YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/23/20946114/google-youtube-premium-subscription-ads-pop-ups-spam-rant

by laurentdc • 7 years ago

204 176 7 years ago

Hokusai• 7 years ago

Welcome to the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3GzYcb1g8

Tech companies are an oligopoly with a few actors. Competitions do not offer enough pressure to make them change. Regulation is the only way forward if we do not want to end in a dystopia.

ianai2• 7 years ago

Agree. We need some old school style trustbusting.

pimmen2• 7 years ago

We’re fortunate to have some politicians and officials who believe in anti-trust measures in the European Union. Margrethe Vestager is the current champion and I’m glad I’m under her wing rather than her American counterpart, Ajit Pai.

I’m optimistic that regulations will come, sooner or later.

0xfaded• 7 years ago

I originally succumbed to YouTube premium because of the bundled music. I remembered thinking at the time this bundling put Spotify at a disadvantage. When for unrelated reasons I started degoogling sure enough I went straight to Spotify.

Can someone explain where the boundary here is for antitrust?

Guest42• 7 years ago

For a moment I read that as truthbusting and got a little frightened

izacus7• 7 years ago

How would antitrust here look like? It's a subscription for a direct service... what's the monopoly solution here? Ordering Google to store and serve videos for free?

cameronbrown3• 7 years ago

It's not about competition or regulation. Someone needs to find a way to drive down the cost of bandwidth.

Disclaimer in bio.

Drakim• 7 years ago

I have the feeling that if you drive down the cost of bandwidth, the businesses that rely on it will say "Thank you" and change nothing, merely pocketing the bigger margin themselves.

The number of ads isn't proportional to bandwidth cost, it's about what their research shows they can get away with.

nvrspyx3• 7 years ago

I don’t really see how the cost of bandwidth is the main factor. What would change by lowering said cost? The corporations of the oligopoly would also benefit and I feel they would just have larger margins allowing them to keep their dominance.

I’m no expert though, so I’m more curious than in disagreement.

lossolo• 7 years ago

This will not help any competition. Google has its caches and own fibers all over the world. I can go and connect now in any IX and most data centers with Google AS and exchange traffic for free, which makes Google cost of bandwidth to most consumers in developed countries almost non-existent. Good luck competing with that as a startup. Google is using this infrastructure not only for Youtube. So unless you have billions to invest in your own infrastructure, Google will always have cheaper bandwidth than you.

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

Disclaimer in bio.

Honest question: why not just write "I work for Google" instead of asking people to click through first? It's not significantly longer if that's what you're trying to avoid.

amelius2• 7 years ago

Yes, the internet promised to be a place where everybody could be an independent broadcaster, yet this turned out to be a pipe dream.

zaroth2• 7 years ago

The problem was that it’s true without it being enough.

It’s not hard to serve your own video streams. But good luck getting enough eyeballs to make it worthwhile.

valeg• 7 years ago

Regulation is the only way forward if we do not want to end in a dystopia.

but what kind of regulation? The Access Act?[0]

[0] https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968

wazoox8• 7 years ago

Good ol' friggin' Sherman Act. Break them up, all of them, to small pieces.

RKearney• 7 years ago

Even if you pay for YouTube Premium you’ll then get reoccurring pop-ups to sign up and pay for YouTube TV.

faeyanpiraat• 7 years ago

Yo’ve pulled out your wallet. Perfect time for a neat upsell.

pimmen2• 7 years ago

That’s the absolute worst. I’m paying for YouTube Premium and I hate that I get pop-ups for YouTube TV and YouTube Kids and whatnot. Peace and quiet was one of the things I paid good money for.

tialaramex• 7 years ago

I don't see these? Maybe it isn't available where I am, or maybe I set a switch that disables promos?

joegahona• 7 years ago

Maybe you guys are getting lost in multiple logins? I've had Youtube Red/Premium almost as long as it's been available, and I never see ads of any kind. I love it.

drewg123• 7 years ago

If you want to get rid of pop-ups, ads, and other annoyances, try Newpipe on Android, and SmartYouTubeTV on FireTV / Android TV

https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/

jackjeff• 7 years ago

I’d kill for a YouTube client for AppleTV or to go back to the old one before Google decide to trash the UI with immaterial design everywhere. YouTube has the worst UI on AppleTV by far.

tehwebguy3• 7 years ago

Yes, literally only useable because of the voice input on the remote / mobile app

PretzelFisch2• 7 years ago

The website, and roku channel are not much better. Seems to get worse with every update.

perlpimp• 7 years ago

you can get your whole Google account suspended by using newpipe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759

jowsie• 7 years ago

No idea how common this is, but that particular case seems to most likely be fabricated.

dastx2• 7 years ago

NewPipe has no way for you to login or any thing like that, so if your account does get suspended on this premise, then people should be way more worried about Google's practices than they are.

dastx2• 7 years ago

Also available is YouTube Vanced which is essentially the official YouTube app repackaged with privacy in mind.

mitfahrener• 7 years ago

Got youtube premium so I can watch videos on my commute. NYC subway, no wifi, no 2g,3g,4g or 5g

gruez• 7 years ago

...or use youtube-dl (or newpipe on your phone), which does the same for free

popup21• 7 years ago

+1 for youtube-dl nifty little cli

Jonnax• 7 years ago

Yeah there's a cheaper way. But like using Spotify versus ripping CDs or piracy, the convenience of the tool is the value.

Crash0v3rid3• 7 years ago

So pirating videos and not supporting creators is the solution?

I understand the complaints some folks have but this isn't the solution.

NoblePublius• 7 years ago

YouTube Premium is the best $ I pay for streaming. YouTube has incredible inde music and background play makes consuming it possible.

czottmann2• 7 years ago

I ditched the YT iOS app last night as the web interface is finally quite usable in Safari (iPad). Fullscreen works fine, quality and speed settings work fine, PIP mode works out of the box…

Both on my Pi-hole-powered internal network and my nextdns.io based mobile setup the experience is so. much. calmer. I recommend giving it a shot. If pi-hole is not an option for you, check out NextDNS. Solid tracker & ad blocking either way.

kibwen• 7 years ago

Seconded. I've never seen a single one of the popups from the OP myself, which I thought was curious until the author mentioned they were using the Android app, whereas on mobile I only use Youtube from within Firefox, which is perfectly serviceable (and apparently less annoying).

czottmann2• 7 years ago

Well, I got rid of the native iOS app because the modal nag dialogs had become so annoying that I didn't want to put up with it anymore.

concerned_user2• 7 years ago

Yes native android app gives you popup to enable premium trial once a week or so, from my experience.

perl4ever4• 7 years ago

I can't remember if it was on YouTube or not, but the other day, I wanted to watch a video about an Acura concept car, and it forced me to watch a Honda ad. I quit in disgust. People insist that online advertising works, but it's just too much to swallow any more.

alexis_fr• 7 years ago

4 ads every 12 minutes was quite common on TV. I’ve always thought Youtube would ramp it up to this level one day. It’s only a matter of time until VoD does it too (Netflix? for 7$?).

perl4ever4• 7 years ago

It's not the quantity of ads overall, it's that the content I want to watch is frequently essentially an ad anyway, and in this case it was for the same entity, and yet I can't watch it uninterrupted.

wazoox8• 7 years ago

It was quite common in the US. We Europeans always considered US TV as totally unwatchable, because of the horrible, constant ad interruption.

catalogia2• 7 years ago

With Netflix you're already hard pressed to go five minutes without product placement.

nerdponx• 7 years ago

I actually disagree with this. I am being provided 1080P video streaming into my house 24/7 with virtually no interruption. If they want to spam their premium stuff at me, that's a small price to pay.

I will complain to high heaven about misuse of personal data, but it is perfectly within their right to show pop up ads for their own premium product on the free version. I would be a lifelong subscriber if I didn't think they were abusing my data in the first place.

If there's anything I would complain about, is that the ads don't have enough variety. I see the same damn advertisements over and over. This is part of why I can't stand TV advertising either. Yes, it's patronizing and intrusive in my show, but but it's also repetitive. At least keep it interesting and tell me about some different products...

CuriousSkeptic• 7 years ago

Same here, would buy a in a second if I believed it would make me the customer.

Waterluvian2• 7 years ago

Dunno if it's a regional thing or what but the last month of Android YouTube has been just insane with ads. I used to only get video ads, then earlier this year got a little banner below the video that was about the ad that played before the video.

But now I have entire blocks of totally unrelated traditional-style ads for nothing YouTube or video related (like women's shoes) in the suggestions section.

jorvi• 7 years ago

Nope, same here. They used to have either one 5s ad or a skippable 20s+ ad. At some point they've started to roll two 5-10s ads back to back, or unskippable 10-30s ads, and only the 30s+ are skippable. The topmost video in the app is always an ad as well, in addition to all the text ads you mentioned. I get that video hosting costs beaucoup bucks but the amount of ads is getting ridiculous..

Its happening on other sites in other ways as well (either dark patterns or vast amounts of ads) and it has gotten me to the point where I actively take pleasure in extracting the maximum value for me as customer (so blocking ads, using VPN to pay in rubles or rupees, etc) as most companies these days see you as nothing but entities to suck as much profit out of as possible, with no regard for a reasonable middle ground. Sucks for them, that's a two-way street.

lokedhs• 7 years ago

It's gotten so bad that I installed Newpipe instead.

Basically I tolerated Youtube ads up to a point, but now that I'm using Newpipe instead, neither Youtube nor the creators get anything.

I wish there was a better way, since it's not pracitcal to contribute to all channel's patreons.

PretzelFisch2• 7 years ago

youtube has served me an hour + ad. The non skippable ads keep getting longer as well. But the ad AI is so bad it won't take a full watched ad as a signal, rather it keeps pushing things I want have previously skip over/ simular where they will be skipped.

arvinaminpour• 7 years ago

Most companies are trying to find the "second act" and need to bump up ad impressions and revenue until they find that next source of revenue. For Google, it's been cranking up the number of Youtube ads displayed per video and also making various changes to the way Google search results are displayed (the ads seem to blend more into the results than before). But I've definitely noticed this myself.

Waterluvian2• 7 years ago

Yeah this feels quite right with what I'm experiencing. Surely it must risk creating an opening for competitors to show up with far fewer ads.

rfwhXQ5H• 7 years ago

vanced.app

CraneWorm3• 7 years ago

I use Firefox on Android. YT app is unbearable.

equalunique• 7 years ago

YouTube Premium is worth it IMO. No adds, the ability to minimize, and downloading videos locally, all within the same app are killer features.

vinay427• 7 years ago

Even better if you have Google Play Music All Access (or whatever the premium version is called now). You get YouTube Premium included along with unlimited streaming of millions of songs.

duncan-donuts• 7 years ago

You know what? I’m not going to pay google to stop harassing me with ads. YouTube was actually usable as little as a month ago. I see so many ads now you’d think this was some sketchy app, but we’re talking about YouTube. How is the answer, “paying them $10/mo is worth it,” in the context of there being an ad problem an acceptable answer?

tehwebguy3• 7 years ago

You went to their house. They have ads there. You knew that.

falcolas3• 7 years ago

I agree it’s worth it, but for slightly different reasons. No ads, yet the creators are getting a significant amount more money for me watching their content.

It’s the easiest, and most sanity-proof way to get money to most content creators I watch.

falcolas3• 7 years ago

Oddest downvotes to date.

Nextgrid3• 7 years ago

the ability to minimize

It's sad that a basic element of computing is now considered a privilege people need to pay for.

izacus7• 7 years ago

It's sad that a basic element of computing is now considered a privilege people need to pay for.

Just like it's sad that being asked to pay the creator and service provider is now something we need to write whole articles to whine about.

How do you thing we'll get rid of personal data tracking and collection if you don't even want to pay a pittance for service you're using?

frou_dh• 7 years ago

Someone not spending money and being indignant at the same time is generally not too interesting. Ask any business operator.

fwxwi• 7 years ago

ublock origin on desktop, youtube vanced on android.

jandeboevrie• 7 years ago

YouTube Vanced or Peertube don't show ads. They do show stories, which are stupid as well. Just as the recommendations are shit lately. Just more of the same instead of new interesting things.

If I can't block ads then I'll stop using YouTube. Did for half a year when I was on ios where adblock in the app didn't work.

monkeyfacebag4• 7 years ago

I pay for YouTube premium but I'm still subjected to ads in the majority of videos I watch: the kind that are embedded by the creator directly in the video, eg, a one minute sponsored by Squarespace segment. I don't know how Google is framing YouTube premium (I get it through my Google play music subscription) but it is most assuredly not an ad-free experience.

falcolas3• 7 years ago

FWIW, the videos with sponsored content are frequently either not getting money from YouTube (such as the gaming segment), or not getting enough from the ads that do run (COPA affected and . The creators may also be futureproofing their livelyhood in fear that their segment will be the next one that YouTube demonitizes by default.

It’s not very profitable to be a content maker (outside the top .01%), and many content creators are paying a team to help them produce regular, high quality videos.

monkeyfacebag4• 7 years ago

I don't dispute any of that. I'm saying that, as a YouTube premium subscriber, I'm not clear exactly what I'm paying for. I mean, I guess fewer ads is better than more ads but I think a paid service should be able to provide me with stronger guarantees.

hddherman• 7 years ago

You might be interested in using this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

Doesn't work 100% of the time but seems to do the trick for most popular videos.

netsharc• 7 years ago

Hah, that's a cool hack. It reminds me of the folks who were editing pirated Mythbusters videos so each myth was its own continuous segment, without the recaps ("before the break, we were watching...") and.. precaps? ("Stay tuned to see what happens!")

izacus7• 7 years ago

What would a good solution for this be? Ask that creators upload a separate premium version of a video with no ads and with bigger payout for views?

brown9-2• 7 years ago

Good luck with a message to creators that they can’t do their own ads in their content.

monkeyfacebag4• 7 years ago

I doubt there's a definition of "ad" that would be feasible target on a platform like Youtube. A trailer, for example, is an ad for a movie, but I think Youtube would be harmed if all of the upcoming movie trailers were removed.

As a consumer, I find it pretty easy to distinguish between a "wanted" ad and an "annoying" ad, but I don't think there's a way to enforce rules based on user value systems if for no other reason than every user's value system is going to be distinct.

chrysoprace• 7 years ago

I see two solutions, each from a different side:

* YouTube (Google) should be enforcing that ads aren't intentionally embedded in videos (intentionally so that videos with a logo on someone's shirt or some such contentious type of "advertising" isn't subject to videos getting taken down or demonitised).

* Content Creators should be handing together to unionise (which I think they're already doing) or band together to move to a different platform. Without its content YouTube is just a video uploading platform.

aquadrop• 7 years ago

I pay for premium as well and those embedded ads bother me much less because I can always skip it manually and I understand the content creator needs to be rewarded. I much prefer embedded ads to some solution like paywalls that appeared on newspapers/news sites after growth of adblockers.

robbrown4512• 7 years ago

I've had YouTube Premium/Red for years (the only thing I pay for to watch video content), but I'm about to cancel it because they now show ads on videos if those videos are embedded in other web sites. Most of the content I watch is on other web sites that curate content, and now the benefit of YouTube Premium is gone.

tehwebguy3• 7 years ago

Can the embed detect your logged in state? Privacy settings may have changed in the browser.

robbrown4512• 7 years ago

Yes I am starting to suspect it has to do with changes in Chrome. I can't find out how to modify site settings to make it work though.

Jagat• 7 years ago

"It’s a pointless subscription that Google is trying to lazily ram down my throat instead of improving its offering,.."

It's now fashionable to shit on google on HN, but Youtube premium is one of the best investments I've made, and I'm glad google is giving that choice. How many times have I not read comments like 'give me an option to pay instead of showing me ads' on HN.

There are tons of videos on youtube that I listen to as podcasts while commuting (and there aren't enough good podcasts in that sector).

izacus7• 7 years ago

YouTube Premium is literally the service HN wants: honest payment to support a Google service costs and creators publishing on it. It's a sustainable service which actually earns more for creators than ads and data mining (at least according to last CPC values I've seen for video ads).

And yet, it seems like the author of this piece still feels entitled to complain about being asked to pay the price of service and these comments are full of people advertising products that still use the service without paying the asking price. It's like demanding that music authors just send you MP3s for free without paying for it at all.

I personally hope that more companies allow me to pay for their services instead of being plagued by behavioural ad tracking.

Kye• 7 years ago

No one asked for constant nag screens.

edit: HN won't let me make any more replies.

I don't know why people are fine with someone accusing me of entitlement with no basis, while me calling them out on it with a level of civility they did not deserve is out of bounds.

I don't understand this place. This is ridiculous.

danShumway2• 7 years ago

It's the opposite for me. I've been paying for Youtube Premium since back when they were calling it Youtube Red, and the nag screens haven't gone away. When I'm signed in, Youtube still sticks up banners that remind me that I have exclusive content I don't care about. I still get reminders about all of the "cool" features I don't want. I still have to jump through hoops to archive content that I care about. I'm paying money for exactly 2 reasons:

- I want to support creators.

- I want to watch #%!@X videos without distractions.

Youtube Red only helps me with the first point -- I can support creators, but it's even questionable there whether I'd be having a bigger impact by directly giving money on Patreon. In the meantime, I'm still paying money for Youtube Premium right now and I've gotten to the point where I don't use it, because the experience with an adblocker and proxies is better than the experience I pay for.

At some point, when someone is paying money for a service and then going out of their way to avoid signing into their account or using the thing they pay for, you have to question whether the service is designed well.

dawnerd• 7 years ago

Hey did you know you can get notified? Just hit that bell icon.

Every single damn video if it’s not the YouTube app telling me it’s the creator, or both.

viraptor• 7 years ago

and the nag screens haven't gone away

I'm also there since Youtube Red and I'm not sure what you mean. I've never seen a nag screen so far. I wonder if it's some bug, or some kind of targeting failure?

gumby• 7 years ago

It may be that you aren't using many / any of the premium features and they are afraid you might cancel because you don't understand all the fabulous advantages you're getting by paying. Sort of like, if you purchased the winter package for your car the entertainment system were to boot up reminding you that your rear view mirrors are heated.

I hope it's clear I'm not defending them; just theorizing what sort of hamfisted reasoning might have gone into deciding to spam you.

yborg• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, you will pay and still get the behavioral ad tracking. There was a time when cable television's premise was "TV with no commercials!"

amelius2• 7 years ago

Back in the old days, a telephone company listening in on conversations of their customers was a deadly sin. Perhaps we should just classify these big (e.g. >1M users) media companies as telecommunications companies (which they are), and let the law deal with them. This would also solve issues involving the network effect.

wazoox8• 7 years ago

No, it's literally the service a monopolist would naturally come to after it killed all competition. First, kill everyone in the field by offering a service for less than what it costs; once the field has been cleared, begin harassing people for their money. This is absolutely despicable. Break Google up, it's way past time.

zamadatix2• 7 years ago

Why can't we want to break up Google and fund creators without ads at the same time? Neither of these preclude the other.

izacus7• 7 years ago

I fail to follow your logic? What's the scenario you want here: for Google to continue providing YouTube for free or that they rise prices so other competition can be cheaper?

What's your endgoal with the breakup?

zamadatix2• 7 years ago

I switched to YouTube Premium recently and the one downside is it largely only pays for the delivery. The actual creator content itself seems to be inundated with in video ads or promotions. For something that costs nearly the same as the Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN bundle it's a bit disappointing I can't purchase what I really want to purchase still.

That being said it's a step in the right direction and that's the reason I decided to switch.

cptskippy5• 7 years ago

YouTube Premium is literally the service HN wants: honest payment to support a Google service costs and creators publishing on it

Except that's not what it is. They've bundled Ad Free with YouTube Music and YouTube Originals, which I personally have no interest in. How much of that ridiculous price is going to the production of that original content and music licensing fees?

$15 a month is a big ask when I see zero value in 2/3 of the offer.

Bundling is what is driving cord cutting and piracy. People don't want to subsidize crap they don't want and didn't ask for.

\* I would probably think differently if I was a YouTube Red or Music subscriber and they gave me access to Ad Free and Originals as bonus for my subscription fee but I'm not and don't want to be.

Amazon Prime did something similar but by bundling Video and Music but I was already paying for Prime just for the free shipping so it was just extra.

bestnameever• 7 years ago

Amazon Prime did something similar but by bundling Video and Music but I was already paying for Prime just for the free shipping so it was just extra.

This is an interesting statement. Users are paying for Amazon Prime Video and Music one way or the other. I'd happily pay $79.00 instead of the current $120.00 a year for Amazon Prime without the Video and Music.

lonelappde• 7 years ago

Why do you care how they spend your fare? You should care if you are getting a fair value for your fare.

blibble• 7 years ago

if the app didn't constantly pop up modal dialogs trying to trick me into signing up for the trial I might have considered it

however I refuse to reward that sort of dark pattern, and yesterday created a new google account for youtube and installed youtube vanced on my phone

matheusmoreira2• 7 years ago

It's like demanding that music authors just send you MP3s for free without paying for it at all.

That's exactly what should happen. Creators need to figure out how to get paid before the work is created. They need to get paid for the work of creating, not for the end result which should be public domain.

They should also publish a lossless FLAC instead of an MP3.

I personally hope that more companies allow me to pay for their services instead of being plagued by behavioural ad tracking.

You are still being tracked. Also, the service isn't likely to remain free of ads. Cable TV was once ad-free but the opportunity to milk even more money out the audience was just too irresistible to pass up:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

CamelCaseName• 7 years ago

Creators need to figure out how to get paid before the work is created. They need to get paid for the work of creating

This has downsides too. After all, what are those paying for the creation getting in return?

I imagine creators, such as musicians, already get paid for the work of creating... In the form of embedded advertising.

Listen to any top song and you'll be barraged by the names of luxury brands.

Is this really the ideal world of music?

trashface• 7 years ago

Google isn't going to stop tracking my every move and building/selling a secret advertising profile on me just because I pay them a monthly fee.

on_and_off• 7 years ago

This is why I have been paying for this since a while ago when it was called .. youtube red or something ? This has has so many names that I lost count.

Anyway, for the standard 10$ a month price, I get Play Music + Youtube without ads (while supporting creators and paying the platform for its infrastructure, unlike adblock).

Play Music is an ok music streaming solution. It has all the features I expect from such a service + I can import (and export) my own albums. This is the killer feature for me.

Getting Youtube without ads was just a cherry on top for me. At the time I was living in Europe where there were anyway not that many ads on Youtube.

It is very valuable now that I live in the USA where there are ads everywhere.

Now, all I want is :

- for Google not to fuck this up. I fear that Youtube Music will be a disaster and that I will lose some of the features I care about in Play Music. The very long transition is giving me some hope that they have enough time to carry things over.. but I am not too optimistic.

- I was going to write to remove tracking but I don't know how I feel about it. All the streaming services I know do track what you listen to in order to give you good suggestions and automixes. So that's pretty much a feature at this point and a way to discover new artists, although there is a tunnel effect in place. So as long as that info does not leave Youtube, I guess I am relatively fine with it until proven otherwise.

Doxin• 7 years ago

Back when I was deciding between spotify and youtube red (which included youtube music if I recall correctly) there was no way for me to give them my money, so I went with spotify. I haven't the foggiest if they allow reasonable non-creditcard payment these days, but they removed the automatically generated music playlist anyways so I'll stick with spotify as I can't be arsed to re-figure out how youtube works for half of my use cases.

Protip for big multinationals trying to get international customers for their service: Not everyone has a credit card, or a desire to get one specifically to pay you. Provide alternative payment methods.

TheCapeGreek• 7 years ago

I don't know if I'm missing some important detail here (correct me if so), but just my experience in the web over the last decade:

Any form asking for a credit card accepts debit cards. Same format anyway.

astral303• 7 years ago

The author throws Apple under the bus pointing out a forced full screen modal message advertising Apple TV+. IMO this is an unfair comparison, because the Apple TV+ modal ad came up exactly once and never again (once per Apple TV device). Whereas YouTube is nagging and interrupting the author every day, multiple times a day.

I wish there was a YouTube alternative. I dislike their Apple TV YouTube app enough that I loathe to explore videos. Yet the content creators I watch only distribute on YouTube. I won’t pay for YouTube Premium because I know the quality of the app is still the poor same.

SebastianKra• 7 years ago

I use RSS to keep track of my subscriptions and Invidio.us to watch them.

RSS is IMO waaay better than the sub-box because they are in the same place as all my other news.

Invidio.us doesn't have the best interface, but it offers all the necessary features and let's me do picture-in-picture on iPad.

abruzzi• 7 years ago

On the other hand, Apple does spam me with an ad for Apple Music every couple of weeks. It happens when I launch the music app on my phone.

wazoox8• 7 years ago

I use NewPipe on mobile. No nagging pop-ups, background play, free software.

htk• 7 years ago

I’m a premium subscriber but I do agree that the pop-ups on non-paying users are too much. It’s a poor proposition to make users subscribe to your service to get rid of annoying pop-ups. It’s like an airline company telling customers to pay a fee to get rid of spikes on their seats.

But I also think the shrill tone of the article diminishes the message.

chihuahua2• 7 years ago

I'm using Youtube via Chrome browser with UBlock Origin. I can't remember seeing even a single ad in several years. I'm amazed that Youtube has not figured out how to prevent this, but at the moment it's a fantastic experience.

abraxas• 7 years ago

To each their own but YouTube premium is one of the few subscription services where I feel I get my money's worth. YouTube's content library drawfs everyone else's and I use it a ton for education as well as entertainment. So much so I think I'm going to cancel Netflix as it gets too little use to justify its price in my house. YouTube on the other hand is wildly more popular in my family.

TacoToni• 7 years ago

I'm sure someone already mentioned this, but I would pay for YouTube premium at a lower price just to remove ads. I have no interest in their music service.

jsnell• 7 years ago

That's what YouTube Red was. Did you subscribe to it?

If you did, why aren't you now grandfathered into YouTube Premium at that old price?

If you didn't, why not? It was after all exactly the product you now claim to have wanted.

Marsymars3• 7 years ago

If you didn't, why not?

Not the poster you asked the question to originally, but YouTube Red was never available in Canada.

monkeycantype• 7 years ago

The edge YT has over its competitor music streaming providers is that I get access to both licensed and blatantly pirated material. I’ve been listening to 70s Japanese Rock, Apple Music has v little, YT has everything, none of what I’m listening to is licensed.

CraneWorm3• 7 years ago

Get background play with YouTube Premium.

Are you shitting me? I get background play with Firefox...

Also, I value my mobile transfer limits so... youtuble-dl it is.

guu• 7 years ago

For those annoyed by the YouTube app or website bloat: https://invidio.us is an AGPL alternative front end for YouTube that truly feels premium. It doesn’t have pop up ads and even plays videos without javascript.

Source is here: https://github.com/omarroth/invidious

martin1b• 7 years ago

I agree with every word in this article. I understand adverts but being hit on the head with the google advertising tack hammer at every view is annoying. Makes me want to look for a new platform.

YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

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