Premium does support creators. Views from premium subscribers are worth significantly more than views from freeloaders.

Most creators have to get sponsors because youtube is very unreliable with what can be monetized, what can't, unblocking stuff after fake reports and so on.

Regardless, YouTube Premium puts way more money in creators' pockets than ads and is more reliable.

If that is so, YouTube should incentivize creators to promote YouTube premium instead of them having to advertise for dubious VPN services.

>instead of them having to advertise for dubious VPN services.

Do you think Youtube wants creators to do that? Youtube doesn't get a cut of that revenue, whereas Youtube does get a cut of regular Youtube ad revenue and Premium revenue.

Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Youtube, and am just speculating here.

> Do you think Youtube wants creators to do that?

Perhaps Google should think upon how things ended up this way then?

Like, there are some pretty clear problems with Google's approach to (at least) YouTube, and they don't seem to really want to fix them...

It wound up this way because Youtubers want more money than AdSense and Premium can give them. They earn a lot more from sponsorships than AdSense and Premium.

Are you suggesting that Youtube squeeze out more money per view than it's currently doing? How do you suggest doing this? I guess one way would be to block people from using adblockers...

Are you suggesting that Youtube is trustworthy, and creators shouldn't diversify their income sources?

I'm not saying creators shouldn't diversity their income streams. My first comment in this chain was pointing out that Youtube isn't urging creators to embed sponsorships, which copperx seemed to think Youtube was doing.

Youtube is widely known to demonetise videos and outright kill established channels based upon spurious inputs / phase of moon / etc. The recent Russell Brand stuff easily springs to mind, as does abuse of the Content ID three strikes policy by bad actors.

If the creators need their income to be resilient to demonetisation, they're forced to use options outside the Youtube system. Sponsorships, etc.

YouTube has actually started to do that with YouTube Premium referral program, but it is open right now to just very few YouTubers (FireShip being one of them).

Premium should give you an allowance to tip channels so that you know what the subscription is worth for content creators.

+1

I wouldn’t even notice the subscription costs, but at this point Google has only succeeded in alienating me. I have disproportionately negative feelings about this.

If you had willingly jumped from ad block to premium any time in the last 5 years would you still feel alienated? Reacting to google blocking ad-blockers as a reason not to subscribe to premium is just rationalizing not paying creators for content.

I personally don't even remember what ads are like on Youtube and have zero idea how they've changed since the Youtube Red days.

I had Red through my google play music subscription but then they turned music into a YouTube nonsense app that removed features I liked and tripled the costs.

I'd subscribe to YouTube premium if it didn't bundle a music subscription and associated cost.

>tripled the costs.

According to this article, when Youtube red was introduced in October 2015, it was $9.99/month. It's now $13.99/month. That's a 40% increase. If you adjust $9.99 in October 2015 for inflation to September 2023, it's $12.93/month. So inflation-adjusted, the price increased 8.2% from 2015 to now.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9566973/youtube-red-ad-f...

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9.99&year1=201...

Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Youtube.

Your calculation doesnt take into account increases in income. As mine has not increased since before 2015 then that would still be a 40% increase to me.

Are you interested in

* Increases in income of the population then vs now, which would be good for comparing the economy then vs now (e.g. median income then vs now)

* Increases in income following cohorts, which would be good for see how on average individual people's income has risen due to both the economy and gained experience (e.g. 25 year old in 2015 would be 33 now, and thus likely make more money both due to population-wide changes (e.g. inflation) and due to having more work experience)

* Increases in income of a few individual people (the example you provided)

For the first one, this page[1], says that in 2021 dollars, the median US household income was $68410, and in 2022 (also in 2021 dollars) it was $74580. So adjusting those back to their in-year dollars, that would be $61,426.62 in 2015[2] and $86,662.50 in 2023[3]. So adjusting the Youtube Red/Premium price change, to those numbers, results in Youtube Red/Premium decreasing price by 0.7% once adjusted for the US population's medium household income.

For the second one, I think adjusting for that would should the price decreasing even more. Because each individual person's experience increases, so you would expect an individual's income to increase more than the population's income.

For the third one, I don't see how it's useful to look at a few examples. One person's income might have doubled, showing the Youtube Red/Premium dropped drastically in price. Another person's income might have halved, showing Youtube Red/Premium increases drastically in price. Another person might have become unemployed, showing Youtube Red/Premium's price increased by infinity %. Another person might have gone from unemployed to having a job, showing Youtube Red/Premium's price decreases from infinity % of income to non-infinity % of income, so basically a decrease by inifnity %.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

[2] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=68410&year1=20...

[3] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=74580&year1=20...

In my local currency it used to be the equivalent of $5.83 USD, with price increases and exchange rate changes it had tripled by 2019 from when I signed up to google play music in 2013.

>when I signed up to google play music in 2013.

Google Play Music didn't remove Youtube ads back then. Youtube Red wasn't created until 2015. So you're comparing the price of something that didn't remove Youtube ads to the price of something that does remove Youtube ads. That's not a fair comparison.

I’m still grandfathered into my $7.99 per month plan. They did not raise the cost for existing subscribers. Which is the only reason I still subscribe. Google Music went away and YouTube Music is a mess so now I use Apple Music. I would not pay full price for YouTube premium but for $8 a month I can kind of justify keeping it. I kind of want to cancel it since I don’t actually use YouTube very often, but I know I’ll never be able to get back my grandfathered $8/month plan so I don’t cancel it. Yay loss aversion.

Interesting. When did you first sign up? When you first signed up, was it YouTube Red or something else? Did it remove YouTube ads?

Call me entitled, but I believe people should have a fundamental right to refuse spam (errr advertising). In fact in Canada that’s more or less a thing. Basically for the same reason I think people should have a fundamental right to not listen to propaganda, or to not eat fast food. Garbage in, garbage out. You are what you eat, you are what you read/watch.

If Youtube Premium had FEATURES I cared about, I would pay for it. I refuse to pay for the privilege of basic information hygiene.

I have a tiny channel that posts long (3-4 hours) gameplay videos and premium is 80% of my revenue. I do have mid-rolls and unskippable ads turned off, but in my experience those would only increase my ad revenue by 10-20%, i.e. premium would still be ~77% of my revenue. For reference the average view duration for my videos is ~25 minutes (premium pays by total watch time).

https://i.imgur.com/wqE2QJ2.png