194
Google confirms YouTube Music issue with Premium users hearing surprise ads
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
194 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
81611 readers
4451 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, this exact thing has already happened with other services. Hulu used to have a free ad supported tier and a paid ad free tier, for example
I guess the other difference is that YouTube isn't traditional media, the content you consume on there has no exclusivity or anything. And the creators producing it are incentivized to go where the biggest audience is (which will always be something free) to maintain relevance and gain bigger sponsorships
Something like Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc. pays for the content in advance with MAYBE some royalties (and never a lot) and they own the media produced. YouTube doesn't pay for production (they tried this and it failed horrifically) they pay a portion of the revenue that gets generated from viewership