The amount of downvotes on comments trying to help people not get price gouged and comments supporting these subscription price increases shows me just how many corporate shills are actually out there. No wonder these corps keep getting away with this bullshit.
Edit: Wow so many people took personal offense to this…almost like it they know it’s true but are afraid to admit it. Everyone is hurting financially right now, some more than others. Yet year over year, the prices keep going up even with record inflation and record profits. Keep shilling folks, enjoy emptying your wallets for the millionaires while you struggle.
I’m not going to defend the price increase, but a lot of comments in here are just aimless hatred of the idea of paying anything, ever.
Pound for pound, YouTube Premium has been a decent deal at $10. Has been. This is pushing it, but there’s a lot of comments that seem absolutely indignant at the idea of paying YouTube period (and by extension the content creators).
There’s got to be some room for nuance here. The internet is plagued by advertising and paywalls, yes, but it can also not exist without them, so we find some middle ground.
Poeple think they are sharing their enormous profits with creators. Maybe they get a few bucks from the billions.
It’s surprising to me. First moment I’ve thought maybe Lemmy is a worse place to be. Is there really that many astroturfing trolls here? Yikes.
Yet year over year, the prices keep going up even with record inflation
Well yeh, that’s what inflation is…
I don’t understand what shilling will earn for these people. The corps don’t care about you. They never will and never have. Do these shills think there’s some comfy bonus to be gained if they wave their flag around in support of greedy practices?
I think what you are seeing here so far is the organic result of those dumb enough to pay this kind of money for youtube being personally offended and defending their bad decisions.
We will get there but I’m not sure that this platform is large enough to be a major target for corpo bots just yet. Just dummies.
I like how you can insult people by calling them a shill because they support youtube premium, but if I insult you, mods delete me comment. Nice double standards. You are a child who thinks they are entitled.
Removed by mod
Ya how dare people actually pay for a platform that hosts billions of videos and streams to billions of users essentially lag free and is actually decent and shares revenue with it’s content creators. /s
Things cost money. You don’t have to be a corporate shill to not expect everything to be free, you just have to be an adult.
Google is one of the richest companies in the world.
Ok? And? They aren’t a charity and don’t owe you free video hosting services.
EDIT: I find it hilarious that point out the fact that you aren’t entitled to free hosting services is getting down voted. Lmao how old are the people here?
Dude they sell our data to advertisers and big data for profit. The least they can do is provide some services for us for the amount of analytics they collect from us on a daily basis.
Dude, they ARE the advertiser. That’s Google’s main business. They have no incentive to export ANY of your account data to 3rd parties. Business tell them what groups of people to advertise to, and their systems handle the rest. They’re open about how it all works.
As someone who’s actually worked in this industry, your data isn’t enough to pay for video hosting services to the scale youtube provides. Youtube makes up a significant chunk of all network traffic in the world. It costs money.
You’re a content creator, aren’t you? 🤣
No i am not. But I am happy to support actual content creators and the platform that they host on and gets them the most views because I spend more time on YT than I do on any other streaming platform.
They were already being paid and profitable, both from direct cash and ad revenue, but that doesn’t ever seem to be enough.
You are free to disagree with their pricing and cancel a subscription if you have one. That’s how the free market works.
“Free market works” is by itself a very questionable statement.
But there sure are some more options beyond that. Although some people think we shouldn’t be free to pick them.
You are free to pick w.e you want. That doesn’t make someone actually paying for a decent platform a corporate shill.
And I don’t owe them a subscription if I don’t agree with the value they’ve placed on it. Free market, baby. 👍
Sure, absolutely, you don’t. No one is claiming otherwise.
No but I’m not going to pay Google for anything. It’s obscene to give them even more money.
I see.
We are at fault for youtube giving shit away for free. We are responsible for youtube’s profits.
We not only need to offer content FOR FREE to youtube … but then accept that we must pay youtube for our content.
Get fucked.
I get that, but the vast majority of content creators seem to make their money with sponsorships or their own ads, so most of what google is doing is content distribution, not creation. Which makes the amount of money they want for that seem ridiculous when pretty much every other streaming service that produces high profile and expensive shows themselves is way cheaper.
This feels like your supermarket requiring entrance fees in addition to you having to pay for stuff you actually buy.
Does…. Any one, actually, you know, subscribe for YouTube?
Revanced still costs $0/month.
I don’t have the money to sustain the “everything is a subscription” simple as that. So adblockers and piracy is the only way to get media content.
I still go to the cinema, but some cinemas over here are already experimenting with subscriptions.
I’d be willing to pay for a few subscriptions if I didn’t feel like subscription services are trying to gouge me left and right. I miss the days when subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify gave me access to 90% of content online.
Contrast this with Steam, which gives me centralized convenience, seamless updates, online sync, achievements… No wonder that’s where I spend almost all of my entertainment money these days.
By the time steam chokes and shittifies we are all doomed
Software subscriptions are what really bums me out. Back in the day you could just buy your software and have it forever. Now Microsoft Office is a subscription, Adobe Photoshop is a subscription, and so much more. Nothing pisses me off more than when I install a basic app on my phone and find out it’s actually a subscription app.
Literally the only major software I can think of right now that isn’t subscription based or insanely expensive is Apple’s Final Cut Pro at $300.
This right here is one of the biggest reasons I turned to exclusively open source software, cuz man the amount of internal rage I feel any time I have to log into software is unreal, like I open the software I want it to just go
“buy your software and have it forever” was not really true other than in the very early days. everything that was in active development like office, photoshop, all the pro music software i used, was updated regularly and had an upgrade cost. my music app had a paid upgrade every year like clockwork for $150. it was essentially a subscription in all but name. yeah i could stop paying and stay with the last version forever but operating system and hardware advances would make it so those versions would stop running on newer machines eventually.
Fortunately Microsoft Office isn’t fully subscription yet, but with how much they’re pushing Office365 it’s not too surprising that people don’t seem to realize this. You can still buy a permanent license from MS directly (with some digging around to get to the correct page) or from 3rd party websites. Only downside is it locks you into the current version of Office, but for the average user (me) that’s not too much of a big deal - I can’t recall them releasing any major must have features over the past 10 years.
Just wait a few more years - Windows 11 will probably be the last “desktop” license you’ll be able to buy. Microsoft really, REALLY wants the next OS to be Windows 365 Cloud OS, run on Azure (of course) and available only via subscription.
I don’t think this will quite happen. People will lose their minds if they need to pay a subscription to use the OS that comes with their newly purchased laptops.
Unfortunately, I recall thinking the same thing about Photoshop before Adobe switched to the subscription model, but here we are.
Adobe made the switch to subscription in 2013, and their revenue the following year grew to about $4 billion. It has continued to increase every year, often by double digit percentages - revenue for 2022 was $17.6 billion, an increase of almost $2 billion over 2022. And 93% of that revenue is from subscriptions.
On a more positive note, maybe a Windows subscription model is what will finally lead to the Year of the Linux Desktop…
If you’re going to all that trouble, why not try some open source alternatives next upgrade before shelling out for another license? You might be surprised how narrow the gap between Microsoft and libre office options has become.
It’s like what cable networks did back in the day, if you want to view a channel, subscribe to it. We have come full circle.
Good lord they are going to put ads again in streaming services aren’t they
going to
Uhhhh
Wait Netflix has ads?
Well fuck me sideways
They already have.
Where? Haven’t seen one on Amazon prime, Netflix or HBO yet
Peacock, Paramount+, Hulu, and YouTube TV all have ads or ad plans. Some even just have ads on popular shows no matter the price you pay.
I’ve started getting ads for other shows and movies on Prime. I’m sure they’ll start putting other ads in front of the actual content too soon
netflix has a plan with ads! https://help.netflix.com/en/node/126831
amazon uses prime video as a hook to get you to sign up for prime membership (which itself has been steadily increasing in price).
i’d be shocked if HBO didn’t introduce an ad-supported price tier at some point in the future. that totally seems like zaslav’s MO.
I just don’t care 🙌
I seriously couldn’t give two fucks about supporting influencers or tech companies. Uploaders can pay for the infrastructure for all I care. Like people use to host websites out of passion, now everything is about profits, and politics, why would I want to support that? Why should I give two fucks about making someone else rich?
Fuck that shit. You can get cracked copies of the YouTube App that give a much better experience.
A single ticket to my local movie theater costs $16.50 for an adult ticket to a typical movie. That is already more expensive than a month of unlimited Youtube premium, even at the inflated price.
Video streaming is a consumable product. What model would you prefer. Ad supported is still available. A la carte is reasonable in theory, but doesn’t seem like it would work well for a site like youtube (even though youtube does have some a-la-carte offerings such as movies)
We used to have a movie subscription service around here. It failed because it was essentially sellings dimes for nickels.
From an actual cost perspective, a video streaming on YouTube is not even remotely the same as a movie ticket. The company selling the movie ticket has to price each ticket to ensure that the company can make enough money to cover:
- Rent/lease for the building
- Wages for employees
- Purchase/rental of movies from studios/distributors
- Purchase/rental of equipment to project movies onto screens
Google has its own costs of course, but for essentially the same thing (showing a person a video), Google’s costs are vastly lower per person, because the video they are showing you is a digital file that lives on a server, and the same file is shown to everyone who wants to view it.
Another example: A book printed on paper requires a lot of physical materials - ink, paper, cardboard, glue, etc. Selling a paper book requires machines to print the pages, trucks and trains to transport raw materials to and from factories, and to locations where they book can be sold.
For a paper book to end up in your hands, lumberjacks need to be paid to cut down trees. Miners need to be paid to dig the materials required to make ink out of the ground. Printing press operators need to be paid. Truck drivers need to be paid. Warehouse workers need to be paid. Delivery drivers need to be paid.
A Kindle ebook is a digital file that has been uploaded from the publisher directly to an Amazon server, and Amazon is certainly able to provide itself with server space at far lower than retail cost.
A brand new printed paperback version of the lastest David Baldacci novel costs $19.99 on Amazon. The Kindle version of the same book costs $14.99. Considering that the Kindle version has almost zero of the costs associated with the print version, and is literally the exact same digital file that is sent to every single person who purchases the ebook, the ebook, compared to the paper book, generates almost 100% profit with almost zero additional costs or overhead.
Given this, should an ebook cost almost as much as a real book? Should a YouTube Premium subscription cost as much as a movie ticket?
Or are two of the most profitable companies on the planet simply charging “real” prices for digital products because they have a de-facto monopoly in their respective markets, and they can basically just do whatever they want?
A) Phyical books cost way more to buy than they do to print. You are mostly paying for the writing/editing.
B) Youtube is nor charging anywhere near “real” prices for their subscription. Renting movies on youtube is generally in the $3-$5 range, far cheaper than seeing a movie in a theater. The subscription gives you unlimited access to almost their entire library of videos and music. The only physical analouge is a library, but those only exist due to government funding and a quirk of copyright law that does not apply as well in the digital realm.
I do pay for a couple subscriptions, but in the 2000s I had a subscription service for video games called GameTap and it was great except they could add and remove games on a whim and when you stop paying you lose access to all of it. So you need to remember a subscription service is ephemeral and there’s long term benefits to having the files yourself.
I pay $22 per month for the family plan because I don’t want my kids or my folks to have to be constantly inundated with ads. And I enjoy being and to play free music that is exactly the songs I want.
I was really upset when they raised the price on me, and kicked me off the grandfather plan. But in the end I decided it was still worth it.
But what the real cost to Google is here is that they have evaporated my loyalty and good will. I now see them as a company that will squeeze me when they know they can get away with it, and that my loyalty and being an early adopter means nothing to them.
That will definitely affect every future buying decision I make for future products and services.
Yeah I love Youtube Premium on the family plan. People on the internet act like there’s no benefit to it as long as Adblock and Youtube Vanced exist. Meanwhile I have an iPhone, smart TVs, and my whole family does too. My nieces and nephews don’t have to get bombarded with ads, and that’s well worth it to me. But the way they silently jacked the price up $5 per month was a total dick move that I’m not happy about. If they keep pulling this shit, it’s only a matter of time before I find another solution.
smart TVs
SmartTube can solve that issue, at least, assuming it runs any form of Android. I don’t know enough about iPhone to know if there’s an alternative there.
deleted by creator
Yes. I was an early adopter away back when their motto was “don’t be evil”, when Android devices were premium hardware at extremely low prices, when Google apps were free or super cheap.
They have changed over time. They weren’t always greedy scumbags.
I’ve had a bunch of their pixel phones and one ended up breaking. So I did a warranty exchange and they kept sending me bad phones with even more problems than the one before it. Like their refurb department doesn’t even bother fixing a bad device before sending it to their next victim. And they have zero customer service, so I was pretty much screwed. No more pixels for me.
deleted by creator
Google, like many tech companies, often promotes the idea that its services are designed with customer interest in mind. Features such as personalized search results, targeted advertising, and location-based services are promoted as benefits to the user. Google Meet, Google Classroom, and Google Docs are some tools that are particularly relevant in remote working and learning environments. Additionally, they have made efforts towards user security with two-factor authentication, safe browsing technology, and by alerting users to suspected phishing attempts.
However, Google has also been criticized for its data collection and privacy practices. Critics point out that these personalized and location-based services also mean collecting vast amounts of personal data on users, which may compromise their privacy.
So, it could be seen as a mixed bag - while Google provides expedient and useful services, concerns about data privacy and how this information is used persist. As an individual user, it’s important to stay informed about these issues in order to make choices that best serve your own interests and comfort level with privacy.
deleted by creator
As a user of Google’s services, it’s natural to be curious about why you should be concerned about data privacy. Here are some reasons:
-
Data Profiling: Google collects data from its network of services to develop a detailed profile of you. This includes your search queries and interests, websites visited, video history, location data, emails, and more. This profile helps them to predict and influence your behavior, which can be a concern if you value your privacy.
-
Targeted Advertising: A significant part of Google’s income is derived from advertising. By collecting your data, they can display hyper-targeted ads that are more likely to lead you to purchase a product or service. While this might seem beneficial, it can feel intrusive and manipulative.
-
Sharing/selling to Third parties: While Google states in its privacy policy that they do not sell your personal info, they do share your data with third-parties for reasons such as improving their services, developing new ones, and for advertising purposes.
-
Potential Data Breaches: While Google has robust security measures in place to protect user data, breaches can and do occur in the digital world. In such cases, your sensitive data could potentially be exposed to malicious parties.
-
Ethical Concerns: Some people have concerns about the sheer volume of data collected by Big Tech companies like Google, how it’s stored, whether it’s anonymized securely, etc. The concentration of so much data in the hands of a few entities raises questions about monopoly and power dynamics.
As in all things, it’s essential to weigh the convenience and benefits Google provides with these potential downsides. Using privacy-oriented alternatives or adjusting your privacy settings can help you maintain a greater level of control over your personal data.
-
deleted by creator
get caught in an automated process and have your life ruined, for starters. I’d say that’s a pretty real world consequence of letting Alphabet scan all of your photos.
Yes, there have been numerous real-world consequences associated with Google having access to people’s data. Here are a few examples:
-
Targeted Advertising: Google collects data about what you search for, what websites you visit, and other details about your online behavior in order to serve you personalized ads. Many people find this kind of targeted advertising invasive and uncomfortable.
-
Data Breaches: In the event of a data breach, the vast amount of personal data Google collects could potentially fall into the wrong hands. This could lead to identity theft, financial fraud, and other serious personal harm.
-
Loss of Privacy: Perhaps the most immediate consequence is a fundamental loss of privacy. Because Google collects so much data, it can build an extremely detailed profile of your behavior and interests. This can feel intrusive and worryingly close to surveillance.
-
Economic Disparities and Discrimination: Google can manipulate the online visibility of individuals and businesses, influencing who succeeds and who doesn’t. Poor data protection practices can lead to consumers receiving different pricing options based on their online behavior.
-
Manipulation of Political Views: User’s search data can be used to feed them tailor-made content that reinforces their existing views, potentially leading to the spread of misinformation, polarization, and manipulation of political perspectives.
-
Dependency: Over-reliance on Google’s services can limit users’ awareness and usage of alternative platforms or services, leading to over-dependency, monopolies, and less innovation.
Please remember that it also depends on how Google and other companies use and protect the collected data. It’s recommended to use privacy-enhanced tools, be aware of your digital rights and to carefully read the privacy policies of the services you use.
-
deleted by creator
Doesn’t matter to them what you think, since they can simply buy any good alternative that show up.
Basically these companies are similar to kings now. They own our services and our data. And the peasants may whine a bit but can do nothing.
At least on Lemmy we are left alone for now.
I had that for $14 a month and they were going to raise it to $22 so I said bye just at the perfect time since ReVanced released it’s manager to install.
They gave me 3 months free and it was just the same broken website without ads.
Youtube is completely broken. The algorithm doesn’t even auto play undiscovered music or videos. It’s just serving me the exact same videos I already watched. It used to be a really fun and good service that was free and now you get shit and have to pay for it.
Why would anyone pay for that?
Is anyone running the company or are they all just doing drugs?
We believe this new price reflects the value of YouTube Premium
I disagree. YouTube offers nothing without the content creators. While reason I ever started using it because TotalBiscuit made a good case for it. But I have to say, while they keep jacking up prices I don’t feel like I’m getting anything more. I never asked for YT Music and would gladly take a discount to have it removed.
Keep fucking around and find out Google, I got no issues going back to ad blockers. Whole reason I got premium was to support those I watch and all I ever hear is how Google is fucken them over.
NewPipe (mobile), FreeTube (desktop), SmartTube (TV). If you did not know about these, you’re welcome.
Newpipe is great, with a play in background mode as well.
How does it fair against LibreTube? As that’s what I’m using right now on my phone, I’ve had no issues with it thus far.
I’d say stick with what works for you. I will say that NewPipe does not even touch your Google account. You have to go to takeout to export your playlists and then import them into NewPipe. Since I’ve found all three (for all three platforms), the only way I watch YouTube now is through them. Ads are a foreign concept to me now.
A fellow libre user! What instance do you usually run as I have been having issues with instances and the videos not loading.
I use the default Kavin.rocks, works like a charm!
Newpipe on Android is tremendous.
I looked up NewPipe on the Google Play Store. First, there’s, like, four different options that are suspiciously similar. I click the one with 4.4 stars (others had, like, 2), and it says it collects and shares location data with third parties, and this data can’t be deleted?
Yeah, I’m gonna have to say no to that.
From what I know, none of the apps in the play store is the real thing, for obvious reasons: how do you think Google would allow it? Hence the ratings.
And no permissions required at all.
Oh, hell yes, that’s more like it! Thank you!
Newpipe on the google play store is a scam
NewPipe
Yeah, definitely don’t get that app from the Play Store. F-droid is a reliable source for that and many other open source android apps. You could also go straight to the source like @[email protected] mentions below.
My YouTube subscription costs 0. ublock Origin.
That’s nice. continues to enjoy effectively yt premium with NewPiped for free
My adblockers are holding steady with a 0% rise! I still ain’t paying!
Lol. Theres already no way I’d pay for YouTube premium. Raising the price more and more just entrenches that more and more.
Increasing the price of a service that is already piss-poor value for your money is incredibly smart. Who the hell is gonna pay 14$ per month just to get rid of ads?
I really wish they’d decouple it from YouTube Music. I don’t use it and if just Premium was about $10 or so I’d at least consider it.
Newpipe has me covered on my phone, and a few extensions in FF has me covered on Desktop, and I’ve already got Spotify. YouTube Premium offers me nothing, and I suspect it’s the same for a lot of people.
