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.

Comments

pay money for youtube?

[alen]

is this november fools?

who is going to pay money for russian driving and ice bucket challenge videos?

Re:pay money for youtube?

[ninjacheeseburger]

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.

Re: pay money for youtube?

[jxander]

I trust that the community at large will always be one step ahead of youtube.

If they make ads harder to block, people will write better software to block the new ads. Currently ABP is a one stop shop, but if I had to install a separate "YouTube Adblock" extension, I certainly would.

Or just stop using youtube. There are much better things in life than staring blankly at the screen.

Re:This is new?

[alen]

that's to separate dumb teens from their money with teen vlogger stars

Now you see them, now you don't

[DumbSwede]

Umm, more power to them I guess. So for money I get to skip the adds, or I don’t have to see them at all? Seems unclear. Most of what my wife watches only requires a 5 second wait before allowing a skip. I expect that wait will skyrocket if subscription fees don’t bring in what marketing thinks they should.

From TFA:

She did say YouTube would continue to offer the option of music videos with ads for those who don’t want to pay.

Seems to suggest other previously commerical supported feeds might no longer be available to non subscribers.

All and all sounds like a bumpy road ahead.

Ads always load fine

[Russ1642]

Ads, even full top quality HD, load up just fine. Then when your video is actually supposed to play you just get that stupid waiting symbol. Then the video starts to play and just as it's getting to a good part it pauses while it loads again then rapidly skips the part you actually wanted to see. Maybe, just maybe, YouTube could make their site not suck before asking people to pay for it.

Re:Ads always load fine

[operagost]

It makes Real Player BUFFERING look fantastic.

Re:Ads always load fine

[sound vision]

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.

Re:Ads always load fine

[lgw]

It's not about the pipe at all. YouTube has issues completely unrelated to sending the bits the last hop to your PC. That's why they're "back-end" issues.

YouTube's architecture is fairly complicated, with many places where things can go wrong. I can't know where the problem is when a video won't start playing - could be a problem in the CDN, could be a bad server somewhere behind a load balancer, could be the storage used for the video shit the bed, could be a lot of things that have nothing to do with ISPs or bandwidth.

High-scale systems have problems like this all the time - not outages, but some things fail for some customers, and if the impact is small enough, it can take quite some time before someone's pager goes off. When it happens frequently (especially if it takes a long time for a human to intervene), that's a serious problem with the system.

Re:Ads always load fine

[stms]

Try using a plugin to enable HTML5 video if you're using Firefox. It works much better if you don't have much bandwidth. It consumes a bit more computational resources than Flash Player so your mileage may very.

Ad free...until they reach critical mass

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> I'd happily pay a higher monthly fee not to have the ads

You must be new to the planet. Remember when the promise of cable TV was "you pay for it, so it's ad-free!" Once YouTube has a critical population writing monthly checks for content, they'll surely add the ads back in.

Re:Ad-enabled music videos?

[ganjadude]

ads??? i havent seen ads on youtube in forever. granted i know what adblockplus is

Re:Ad-enabled music videos?

[sound vision]

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.

you know it's coming...

[funkymonkjay]

enjoy adblockers while it lasts. you know they'll embed the ads right in to the stream. then we'll have to resort to some dvr like client to fast forward.

I won't pay for YouTube

[koolphoto]

I'd rather watch the ads. Though, annoying, I don't wait long. I don't need to pay another subscription service especially YouTube. I'd rather spend it on Hulu+ and Netflix.

Price needs to be realistic (low)

[timmyf2371]

For this to work and reach a mass market, the price needs to be (i) realistic and (ii) generate an impulse purchase.

There are too many subscription services out there; everyone wants their £5 per month or £7.99 per month or £9.99 per month, and it all adds up. I think an ad-free YouTube at £1.99 per month would entice a lot of people. Any more would probably not be worth it.

BTW, Adblock is great and I love it. But it doesn't stop the adverts which sometimes play before a video when I'm using the YouTube app on my iPhone.