I have a feeling that this is a "Kinect" moment for Google and they'll reverse the decision in a few days.
The potential backlash is just too big, if you don't sign up you do not get revenue from the views that will push pretty much any YT contributor to sign the deal if the amount of YT subscribers gets even to single digits as a percentage of the total YT userbase.
Not all views are equal already, views from non-western countries generate little to no revenue as they either do not show ads at all or at a very low rate, the people that do generate ad revenue are people from countries that most likely won't mind getting the subscription and can afford it so even a small percentage of them moving to YTRed can have a drastic effect on the revenue of YT contributors which will force them to sign.
So option 7 and the reasonable one will be show videos, there's almost no loss for YT (many ISP's cache YT videos to save money which reduces YT bandwidth costs) but don't give money to contributors, they already don't get money if people use adblock, why would this be any different?
I'm reasonably certain that subscription paying viewers will earn the creators more per user than US-based free/ad customers, as is the case for Spotify.
This feels more like a 'we are switching, it will benefit everyone, but everyone needs to be on board or this wont work' move.
The potential backlash is just too big, if you don't sign up you do not get revenue from the views that will push pretty much any YT contributor to sign the deal if the amount of YT subscribers gets even to single digits as a percentage of the total YT userbase.
Not all views are equal already, views from non-western countries generate little to no revenue as they either do not show ads at all or at a very low rate, the people that do generate ad revenue are people from countries that most likely won't mind getting the subscription and can afford it so even a small percentage of them moving to YTRed can have a drastic effect on the revenue of YT contributors which will force them to sign.
So option 7 and the reasonable one will be show videos, there's almost no loss for YT (many ISP's cache YT videos to save money which reduces YT bandwidth costs) but don't give money to contributors, they already don't get money if people use adblock, why would this be any different?