You know, they'd probably get a tenfold increase of Premium subscribers if they just, I don't know, dropped the prices a smidge and had better regional pricing. Not everyone can or will subscribe, but Google is only making this more difficult for themselves by making it such an expensive service.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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I was a happy subscriber when I was paying $15/mo for a family plan for 6 people. I was grandfathered into a low rate for being an early adopter of Google Play Music All Access.
Then they decided that grandfathered plans no longer applied and wanted me to start paying $23/mo, a more than 50% increase, so I canceled. I switched to Spotify for the music, where I pay less, and just watch less YouTube since the ads are ridiculous.
If they kept it at $15/mo, I'd still be a subscriber. If they sold just ad-free YouTube for like $3/mo, I'd consider subscribing to that and keeping my Spotify subscription.
It costs $23/mo for fucking YouTube? And to get the same experience you get with a free browser add-on? Fuck all of that. Absolutely not.
Yep. Their excuse is that you also get YouTube music out of it, but there is no option to buy them separately.
At this point I have no interest in moving away from Spotify, so Google's gonna have to play ball if they want to get me back. It's sad, too, when it seems like every other YouTube link I visit from my phone brings up a prompt begging me to subscribe again.
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I was about to pay for it when they doubled the cost. No joke I told my wife I was going to start paying since we watch it all the time. The next week they doubled the cost. It irritated me. Not because I couldn't afford it but because they added no value with the increase. Nothing changed.
I believe there's a sort of death-loop phenom taking place here. The enshitification, you know.
How much you think the salaries of the pencil pushers are, the ones who get paid for little else but squeezing every single possible cent out of the supply/demand curve? The corporate greedsters, err the “revenue maximizers”.
Startup founders are told:
Raise your prices. You’ll triple them and only lose 10% of your customers, and it will be your worst 10% of customers.
By now just paying for adblocking alone wouldn't cut it, I have also grown accustomed to YouTube sponsorblock in my client.
Indeed, paying for YouTube would still result in loads of advertisements. So it's pretty crazy that Google (and various people) are saying you need to pay because you'd just pay and still see loads of ads.
It's not just the ads either. Automatically skipping interaction reminders, zelf promotion and non-music parts is such an improved experience that it's just too painful to go back.
I said the same thing for Reddit before the third-party apps crackdown; instead of cracking down on users who just want a better experience, they could allow third-party apps to be officially used if you have a paid/Premium subscription?
That way Google gets paid, and the users who enjoy their third-party apps can keep using them without worrying about them suddenly breaking.
That doesn't solve the privacy issue which is a good reason why people use these, but at least it partly solves the monetary issue.
It would only work if it was still a massive privacy invasion. They either feed you ads or sell your data, they're not going to offer a service that can't at least do one of those.
It's ok google, we have just as many engineers across the world that hate you and your ads and want to watch videos without your predatory pricing.
Indeed. However, they have that web DRM thing in their back pocket. The more we resist (as we should) their efforts to shut ad circumvention down, the more they'll look at web DRM I'm sure. And they'll have all large media outlets with them when they load that ball into the cannon.
Go ahead, as the only Google service I regularly interact with, I am looking for a reason to finally ditch it, so that I can say that I no longer use any Google services at all for any reason.
Even if my client couldn't block ads, I'd still keep it for the downvote button count and sponsor block.
Fuck Google and their price gouging.
No. No fucking ads, or lack of swipe controls.
Google lost the battle even in their own browser so now they're trying to save face by attacking third party apps, dumbass just don't know how to take the L.
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I uninstalled the YouTube app on my phone a long time ago. I only visit the site in an ad blocking browser.
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Does anyone know how to add my subscriptions and channels from regular YouTube to newpipe? There isn't a login feature.
You have to export your youtube data at "google takeout manager" and import it in new pipe. Also you can read about it at newpipe FAQs
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