Google: Give us cash or we'll poke YouTube ads into your eyeballs Google is planning to launch a subscription service for YouTube, offering viewers the opportunity to avoid advertisements for a monthly fee. In an email sent to vid makers YouTube Partners by the YouTube team the Chocolate Factory's video service is set to roll out a subscription service which will offer "fans an ads-free …
It is something adblock can do you will be pleased to learn.
If youtube do move to block adblock then I'll cheerfully stop using them - I don't watch much on there in any case. El reg on the other hand I always feel slightly guilty about adblocking, but there's no subscription here.
Did you trawl every one of the video partners to find that any might be a bit rude?
A subscription service so I can watch the music videos I like without getting some stunningly annoying, completely irrelevant adverts aimed at some spotty, scrawny little oik half my age?
SIGN ME UP.
Relevance is very important. I get somewhat miffed with the ads on Spotify. I don't object to ads per se, after all they do have to get the money to pay a pittance to the artists from somewhere, but why can't they find some relevant ads? If I'm listening to a load of odd classical and celticy folk music, why would they ever think I might be interested in some total crap aimed at the tone-deaf yoof market? Surely if they offered appropriate ads I might be more inclined to click on them, and they could then charge more for the ad spot.
The trouble is, you will then be on the receiving end of Amazon's crap advertising, whereby you will be pursued by ads for the latest thing you just bought/looked at before buying elsewhere and are no longer interested in buying. The only difference between Amazon ads and a vacuum cleaner is that you have to plug in a vacuum cleaner for it to suck.
If you subscribe to Google Play Music (£7.99/mo) then you don't get ads on the music videos anyway.
As has been pointed out by NerdCubed, the subscription model means creators are much less likely to link to other similar Youtube videos as this will be reducing their own payments.
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I would POSSIBLY consider this on the condition that the channels that I watch get a much larger cut of the money than Google do. However, given that only pewdiepie makes anything worthwhile even from ads these days, I can't imagine a sub would be different for anyone else than being (blocked) ad supported. Other than Google themselves of course.
Also, has anyone else noticed that it's really hard to find new channels to watch these days since the multiple awful layout changes?
Subscribers can watch offline. I don't pay for a big data allowance, so having playlists of pretty much anything I fancy to play in the car suits me. I'm on the music beta.
If it's £10 or less for this new doohickey, I'll be signing up. Hate ADs, but too guilt ridden to use Adblock - the channels I watch put in lots of effort to create top quality stuff. Supposedly the Green brothers (for instance) have spent $4m on production and achieved only $2m in AD revenue.
A nice step in the right direction.
Next up, I want an easy to use monthly subscription option for channels I want to support - like Twitch TV's subscribers. Entirely voluntary, doesn't affect the content in any way, but allows you to easily show support to a channel. The Fan Funding/Tip Jar concept is a nice one, but they need an option for recurring payments, and also need to roll it out further afield than USA/Mexico/Japan/Australia.
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