I also block ads - BUT I do go pay for services that I use daily and get benefit from. Otherwise, the sites that I love would go away because it's not sustainable to employee people to write code and run servers without some sort of revenue.
I paid for YouTube for a few months, even though I run everything through pihole, but found that I didn't get enough value to justify the cost.
They're essentially charging 80% surplus to tack on a poor man's version of Spotify. I also don't get any other improvements to the service.
If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking.
So many small QoL improvements that would make a huge difference but instead they're too busy removing voting buttons and testing obnoxious autoplay thumbnail ads.
Hm, I have the opposite point of view: I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify when Youtube gives you the same thing for the same price and throws in ad free youtube at no extra charge.
I tried YouTube music for a few months and it felt much more spaghetti-at-the-wall than Spotify.
My opinion is that this is because of the way that Spotify applies algorithm and curation in a highly unified way.
Spotify Radio, Release Radar and Discovery playlist are just wonderful. Right down to the ordering of the lists it accounts for broad tastes, current personal trends, building accessible gateways to new genres and so on.
YouTube Music felt a bit like the video algorithm. "You watched a Minecraft video? Prepare for the avalanche of tenuously related but quite obnoxious Minecraft content"
This is was weird to read... I was a Spotify user for a rather long time, but realized that instead of getting better, recommendations got worse, ultimately becoming quite repetitive. I've since ditched them, now using Deezer. The difference is like day and night - with Deezer, if I want it to generate a playlist based on a particular song, I actually get a playlist of songs which are similar to the one I chose and not just the popular songs of bands similar to the band of the song...
As for Discover Weekly, it was the worst offender, rehashing stuff Spotify knew I had listened to.
That is strange as it's not my experience, but I don't know how the algorithm functions internally. Sadly we are at the whim of it's hits and it's misses.
I am however left to assume, based on Spotify's broad success and appeal, that it hits a bit more frequently than it misses.
Curious if you found another viable alternative. Ive gone over to using Plex/Plexamp for music sync/cloud play and its been pretty okayish on the whole. Biggest issues are my server strength and internet connection
Source: I just tried it on my phone right now. platform - iOS (don't know about others). Also, possibly not possible for all songs or countries in the world.
Really the only reason I used Spotify over YouTube Music at all was that I could use my own clients with Spotify, but once Spotify killed that it was over to YouTube music for me for my streaming usage (though I buy a lot more downloads these days than my peak spotify usage days). YouTube Music doesn't have third party clients either, but with that selling point removed, ad-free youtube was a better add-on than anything spotify offered.
I was a mopify/mopidy fan for a while but my installation fell over about a year ago and I never returned to fix it - does that no longer work at all with Spotify APIs? If so, that's definitely a huge downside to Spotify (though I have no idea if it's possible with YT music).
Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or gradual rollouts!
I have had the "continue playing from another device" feature for a good couple months at least, and it is clearly labeled as a "Premium" benefit.
Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the video that was playing on the other device shows up paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can see a desktop screenshot.
>Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or gradual rollouts!
Good A/B testing only works if you're measuring for the right things. When you get into the realms of "engagement is down but revenue generated is at $X" and X meets a goal, you're doing it in bad faith.
Given that a big fat ad thumbnail is a pre-selected item that fills half the screen on the YT TV client, we are left to assume that engagement resigned from Google a while ago.
>Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the video that was playing on the other device shows up paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can see a desktop screenshot.
This doesn't work at all for me TV -> TV. TV -> mobile device also does not work. I'd be interested to know, if you do try this with TV, whether you can get it to work.
If I ever get the chance to try it I will attempt to tell you the results, but don't hold your breath. I don't know anyone with smart TVs who would also be okay with me spending an hour messing up their settings to log in with my account.
> Good A/B testing only works if you're measuring for the right things. When you get into the realms of "engagement is down but revenue generated is at $X" and X meets a goal, you're doing it in bad faith.
Sure, and that doesn't stop people from doing it anyway. Pointless mass-gaslighting, but it makes you look busy.
> If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking.
What specifically are you looking for? e.g. was watching a video on my computer, powered that off, opened youtube on my phone and the video I was watching was most recent thing in youtube history there with my position in the video tracked. Similarly I can use my phone or laptop to control Youtube on my TV. Seems like what you're looking for is already mostly here.
(I've been a Youtube Premium subscriber for the last year or so thus far).
This is the inconvenient version of what I want that takes several menu navigations to achieve it.
'Continuity' for me means a seamless experience. For example, Netflix used to be one click and is now two or three clicks which I find to be a worse experience.
The _perfect_ version of this for me would be a "Send to device" function to send from TV to TV in different rooms. Even being able to do a quick switch via my phone as I'm in transit (like I do with Spotify) would be a worthy middleground.
I was at first super confused by this comment, because cross play has been a thing for at least a year or two without YouTube premium. You just have to enable YouTube history and it will populate across devices. I know a lot of people disabled YouTube history because it tailors the experience but it's a fair tradeoff for continuity.
YouTube history is not the seamless experience that I get from literally every other content provider charging even less money than they do. Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer, Spotify etc. all give me access to continue the last thing I was watching with a click, or even do so automatically (or have the option to). Some even have a "switch to room" function which is further empowering.
Having it hidden three menus away is archaic and not the 'continuity' I'm looking for. It's a small thing but it's a) painfully simple to implement and b) one of many of these kinds of small usability gripes that make it a lesser experience.
What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of content on YouTube you can watch without ads?
> If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking.
Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other feature needed to open the wallet.
> What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of content on YouTube you can watch without ads?
To restate what I already said: will I pay to remove ads? Yes. Will I pay the price they're asking when I compare to the value and quality of service / UX other services I pay for? No.
> Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other feature needed to open the wallet.
You're wrong, but I don't need to justify it, I stated why in the original post. There's no need to be stubborn about it.
I think this is one of the biggest sales problem for any online service. People will not think about the actual value proposal, but instead compare it to things that are extremely free or cheap. Pay for Fastmail? Why would I when Gmail is free? Pay for Kagi search? Why would I when Google is free? Pay for a newspaper subscription? Why would I when they want the same monthly price as Netflix, and I watch Netflix every night.
My question is why do you compare? Just because both things are on a computer or telephone screen? I've never heard people compare with other things they purchase. Why would I pay for this cup of coffee when I get 15 minutes of use from it, when there is so much free content online? Why would I pay for this restaurant meal when I get several months of entertainment on Netflix for the same price?
People will agonize for weeks over a $5 or $10 subscription, but outside of the digital they won't think about spending the same amount on parking, a pint of beer, etc.
Since we have the idea that everything on the computer should be free, we get upset over the slightest annoyance and cancel/decide not to continue the service. But is that rational? Like people are itching for the slightest excuse to not pay.
YouTube has an enormous amount of entertainment and also educational content, like videos on how to fix things that have personally saved me at least hundreds of dollars. It's a great value IMO.
Yeah. I'm not about to pretend I have a right to get content for free, so if the site offers a paid option to remove ads that I find obnoxious I'll take advantage of it.
A hill I’m happy to die on is: the standard of behavior appropriate for websites is you send whatever (not actively malicious or illegal) content you want, and the user renders it however they want.
If sites want to send me useful content and additional annoying content, I’ll just render the useful bit.
If sites decide they aren’t willing to send the useful bit unless enter some other sort of arrangement with them, that’s fair on their part, I’ll evaluate their other options.
I don’t feel any obligation to render ads or make their business model viable, of course it is no problem if they decide they don’t want me around as a result!
But then to circle back on the submission, do sites have any obligation to make it easy (or no harder than it initially was) for you to separate the useful from the annoying? No more than you have right (which I agree with) to render it differently to their desire, I'd argue.
I don’t think they do have that obligation. But the business model where ads are hosted in some ad network makes it pretty easy to differentiate between the good and bad content. It is a happy coincidence that this is the source of the most annoying ads generally.
Of course, business models might change. In that case my preferences probably will too, but I don’t think my reasoning will.
What if the “arrangement” is a TOS that you agree to, wherein you agree to render the content how they want? Will you stop using the site, or just ignore the TOS?
I will follow their TOS if they follow my local laws regarding advertisements and legal liability (both in term of providing honest and fully disclosed commercial messages and in cases of malware). I strongly doubt they want that deal.
I’m not a lawyer but in the US at least, from what I’ve heard TOS requires affirmative consent.
I try to quickly check if I’m agreeing to a cookie consent thing, or if it is a full TOS. But sites have so much garbage when you first show up nowadays. I’ll have to be more careful there.
Just circling back a bit, what IS advertising? I work at a relatively unknown company - it's not in anyone's daily vocabulary. It exists, but barely. It will actually die if it's not marketed, advertised.
Now I can just go, fuck it, I don't want to work for any company that advertises. Great. Where should I work?
If advertising was required, nobody would be using most open source applications. Nobody had to sell me linux.
A company website that tells me what the elevator pitch is, is advertising arguably, but is not in the same category as putting a message in something I want to consume. The difference is push vs pull. If I have to seek out your message, if I ask you a question, then it's perfectly acceptable to answer.
The second you answer a question I've never asked, you are morally repugnant and harming society as a whole. It's an inevitable slippery slope to literal mental manipulation at that point. There is no "push" advertising that can NOT go that route, as it is inherently a hostile relationship, with independent competitors.
I feel like the problem here is that we do not have an effective way to match products with consumers who may find it useful without bad actors gaming the system. Companies with a modest marketing budget try to be as targeted as possible with advertising but companies with stupidly large budgets will optimize for “engagement and enragement” which will end up with them creating obnoxious advertisements that are spammed across all channels they can regardless of relevance because they can.
It’s a sad problem that we can’t expect to solve if we continue to limit our discussion around the symptoms of the diseased advertisement industry rather than the root causes of this cancer that ruins it for everyone like your company and most other small and medium sized players.
100% agreed. If content is provided for free along side content (ads) that the site wants me to view for their own reasons, I'm under no obligation to view the content they want me to view.
If the site needs me to view content in a specific sequence, then they need to deliver it as such. Otherwise, I'll ignore (technically block) any content other than that in which I'm interested.
Everybody should have line item veto rights for code running on their computer.
if youtube wanted to make the ads unblockable, they could embed them in the primary video stream. They won't do that because then they would have to expend the computational effort of muxing the content instead of offloading it onto your computer. They want their code (javascript) to manage the ads to run on your computer and they want to be able to treat your computer as their slave.
Sadly, a Youtube Premium subscription only removes the ads. They still collect all the data about you.
Remember that you are not just paying with ad eyeballs, but also with your data. When what where how much you watch. That's nobodies business. I'd pay for not having this be in somebodys DB, ready to be exploited (and/or leaked).
And they definitely don't need to join it with data about my phone location history and my search history. Or evaluate which video I have watched for how long. Subscriptions, fine. Recent history, fine. Until I delete those, then I want them gone, not just some "delete" flag turned on.
I might consider paying for premium if this wasn’t Google we’re talking about, which I imagine is tracking your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads.
> I might consider paying for premium if this wasn’t Google we’re talking about, which I imagine is tracking your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads.
So basically, you won't pay for premium because Google makes money by serving ads, but you also use an Adblocker (assumption)?
It’s not just established companies that you know to subscribe to. How does someone set up a new company or start selling a new product without advertising. People that are perfectly reasonable about some things can be so short sighted out how society even works.
