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Recently, YouTube Red was launched. It’s a subscription service in the same vein of Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Spotify. You pay them money (for youtube red it’s $12.99 a month, starting with a month long free trial) you get ad-free access to YouTube content, including exclusive content. In addition, you can save playlists offline, or even play videos in the background, even while opening other apps on your mobile devices. Sounds fair enough, right?
Well, people are pretty divided on this subject.
Some YouTubers, such as Pewdiepie, recently weighed in on the subject, arguing that YouTube Red pretty much exists to counter adblock, which many people use to block ads on the Internet. He claims that adblock is contributing to the loss of income for the website, as well as to the loss of ad based income for YouTubers themselves. Other YouTubers essentially agree that the existence of the paid subscription service is necessary in order to keep the website in tact. The channel supdaily06 pointed out that for higher quality content, there does come a price. You pay for higher quality exclusive content in which you can enjoy anywhere at anytime, ad free, and the creators get a chunk of the profits (though no one knows for sure how much of a chunk they will receive quite yet).
Other folks don’t like it much at all. Concerns especially popped up for users when content from Japan was blocked thanks to YouTube Red, in addition to some gaming videos being blocked in the United states and ESPN having to remove its content from the website thanks to the service, elevating concerns that creators that don’t comply with YouTube Red will have their videos either blocked or pulled. It raises questions about the future of the service, and if we’ll see any more incidents such as these in the near and distant future.
In the end, it’s really up to the user whether this is worth it or not. So far, aside from a few isolated (but nevertheless concerning) incidents, YouTube seems pretty much the same on the free side, but given the fact the service just launched, one can only hope that the potential problems that will surely arise in the coming months with the service are not terribly large. In addition, some folks just aren’t going to want to spend $10-$13 a month on subscription services. That’s extra money out of people’s pockets that they’ll want to keep. That’s just a fact.
On the positive side, the subscription service really does have something to offer the user that’s on the fence. The new service offers really appealing services and the promise of significantly better content if you pay for it, and it helps the channels we know and love supplement their income, and we all have to make money somehow in this world. Regardless of how much of a better experience it offers, however, it’s going to be hard to convince some people that the content is worth it, especially considering they’ve used the service free for years on end.
So what do you think of YouTube’s new service? Do you love it or hate it? Comment and let me know what you think in the comments below!