this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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They had me as a paying customer when the Premium Light tier was a thing and just offered ad free viewing at a reasonable price. Then they got rid of that plan at the very same time they rolled out this mission to beat ad blocking plugins. That's bad faith right there. My choice now is to get a plan at at least 50% more a month with added extra crap I didn't ask for and would never use (music, etc).
So I'm not their customer anymore.
These companies clearly won't be satisfied and I'm sure a ton of their customers will just keep forking over more and more money for worse and worse service, but I'm done. I'm pulling up stakes on all streaming video platforms. Good luck to them I guess.
I was about to buy premium when the upped their prices. I would have paid for it if my wallet wasn't downstairs. The next day the jacked the prices or announced it(can't remember). It turned me off of paying for it.
I watch a lot of YouTube. But it's not worth $14+/mo and who knows if they'll increase it on a whim.
I installed ublockorigin and haven't looked back.
I'd pay $5/mo for ad free YouTube at this point. No more. Adblocking is more convenient. I have no problem watching the sponsor blocks for the channels I watch. I typically enjoy them because they are relevant to my interests.
It looks like you paid around $7.50 USD for the lite tier. At the current rate of ads per 5 minute video (where each video under 8 minutes has only one ad spot), you'd have to watch approximately 213.5 5 minute videos for YouTube to make the same amount in ad spots that they do with your subscription. I honestly think Google did away with this tier either because some percentage users were exceeding that amount of views per month, or because of greed (I'm inclined to believe both). I assume they thought that they could increase the price by doing away with that tier and forcing those users to buy the next more expensive tier because those users had become accustomed to adfree viewing and given the hellscape described by other users using the ad supporter tier, they are probably right that it did goad some users to buy the regular premium tier at $10.99 (USD). now they are raising that price to $13.99 (USD) to further that income vs ad-clicks. I think that is specific because they know there is a limit to the number of ads people will watch/what can be shoehorned into a given videos especially with the popularity of apps like Tik Tok and the short form video (similar to Vines and YouTube shorts) where adding more than one ad just doesn't work and content creators would obviously leave the platform for.
Given all of that, I can't blame you or others like you for leaving. I do think using a different front end like new pipe is a good idea. I also think using adblock origin is a good alternative. I feel the way you do about pretty much all streaming services at this point. But since I have been on the paid tier of premium at a grandfathered in $8 a month for more than a decade I'm kind of already invested and will continue to pay for the services I use.
Just figured maybe others could make a more informed decision if they knew the context.