads, we get YouTube music (not missing Spotify at all TBH) - that's well worth the money.

If you're a student or working low paid job I can understand - but on a site mostly for software professionals and startups ?

I dont know if its changed, but you can only watch 1 thing on youtube at a time with the premium account, like not even with ads. it straight up stops the other video.

15€ is the family plan

I’d definitely pay 2-3$/month for Youtube if I could unbundle it from Youtube Music. I’m paying for Spotify and have no intention to change that (and I’ve given Youtube Music many chances).

Spotify Family is taking about $20/month from me, but everyone else offers a subpar experience (especially Apple Music).

Youtube certainly costs money to run. It doesn't cost as much as they're asking. Besides, Google has mercilessly injected itself in many more parts of my daily life, and they're making good money off of me. They're not paying me for that. So I'll consider it a debt paid to block all of their ads.

Now, if Youtube was an independent company, that'd be a different story. But it isn't, so µBlock it is.

A good chunk of that YTP money goes to creators.

man I hate to pull the "get a real job" quip but I would bet my life that most of those "creators" are going to end up getting a "real" job in the next few years. My sister makes a couple TikToks a month to review stuff and these companies pay her stupid amounts of money because of the number of followers she has. She lives in the West Village where she regularly hangs out with Malcolm Gladwell and David Blaine. She does something with art. Spain's bureau of tourism (I'm sure they have another name for it) paid to fly her and a couple of other "influencers" to Spain for a several-day tour of places Salvador Dali either lived or created something for. It's fantasy land, where company execs think things like that are a good use of money. MrBeast and Legal Eagle will be alright whether YouTube dies or not, but everyone else is screwed.

That actually furthers the argument of "it doesn't cost that much", since creators get about ten times as much money from YTP viewers.

I don't understand paying ten cents for something that does what it wants instead of what I want.

I currently pay for premium to avoid ads myself, so you don't get to call me any freeloader names while I complain that despite paying I still have to suffer shorts and utter shit suggestions and embedded sponsor ads and having to answer a ridiculous 2fa prompt on my phone every single time just because I use firefox in medium private mode , and annoying things like hiding downvotes, and serious things like censoring and invalid dmca takedowns and algorithmic promiting/hiding, etc.

12 bucks is enough to get you access to entire streaming catalogs full of exclusive content on other platforms. Merely not showing you ads on a site that's largely full of non exclusive user generated videos doesn't seem enticing. Wellness videos are everywhere, people will just watch them on TikTok instead of paying for a full premium subscription.

It's a strange argument anyway, nobody buys something simply because it's only an hour of work. The internet offers me a hundred subscriptions every day, if I buy them all because they're just 10 bucks I'm broke. Whatsapp cost 1$ once and they even dropped that because although it's great value, what matters is that none of it is exclusive.

Yes, my feelings are similar. It's one of the monthly costs I would not consider putting on the chopping block unless I were in dire circumstances.

Unfortunately paying does mean there is no way to escape tracking, that’s even worse than the expenditure.

I'll never pay for YT because when it first started it was about people sharing information because they wanted to give to others. Now, people want money and fame. That's fine, but it's not my money they will get.

I would love to buy it, if i liked it. I happily pay Spotify, Kagi, ChagGPT, etcetc - but while i do watch a fair amount of Youtube.. i'm not sure i get that much from it.

More over, i'm constantly of the defensive with it. If i click on an impulse video -- aka one i watch guiltily but would rather not make a habit out of it -- Youtube disregards other videos i'd much rather watch and now gives me repeated videos of that one thing. I open a fair bit of stuff in Incognito just to avoid Youtube polluting my feed.

I think i'd happily pay $3/m for what i get. But generally it's not close to $12/m for me, especially when i don't feel like it's working for me.

You watch 50 hours a month. I watch maybe 30 minutes. So it makes a lot more sense and a better value to you, obviously. Would you still be keen to pay if it were say, charge by the hour? I'd probably sign up for something like that, as either my cost would be negligible, or yours would skyrocket.

In the U.K. YouTube is £16 a month — that’s $20 a month.

I use YouTube far less than Netflix, Disney, Amazon, bbc, all of which are cheaper. Many YouTube videos come with burnt in adverts too.

yeah I'm done with Linus Tech Tips videos for that reason. Knowing them, their Floatplane (YouTube/Twitch competitor) platform has the "after this segue... from our sponsor!" bits edited out. Like even they know YouTube is dying.

> Like even they know YouTube is dying

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion. Of course Floatplane subscribers get the sponsorships edited out, that's the benefit of being a sponsor.

LTT was worried about their Youtube dependence, so created Floatplane. The fact of the matter is they wouldn't be in existence without Youtube and would probably die, even with Floatplane now existing.

There's no evidence anywhere that Youtube is dying.

The advent of competitors isn’t evidence? Why would they spend millions to build an entire YouTube competitor?

I’m not sure how you can say “YouTube isn’t dying” and “LTT is worried about relying on YouTube” in the same breath. Linus was always complaining about YouTube from a creator’s POV.

It would be a foolish person to build their company in the success of another than have no say about.

The local farmer sells to 10 shops. Each shop buys from 10 farmers.

Sure you can hitch your wagon. It’s a massive risk, sometimes unavoidable. It makes perfect sense to diversify your supply chain.

It’s £11.99/month if you subscribe via the website, instead of an iOS subscription.

YouTube Music on its own is $10/mo, so if you were going to subscribe to that then YouTube Premium is really only $2/mo extra, which is a bargain in my eyes.

Gatekeeping a thread about YouTube/subscription services because I don't watch YouTube is asinine.

I suppose ultimately I am arguing that $12/month isn't "cheap" because it's really "$12/month and whatever time you spend on it". I used to dump so much free time into things like TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, and I am grateful their leadership answers to greedy millionaire/billionaire venture capitalists who can barely tell a mouse and keyboard apart.

Paying $12 a month to get health advice from Youtube sure seems like a problem that'll sort itself out in short order.