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YouTube Considering an Ad-Free, Subscription-Based Version
Walking The Walk writes YouTube is looking at creating a paid-subscription model that would allow users to skip the ads on their videos. (A more condensed summary from CBC.) No firm date has been announced, and it sounds like tentative steps right now, but YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki did mention that ad-enabled music videos would still be offered.
People who haven't heard of adblock?
Some of us reaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly hate ads.
If Google will now be directly earning money from people subscribing to ad-free service, the AdBlock situation could change quickly. Frankly, I'm surprised Google hasn't already made the ads inseparable from the content - it's not hard. I suppose there hasn't been enough incentive for them to do that. If they bring out subscriptions, maybe they will have the incentive.
I've been very disappointed in how the YouTube video player has been getting worse on a technical level. In fact, it's been many years since it was in a state that I'd consider "good". Between videos failing halfway through, or just failing to load period, requiring a refresh... not to mention the extreme bandwidth waste while seeking. It used to be, once a video had loaded, you could seek to any point in that video and it would simply start playing the loaded video from that point. Now, it begins re-downloading the entire video, beginning at your seek point.
Youtube has come a long way recently in terms of production value some channels host shows that even surpass TV shows in terms of quality such as VGHS https://www.youtube.com/show/v... or even full length movies such as Ashens and the Quest for the game child https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Users like TotalBiscuit regularly provide high quality coverage of video games, so depending on your interests, there are defiantly videos worth paying to watch, obviously depending on prices. It would have to be pretty low to be justifiable though, a TV licence in the UK is just over £12 a month which funds multiple add free channels with for the most part high quality content.