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"YouTube Red" Offers Premium YouTube For $9.99 a Month, $12.99 For iOS Users (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: YouTube is launching a subscription plan in the U.S. called Red that combines ad-free videos, new original series and movies. The official blog post reads in part: "On October 28, we’re giving fans exactly what they want. Introducing YouTube Red -- a new membership designed to provide you with the ultimate YouTube experience. YouTube Red lets you enjoy videos across all of YouTube without ads, while also letting you save videos to watch offline on your phone or tablet and play videos in the background, all for $9.99 a month. Your membership extends across devices and anywhere you sign into YouTube, including our recently launched Gaming app and a brand new YouTube Music app we’re announcing today that will be available soon."
I suggest they shorten it to RedTube.
I read the internet for the articles.
With all the streaming services out there, it seems like the chance of getting any single service that is of very high quality will go down. Will we continue to see content split between many vendors with no place to get everything you want in one spot? Or worse, will we start to see these streaming services start trying to sign more and more exclusivity agreements for content to wall it off for people who use other services?
IMO, the idea of another service offering streaming movies and "new original content" is not an appetizing one. It's another subscription they are asking you to maintain, and how many are cost-cutting cord-cutters supposed to maintain at once?
I already enjoy Youtube without ads.
I have no issue with Google trying to launch a premium video service but I'm really surprised by the price point. When Netflix is $8.99 (I think in the US) and Amazon bundles its service with prime for $99 I can't imagine Google is going to be providing a service that is worth notably more than either of these quickly.
pay us...no ads...well, until we change our minds.
Your membership extends across devices and anywhere you sign into YouTube
If that's the case, why do they charge more if you use iOS devices?
youtube red... redtube
Nah, no one is going to mistype it and get a surprise.
>> YouTube to launch TubeRed, not to be confused with RedTube
My only two thoughts are 1) Are we celebrating April Fools' Day early? and 2) Or is Yahoo's CEO now running YouTube?
Either way, this is dumb and funny on many levels.
Offline video, background playback, and music/audio only are features that are relatively trivial and are frequently implemented by third party YouTube players. It seems they are launching this in a poor way by even including these as "features."
1. Sound. Make sure it is waaay too lound or waaay too soft. Keep'm guessing.
2. Make sure your camera jiggles everywhere. Clear pictures are way over rated.
3. Make sure the action takes place right near the bottom. that's where Google places its Ads so we can't see anything.
4. Put up lots of those stupid text boxes with links to stuff we should watch instead of what we wanted to watch, subscribe messages, or even better, just be fucking blank.
5. If do just one of the text boxes, make sure it's right where all the action is so people can't see.
6. If you do multiple text boxes, cover the whole screen with them. If you are really good, you can do them so hat we can't close them.
7, Make sure your Title is completely unrelated to the actual content. Misleading is even better.
8. If you do something controversial, turn off the comments so we can't tell you what a fucking ass you are.
9. If possible, have the video go for about 5 minutes before whatever we wanted to see shows up.
10. Use a thumbnail with pictures of tits. Everyone ALWAYS click on tits.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Flexget can be configured to handle them.
So they're essentially going back to Youtubes roots, just that they're charging for it.
I would argue that the "ala carte" model we're ending up with (at least 6+ streaming services) isn't really ala carte, but more like buffet style. It's all you can eat, but not every buffet serves every item you want, so you have to buy multiple buffets to get a meal.
I'd rather see them come up with per show or per movie pricing, where I pay for every episode or movie I actually watch.
I suspect that even at the inflated Amazon (non-prime) Instant or iTunes pricing, it's getting to the point that unless you have a shedload of time to watch TV, you'd probably be better off not subscribing to a streaming service at all and just buy the content you want as you watch it. At least then you'll only be paying for what you actually watch and not subsidizing (again) the equivalent of 100 channels with nothing on.
Amazon Instant and Netflix seem to have gotten worse in terms of movie selection. I use the hell out of Prime, so I don't care (as much) about it Amazon Instant, but if my kid didn't watch Netflix I would consider dropping it entirely. Plus I seem to remember where Netflix lost/didn't renew a distribution deal with somebody lately, taking away another block of content, leaving even more D grade movies. I occasionally find myself suckered into one them by the description and I'm often baffled how such awful content gets generated with what often amounts to pretty decent production values. It's like they paid for everything but writers, director and actors.
Well, that's kindof true; note the exact wording though, "applications and in-app products that you sell on Google Play". If an app uses a non-Google Play mechanism for in-app purchases, it doesn't apply, and unlike Apple they don't (last time I checked) have a policy for their app store against publishing apps that offer non-"official" methods of IAP. Apple does have such a policy, though, so app developers can't opt out of the 30% overhead.
This is why the Android Kindle app allows purchasing directly within the app, but on iOS you have to use the web browser to buy books. Amazon isn't willing to pay a 30% overhead, and on Android they can choose to forgo the provided APIs and use their own infrastructure for purchasing within apps, but they can't on iOS.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Because the only reason you all block ads is security, right? With this model, you'll totally pay the subscription so as to not have ads, right? You wouldn't continue to keep blocking ads because the real reason you do it is because you all feel self entitled to free content and just use the security/privacy of ads as a scapegoat for your behavior, right?
"..while also letting you save videos to watch offline on your phone or tablet and play videos in the background." I am already doing that before viewing any lengthy video to avoid any interruptions, I wonder if they will change the way playback is working to prevent that, rigth now I just open page info->media and viola!
It plays a sound recorded from a stringed instrument? :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.