I didn't go anywhere. I spend a lot of time on YouTube and enjoy the service immensely. Also, YouTube Music is my main streaming source. And yeah, I pay for both, every month. It's worth it to me. YMMV.
I'm happy it works for you but unless no tracking/privacy violations is included in their subscription model this will not work for a lot of people here.
Same, privacy concerns are huge for me. Also, there’s no way I’m paying $18.99 a month for it, that’s comically expensive. It’s the same as Netflix’s top tier plan, and at least Netflix has the expense of producing their own content to (attempt) to justify that cost.
I run a lemmy server and nobody pays anything to use it. It a public service by me for anyone.
Just because some company hasnt figured out how to do it doesnt mean something cannot exist for the good of the public run by members of the public.
Im not interested in conforming to imposed problems personally. Im interested in building resilient systems. That was why we invented technology as humans to begin with. Otherwise whats the point.
Video bandwidth is expensive. Plus YouTube pays the creators too for producing the content. I subscribe to YouTube, and haven’t had a real TV subscription in years. Totally still saving money. In terms of hours per dollar per month, it’s gotta be pennies for me. Plus YouTube music and downloading to my phone to save data is kinda nice too.
I started paying for Google music when it started because I didn't like Spotify. Now I've been paying for so long it doesn't make sense to move away. When they implementet YT premium, I was hooked. I haven't seen an ad in years.
Also, streaming music and video is also way more data intensive, I wouldn't expect the random good Samaritan to pay the server costs for me. Yeah ads suck, but I don't see it as such a crazy thing to pay for not to have. Two decades ago you'd pay for cable and still get ads.
I don't approve of Google blocking adblockers because I'm sure it doesn't hurt their bottom line that much, but I also don't blame them.
The issue is 10 minutes x 5 ads for a 10 minute video. In what universe is this ok? I was ok with 1short ad at the start of the video but now they also randomly show up. Face it, Google is simply greedy. They know the jig is up and is cashing out as long as possible before it crashes.
Google screwed up like a lot of companies do. YouTube was never profitable to run. They were just burning through cash to keep the lights on and become the number one video host online.
Internally there became a mandate to try and turn it into a profit making machine and the advertisers caught wind so they stepped in with their demands knowing that they were going to be the source of the profits. This is where the content restrictions started to happen as videos needed to become ad friendly.
I wish YouTube would have figured out another path to help provide the service and pay video creators. At least with Premium you don’t get ads and Sponsor Skip means you don’t see embedded VPN and game sponsors.