Coincides suspiciously with the removal of uBlock on Chrome.
The timing makes this the most obvious alternative when you find yourself getting ads again - they're hoping to capture the portion of adblock users that are unwilling or unaware that they can switch off of Chrome (or continue using uBlock on chrome for the time being if you ignore their warnings). To add insult to injury, it only stops "most ads".
I say this as a long time subscriber to YouTube Music + Premium. I want to support the people, services, or content I value - and doing so directly with money is much more appealing to me than doing so through ads. But when you ask for money and still show ads, I get a particularly bad taste in my mouth. (See Netflix and Hulu's half-ad-supported tiers)
>Coincides suspiciously with the removal of uBlock on Chrome.
When was it removed? It's still on the chrome web store, and google's docs suggests they were removing manifest v2 extensions as early as October last year, so if they launched premium lite any time in the past 4 months, you could have plausibly claimed "Coincides suspiciously with the removal of uBlock on Chrome".
They recently started disabling MV3 extensions automatically but you can still enable them back in Developer Mode (probably for a few more months until the code is fully dropped). On my machine they were disabled about 3-4 days ago.
uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support fetching filter lists from the internet (all lists are hard-coded in the extension itself) so every time YouTube tweaks their ads, you need to wait (potentially, multiple days) for Google to review and approve an updated extension. Very clear incentive mismatch.
Yep, that's exactly the incentive mismatch! A great feature of (regular, non-Lite) uBlock Origin are exactly its frequently-updated "quick fixes" and "unbreak" filter lists. The former updates every 12 hours, and has been instrumental in keeping the YouTube experience smooth https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1etvawp/youtu...
In the comparison matrix Premium says Music and Music Videos Ad Free, while Lite doesn't have that checkbox so it looks like it's just music videos that'll have ads.
Having ads in your music videos is hilarious when you consider that the music video itself is basically an advertisement for the band, the band's album, the single, or the label.
And what exactly would be the point of this "advertisement" ? Since you're already listening to the artist's music ad-free, what exactly being exposed to their music will achieve in you buying something ? What is the return on investment here for the artist ? It's not like you're going to buy their album or their songs individually anyway. Merch and concert ticket ? That's nowhere near enough to offset the loss of the (already very small for the vast majority of bands) ad revenue
I've been a touring musician for over 10 years. The thing is, while streaming services provide very little money, they sill provide some. If youtube stops playing ads on music videos (and by extent stop paying artists), artists won't sell more merch, they will not sell more tickets, but they will loose that little bit of income.
Singles used to be an advertisement, they would make the artist more known and be ads for the full album. This is no longer the case since the whole album is available on youtube on release day. Public tv has shows you can watch for free, you have to sit through commercials though, why would it be different for music ? Producing an album is extremely expensive and we don't expect movie studios to distribute their movies for free because they'll sell merch. Not even children movies that are obviously made to sell toys.
I know I'm cynical, but any time there is anything vague in a plan, I just assume it will be as asymmetric as possible. I assume this will allow for a ratchet that can adjust for more ads during lean times, and maybe reduce them during the good times.
Do I think it's a good idea? Sure, but if I don't know exactly what I'm getting, I'm probably not buying.
Launched right after Chrome disables ublock Origin! Perfect timing! what are the odds!
Also Notice how it says "Most videos" are ad-free. Some will still have ads? Do they mention which ones?
In the comparison matrix between Premium and Lite it says Music and Music Videos Ad Free for premium, while Lite doesn't have that checkbox so it looks like it's just music videos that'll have ads.
Despite being a YouTube Premium user almost none of the YouTube content I watch is "ad free" since I am constantly bombarded with embedded ads for Displate, AG1, Hello Fresh, Oodoo etc.
I wish there was a Premium tier that let me auto-skip these too.
Exactly, it's sort of reasonably priced. $6.50 would be better, but it's fine.
I primarily watch YouTube on my TV and it would be great to be able to unbundle YouTube Music. They've already tried this in Denmark, but failed to advertise it, like at all. There also was no option to downgrade, you had to cancel and then sign up again.
I’d gladly pay 60% the price for Premium without Music (as I have Spotify already), and no background play is an acceptable tradeoff (as I ~never watch on my phone, and I don’t need YouTube’s permission for background play on my computer, and I don’t need background play at all on my TV).
I've never even considered Spotify because I already have YT. Modulo the social bandwagon, seems like it's the same offering and one also gives you ad-free YT, so it's been a no-brainer for me.
Makes me wonder how many people would use YTM if they only had the full premium option, but will split subscriptions across YT and Spotify with this new offering.
My Spotify account from 2013 predates paid subscriptions on YouTube (2015). I’ve played around with the YTM app, but was not convinced. Also, I don’t want any video with my music, can YTP guarantee I’ll never have my bandwidth wasted by it, and I won’t have music video-specific additions in my ears?
I've had an account since it was Google Music All Access.
YTM wants to be a peer of Spotify in the same way that Google Music was positioned against iTunes. Google Music was actually a better product if you're used to buying music (the Library section in YTM is a total afterthought). YouTube Music assumes you're streaming. It's still primarily a music player - I think you can watch music videos through it if you try, but its main purpose is audio, and the corpus it pulls music from I assume is the same as all the music streaming services. It's not like it's playing music videos and hiding the picture.
Honestly, the experience on YTM can be a little rough. It doesn't have the level of polish that Rdio had before it. But subscribing takes the ads off of YouTube, and I can deal with a slightly rougher app to also make my streaming video experience better.
YouTube ensures that this option remains as annoying as possible though, requiring constant (~weekly) updates to the NewPipe app - I assume they keep introducing tiny incompatible changes to the way video downloads work just so that NewPipe will have to keep adapting and pushing out new updates.
It's impressive the amount of work the NewPipe folks put in, both to keep up with this and to make the app more feature complete over time.
I'm pretty sure this is a re-launch of the lite tier they already had in lower income countries at a higher price, instead of making a tier for people that don't like ads and also don't use Youtube as their primary music platform.
The fact that background play is locked behind a paywall was always absurd in the first place. There's no technical explanation for why it's paywalled, Google can't play the bandwidth card because they're Google.
Ironically, YouTube is one of services where I find it's worth the money I pay for. I mean, I'd rather not pay for it sure. But when I compare it to Netflix, which charges almost $20 and I barely watch (pretty much use every 2nd or 3rd day), and then paying like $15 for YouTube premium which I consume at least 5 hours a day then it is totally worth it.
I can't find it right now, but the Financial Times ran an article a few months ago about how YouTube is the world's most useful website, period, because it has everything imaginable: Not just entertainment, but also educational content. In a real sense, YouTube is the planet's #1 teacher.
It's also the #1 bad teacher, a lot of outdated or plain wrong information abounds. And of course its major role in getting people hooked into psychologically damaging vices, "toddler surprise gift unwrapping" videos for children among many many others.
Yeah, good point. The information is scattershot unless the content makers make their content curated.
As far as outdated information goes, especially for programming knowledge, I could make the same case for college and university. Even worse in their case.
Price difference between regions are unbelievable. Kudos to Google for trying to make their premium plans obtainable for people in low income regions. For instance, I pay $4/month for the premium family plan. Youtube premium is a godsend feature. Once you have it there is no going back. Cancelled my Spotify subscription because YT Music is a decent replacement.
Nice. Def switching over to this, as I've been paying for YouTube Premium but don't use YouTube Music at all (have Apple One Sub and find Apple Music to be way better).
There's the clear greed there in keeping background and offline play in the highest tier. But the two people I know who actually pay for YouTube Premium because they can't stand the ads would probably benefit from this cheaper tier, since they tend to be watching it from their home WiFi 99% of the time.
I'd love to see someone calculate the ecological damage that has resulted from the business decision to prevent users from turning their screen off while listening to content on the official youtube app.
What percent of battery life loss in phones that can't easily have their batteries replaced is attributable to this business decision and how many millions of phones has this resulted in being sent to the landfill years before they otherwise would end up there?
For those consuming YouTube in homeopathic dosages - uBlock Origin is effective for YouTube ads in browsers (incl. mobile Firefox on Android [1]) and NewPipe is a wonderful native Android client (supports background play, downloading audio-only for podcast episodes, etc). Of course, yt-dlp for command line downloads. NewPipe sometimes breaks, so you want to use their F-Droid repo for faster updates.
Just switched to Apple TV 4k and life without SmartTube is rough. https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV helps with some of it, but the official interface is just straight trash compared to what SmartTube has accomplished.
I pay for quite a few subscriptions, to several services, mostly to avoid ads and show my appreciation to the creator of the service (or content). I'm all for the "support the creator" stuff.
However, YouTube Premium never made sense to me. Sure, I get to block YouTube's ads. But, without other ad-blocking tech, I still have to watch baked-in advertisements/sponsorships. I can't bring myself to pay for ad-free viewing, when the ad-free viewing still has half the ads.
This is a nice option for people who watch Youtube content on their TV and have no interest in music or mobile stuff -- when people watch on their FireTV, etc.
I can't see myself ever paying for Youtube. Not because it is not valuable but paying for Youtube doesn't remove any of the dark patterns. Paying for Youtube won't let me remove shorts, hide recommendations, block channels or fix the abysmal UI. Coincidentally I can and do fix all of this with uBlock so Google can stuff it. I'll pass.
YT premium is one of those things I felt kinda silly purchasing initially, but now can't imagine living without. I've essentially replaced my cable tv usage with TY premium - it is awesome. I don't use the music service or downloading so this new plan is perfect for me (spotify gang)
We all know this is just the starting point & they'll inevitably raise the price without good reason. However, this is genuinely what I had been asking for; none of the youtube music nonsense.
The (current, temporary) price is reasonable, so I'll probably give it a try.
EDIT: Nevermind, I didn't realize that background play wasn't included.
I might actually use "Downloads and background play" (for which you need the higher $$$ tier) if the YouTube app gave "Skip back 15 seconds" controls on the phone lock screen. Insane to use YouTube as a "podcast" player when the only control you have is skipping to the previous/next video.
Can you use that app for any/all YouTube videos? I want to listen to long-form video interviews and such, not just listen to music and 'actual' podcasts.
Still more expensive than signing up using an Argentinian VPN for ~2EUR/mo (they found out after 2 years and downgraded me - now I’m not paying anything anymore)
It probably would. My point is that they tried this in other markets, but did everything they could to hide the cheaper option. I think that was on purpose, as to be able to say: See, no one wants the version without YouTube Music.
Trying to hide cheaper options is a common dark pattern, simply so more users pick the higher-priced option. Only a small minority would care about a “told you so” statement, or even witness it in the first place.
Almost every big creator has sponsors in their video. This is the biggest source of revenue for large creators. Mark my words, Google will be shaking creators down for a cut of direct sponsorship money at some point.
Providing the free platform to publish content is a means to an end (advertising revenue), and this is their documented business strategy, and is very much the norm and profitable.
Despite that ^ Ad-sense rates drop, youtube decides to arbitrarily de-monetize; no human review.
do you think they should further be able to arbitrarly request payment on top of routinely arbitrarily reducing ad revenue share from the content creators work, which are already bolstering the platform?
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A somewhat exxagerated comparison/Scenario: insulin provider provides you insulin thru paid insurance.They make X money, are profitable.You get used to this routine of getting meds, paying insurance, insurance pays med provider.
Nothing changes, but insulen provider realizes you have XXX money. so wants a cut of your paycheck on TOP of insurance...
>do you think they should further be able to arbitrarly request payment on top of routinely arbitrarily reducing ad revenue share from the content creators work, which are already bolstering the platform?
Why are you moving the goalposts from "a cut of direct sponsorship money" to "arbitrarly request payment on top of routinely arbitrarily reducing ad revenue share from the content creators work"? It's fine to lament about youtube's capricious judgements on what can or can't be monetized, but there's nothing inherently "arbitrary" about asking for a cut of sponsorship revenue.
>A somewhat exxagerated comparison/Scenario: insulin provider provides you insulin thru paid insurance.They make X money, are profitable.You get used to this routine of getting meds, paying insurance, insurance pays med provider.
I don't see that happening any time soon. If anything, the current trend is the opposite, ie. brand-name drug makers charging an (inflated) amount to insurance companies, and rebating the patient's copay. There's also nothing fundamentally wrong with a company "double-dipping" (ie. charging both sides). Delivery apps charges both the restaurant and the customer, for instance.
So they brought it back? I had the old "Premium Lite" until Google decided to end it back in 2023, what the hell is wrong with Google's product decision making?
I've had premium since YT Red days, and actually FORGOT that you can't lock the screen with media playing without premium.
I now feel weird that I've been paying for basically that arbitrary feature for like 10 years and in that time, the cost has gone up, creator shares down, and the service far worse.
I started paying for YT Premium a few months ago, despite hating the Google ecosystem. Figured I'd attempt to support the creators I watch. Then I flew to Trinidad over Christmas, and YouTube had the gall to tell me Premium features aren't supported in my location. Back to pirating and adblocking every fucking thing for me after that one
The timing makes this the most obvious alternative when you find yourself getting ads again - they're hoping to capture the portion of adblock users that are unwilling or unaware that they can switch off of Chrome (or continue using uBlock on chrome for the time being if you ignore their warnings). To add insult to injury, it only stops "most ads".
I say this as a long time subscriber to YouTube Music + Premium. I want to support the people, services, or content I value - and doing so directly with money is much more appealing to me than doing so through ads. But when you ask for money and still show ads, I get a particularly bad taste in my mouth. (See Netflix and Hulu's half-ad-supported tiers)