YouTube Subscription Model And Rise Of The Online Paywall

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Anyone feel like paying to watch videos on YouTube. Anyone? I didn't think so.

Forcing someone to watch 20 seconds of an advert as they frantically hit skip in vain, is never going to end with a sale. This form of intrusive advertising just feels a fruitless exercise that doesn’t benefit anyone at all and probably enrages both parties.
 
Do people really place any value on YouTube content or am I just getting old.

Yeah. I'll kill some time there, but if I never went there again it wouldn't be much of a loss.
 
Usually when I am forced to watch an advertisement to see a video I close the window instead. If I really want to see the video I mute the advertisement and switch tabs until later when I know it is over. And no annoying me like this will never generate a sale.
 
You are just getting old... ;)

Many and I mean many people below the age of 20 watch youtube content more often than high-production made for TV content. When you dip down in the teens there is even more of a gap.

Just look for kids watching minecraft videos or vloggers that just copy kidz bop videos and see how many watches and subscribers they maintain. It isn't the small underground market that it once was.
 
Do people really place any value on YouTube content or am I just getting old.

Yeah. I'll kill some time there, but if I never went there again it wouldn't be much of a loss.
You're getting old, there's far more than cat videos. ;)

That said I think people are freaking out about this for no reason. Those who create content for YouTube won't be going behind a paywall. They need new subs to continue growing. The kind of content that goes behind a paywall is the stuff that currently gets deleted. It's going to largely be copyright type content. Regular YouTube isn't going to change. Plus even if all the big YouTubers did something that stupid, it just makes room for the smaller ones like myself to start growing as people seek free content.
 
You are just getting old... ;)

Many and I mean many people below the age of 20 watch youtube content more often than high-production made for TV content. When you dip down in the teens there is even more of a gap.

Just look for kids watching minecraft videos or vloggers that just copy kidz bop videos and see how many watches and subscribers they maintain. It isn't the small underground market that it once was.

I don't think YouTube will get all those teens and children to pay for a subscription service.
 
I don't think YouTube will get all those teens and children to pay for a subscription service.

They'll just bug their parents. I know I'm getting old because when I wanted something that cost money as a kid, I had to go find work and earn enough money to buy it. The thought of mowing a neighbor's lawn in the summer or shoveling a neighbor's driveway in the winter (or worse, shoveling out the dairy barn down the road at any time of year) has never even crossed a lot of today's kids' minds.
 
Do people really place any value on YouTube content or am I just getting old.

Yeah. I'll kill some time there, but if I never went there again it wouldn't be much of a loss.

There are some good informational videos on YouTube! I've found many good videos for working on my motorcycle, many little tricks and techniques that I never thought of. In general, if it's something I'm unfamiliar with (changing valve shims for example) I'll look on YouTube for a video first. For the valve shim change, I found 4 (at least) different vidoes on how to do it. Each had their own take on the operation.
 
I didn't mind 10 second ads, but some are over a minute long and I do as the poster above did and just open another tab or close it out altogether. I like youtube, but never going to pay for it and if that ads keep getting longer, I'll use it less often, but I do find it useful.
 
They'll just bug their parents. I know I'm getting old because when I wanted something that cost money as a kid, I had to go find work and earn enough money to buy it. The thought of mowing a neighbor's lawn in the summer or shoveling a neighbor's driveway in the winter (or worse, shoveling out the dairy barn down the road at any time of year) has never even crossed a lot of today's kids' minds.

Sounds like a parenting problem.
 
Sounds like a parenting problem.

This.

Don't approve of your child's media consumption, how much they use their phone, or how much time they spend on video games? Look to yourself as the parent first. How are you enabling this? Are your kids working to at least pay for their phone or the newest video game? If no, time to implement some better parenting techniques and teach your children the value of hard work, of cost/reward, and opportunity cost. Teach them the importance of saving.

My parents did it right. When I was growing up, I wanted a gameboy really bad. Their response? Go mow some lawns, and pay for it. $90 later, I had a gameboy. But then I wanted Pokemon Red. Well, time to shovel some walks in the winter. When I wanted a PS1, they said I needed to pick up an instrument and commit to it for at least 2 years. I did, and I still had to pay for the PS1. I learned hard work, the value of commitment, and I learned how to play an instrument to boot.

At the time, I thought it was a pain. I saw my friend's parents buying them all of these things, no questions asked, while I was out mowing lawns in 100 degree heat. But, now everything is the opposite. A lot of those kids never learned the value of work, and many of them are still living at home, going nowhere in life.
 
They'll just bug their parents. I know I'm getting old because when I wanted something that cost money as a kid, I had to go find work and earn enough money to buy it. The thought of mowing a neighbor's lawn in the summer or shoveling a neighbor's driveway in the winter (or worse, shoveling out the dairy barn down the road at any time of year) has never even crossed a lot of today's kids' minds.

Yup, but those things are available in all areas for kids.

/sarcasm

Big city - farms? Nope. Lawns? Not with this drought in California (and the hundreds of guys with leaf blowers driving around looking for work). No snow here.

yes, there is things to do for money, but its not nearly as available as it was 20 years ago.
 
Do people really place any value on YouTube content or am I just getting old.

Yeah. I'll kill some time there, but if I never went there again it wouldn't be much of a loss.

Ditto.

It IS a convenient way to share your own videos with friends, but other than that, it's just useless time wasting. I use it on occasion, but if I had to pay to use it, I would simply never use it again.

The ads are annoying enough as it is.
 
Some people making a living off uploading videos to youtube. I wouldnt say I go frequently to youtube but when i am looking for a good how to "instructions" i will use or at least check youtube if there is a video for something im trying to troubleshoot (car, vacuum, home do it yourself, etc)

Ive learned quite a bit, now i upload my own videos on how to do things that im good with and ive made $91 so far from ads. I made $30 just from a video i made on how to side load google apps to an amazon fire phone
 
I didn't mind 10 second ads, but some are over a minute long and I do as the poster above did and just open another tab or close it out altogether. I like youtube, but never going to pay for it and if that ads keep getting longer, I'll use it less often, but I do find it useful.

Personally I have found the rise of Youtube also has had some annoying side effects.

Like - for instance - if I cant figure out how to set something up in Windows because Microsoft has buried a menu option somewhere that doesn't make sense, or it is something I need to edit the registry for, in the past, googling it would result in a forum post, or an aerticle with a few screenshots. Easy to follow, done.

Now, the only way to find the information in some cases is to sit through some idiot doing a screen cast on Youtube, putting up with their annoying voice, horrible music, and time wasting, causing my to try to fast forward and rewind to get to the fucking point.

Verizon FiOS even posted my bill in video form recently. yes, I have a fucking moronic personalized video bill, the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life.

It is easy and quick to scroll down rows of text until you reach the spot of importance and stop. You can't do that in a video. You have to sit through the entire dumb thing, or try to skip to the right spot (and then skip back when you miss it, and pause as you note things down, etc, etc.

I blame the god damned millennials. I don't know how it's their fault yet, but I'm sure it is. :p
 
Some people making a living off uploading videos to youtube.

What, like this moron?

pewdiepie-south-park.png
 
Yup, but those things are available in all areas for kids.

/sarcasm

Big city - farms? Nope. Lawns? Not with this drought in California (and the hundreds of guys with leaf blowers driving around looking for work). No snow here.

yes, there is things to do for money, but its not nearly as available as it was 20 years ago.
Plenty of things available in the city as well. It's all a matter of how motivated the kid and parent are. We also didn't have Craig's list 20 years ago which makes finding odd jobs so much easier. But I suppose most parents would rather just make excuses and we will continue getting more lazy, entitled kids.
 
Plenty of things available in the city as well. It's all a matter of how motivated the kid and parent are. We also didn't have Craig's list 20 years ago which makes finding odd jobs so much easier. But I suppose most parents would rather just make excuses and we will continue getting more lazy, entitled kids.

Well, remember, parenting has changed a lot since we were kids too.

Back when I was a kid, I'd hop on my black BMX with Red cushions adorned with lightning bolts, and big red tires and explore the town I grew up in freely. As long as I was back by dinnertime, everything was OK.

These days parents get arrested if they leave anyone under 15 alone for more than 15 minutes... :p
 
Personally ... at 47, I do not really connect with a lot of the popular youtubers that make content. There are a few I like ( frankiein1080p ) along with a few VERY obscure musicians who play music via Ableton Push / Midi Controllers etc but if I had to pay for any of it, no, I don't think I would. While I like youtube I just don't want the added cost of anything else on top of all the crap I pay for already.

My GF and I do not even watch live tv anymore, we can't, commercials are horrific. We have to DVR programs we want to watch and then watch them that way so we can skip commercials.

If youtube or anyone forced me to pay or watch commercials, I just wouldn't deal with service anymore
 
I've actually noticed that YouTube isn't letting me skip commercials anymore. It causes me to not use it. YouTube content isn't worth the hassle usually.
 
I'm all for a company doing what they can to monetize their site and turn a profit. The everything-on-the-internet-should-be-pay-free-and-ad-free crowd can go eff themselves.
 
I'm all for a company doing what they can to monetize their site and turn a profit. The everything-on-the-internet-should-be-pay-free-and-ad-free crowd can go eff themselves.

It's not that everything should be free/ad free, but there is certainly a value proposition.

When people feel like they are being asked to pay for something that isn't worth money (a bunch of kids taking stupid videos) they just aren't going to watch it anymore.

They may have glanced when it was free, but if the ads get too obnoxious, or if there is a fee, then it simply is not worth it.

All that being said, I feel like the internet today is a shadow of the early days, when it was mostly geeks like ourselves with server boxes hidden away under their university desks.

Back then it was mostly hobby content. Geeks sharing information with geeks for free.

I kind of miss those days. Part of me wants to say that no one has any business expecting to make any money on the internet, that it is, and always should remain that early geek paradise of the free flow of information, even thought I know that is not a realistic take on it today, given what it has grown into.

That being said, if the growing use of ad blockers and peoples resistance to wanting to pay for anything online kills off all for profit business on the internet, I'm not sure I would be TOO disappointed. :p
 
Gouging customers and content providers only causes them to go elsewhere.
If they go elsewhere, that is fine. That's the beauty of the free market.

Zarathustra[H];1041829104 said:
It's not that everything should be free/ad free, but there is certainly a value proposition.

When people feel like they are being asked to pay for something that isn't worth money (a bunch of kids taking stupid videos) they just aren't going to watch it anymore.

They may have glanced when it was free, but if the ads get too obnoxious, or if there is a fee, then it simply is not worth it.

All that being said, I feel like the internet today is a shadow of the early days, when it was mostly geeks like ourselves with server boxes hidden away under their university desks.

Back then it was mostly hobby content. Geeks sharing information with geeks for free.

I kind of miss those days. Part of me wants to say that no one has any business expecting to make any money on the internet, that it is, and always should remain that early geek paradise of the free flow of information, even thought I know that is not a realistic take on it today, given what it has grown into.

That being said, if the growing use of ad blockers and peoples resistance to wanting to pay for anything online kills off all for profit business on the internet, I'm not sure I would be TOO disappointed. :p
It was inevitable that the virtual space become a for-profit venture. How could it be otherwise? Jobs which require physical labor grow less by the day, as do many service jobs. We're going to come to point where many of use are going to be paying each other to entertain each other.

As I've said here before, it's as if some people believe we already live in a post-scarcity society where nothing should be paid for (I realize that's not what you in particular are arguing.) They don't even want their precious eyeballs exposed to ads.
 
Do people really place any value on YouTube content or am I just getting old.

Yeah. I'll kill some time there, but if I never went there again it wouldn't be much of a loss.

There's plenty of shows that I watch on YouTube. There's some quality content among the garbage.

I mean, PewDiePie has 40mil subscribers. To put that in perspective, popular shows get a few million viewers.
 
Its becoming like Hulu. It used to be a single commercial, then a couple, then an option to watch a single long one prior to your content, and now its just as bad as watching normal TV or WORSE! I stopped using Hulu a long time ago and cannot see why people still use it. Used to be free with minor inconvenience. Now its as bad a the cable companies.
 
There's plenty of shows that I watch on YouTube. There's some quality content among the garbage.

I mean, PewDiePie has 40mil subscribers. To put that in perspective, popular shows get a few million viewers.
I don't get PewDiePie. By that I mean his appeal and all the hate he gets. I find no entertainment value in what he does, but he seems like an truly nice guy who is making an honest living. More power to him.

See a thread running through my posts? People and companies should be able to make money without being castigated for it, so long as it is legal and ethical. Of course, the "ethical" part is where it gets extremely fuzzy, subject to one's own worldview.
 
What's You Tube? White water rafting on an Inner Tube? I guess I tube, towed behind a ski boat on a truck inner tube. That's cool! If there was any water left in CA.
 
I don't get PewDiePie. By that I mean his appeal and all the hate he gets. I find no entertainment value in what he does, but he seems like an truly nice guy who is making an honest living. More power to him.

See a thread running through my posts? People and companies should be able to make money without being castigated for it, so long as it is legal and ethical. Of course, the "ethical" part is where it gets extremely fuzzy, subject to one's own worldview.

I don't get the PewDiePie thing at all, either. He's not remotely interesting, funny, or offensive.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041828985 said:
What, like this moron?

pewdiepie-south-park.png

that moron sure is more successful than you and i can judge that without knowing you. i don't like his videos either, but if it earns him decent money without bothering anyone then more power to him.
 
You are just getting old... ;)

Many and I mean many people below the age of 20 watch youtube content more often than high-production made for TV content. When you dip down in the teens there is even more of a gap.

Just look for kids watching minecraft videos or vloggers that just copy kidz bop videos and see how many watches and subscribers they maintain. It isn't the small underground market that it once was.

Yeah I consume content on youtube, the question is would I pay for it, or would I just cease consuming it if too many ads are placed in the way or if a pay wall shows up? The reality is that a lot, if not all of the content that isn't tied to specific IP would just be reproduced elsewhere, if not literally, effectively. Product reviews and the unboxing videos of product X I check out because I want to see what the one side of the item in question that isn't in promo pics looks like are just incredibly easy for someone to replace and replicate. So are videos of stupid people doing stupid things. The music videos, well if they don't get the viewers behind a pay barrier, they will go to where the eyeballs are.

Do I pay for streamed video content? yes.

Would I pay youtube for such? I'm nto sure. between trying to jumpstart G++ by fucking up youtube, and the cpu crushing quanity of ad scripts on the site, I don't know that that is the platform I would choose.

If they bill me $10 a year to eliminate ads? Yeah I'd probably bite. $10 a month? Fuck no.
 
Personally I think You Tube is an awesome source of information.

I find it valuable when looking up something I haven't done before.

Replace a screen door? On Youtube. Change oil on a outboard motor... youtube. How do you replace the ice maker in your fridge youtube.

For stuff like that it is valuable to actually see the process done, better than written words in most cases.

Heck I will even use the videos to figure out if I want to do it or hire it out etc.

I will deal with the ads and the video hunting (some are horrible) because its free... add a pay wall the content better be good.

Though imo I don't think youtube will change much, the pay wall will be there maybe someday you will get full episodes of something or another instead of netflix.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041828977 said:
Verizon FiOS even posted my bill in video form recently. yes, I have a fucking moronic personalized video bill, the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life.

Wow, just wow... :rolleyes:

Zarathustra[H];1041828977 said:
It is easy and quick to scroll down rows of text until you reach the spot of importance and stop. You can't do that in a video. You have to sit through the entire dumb thing, or try to skip to the right spot (and then skip back when you miss it, and pause as you note things down, etc, etc.

If you use FireFox, there is a plugin called Download YouTube Videos as MP4
  • Start playback
  • Use the plugin to save the video
  • Pause playback
  • Wait for download to complete
  • Watch video with VLC Player or whatever
  • Profit

Bonus: None of those stupid during-playback popups are included.

I'm sure there's many more plugins that do the same thing, and for other browsers, but that's the one I use.
 
99% of it is garbage.
The other 1% are truly useful tutorials and Clueless Gamer.
 
Still, I understand that everyone needs to be paid in order to provide more education and enjoyment to me.
I will watch a 5 second ad if the subsequent video content is truly useful or entertaining.
 
I think there's a video somewherewhere they interview Linus from LinusTechTips, and he said Youtube ad revenue is no longer his main source of revenue. I believe his company relies more on the advertisers who advertise in his video (not through youtube ads), and the only way he can keep these advertisers coming is to ensure his video reaches out to as many viewers as possible.

So I think for some big channel like Linus, a paywall is not going to work even if they are well established, as they still rely on getting their video out to as many viewers as possible.
 
Youtube has 2 uses.

1. Music Videos
2. Tutorials

*drops mic*
 
Youtube has 2 uses.

1. Music Videos
2. Tutorials

*drops mic*

*picks up mic*

3. news and information
4. details of a particular hobby (more than just tutorials)
5. entertainment
6. education
7. blogs can be therapeutic for some who make them and others with similar issues
8. advice
9. income for some
10. publicity for some

There are way more uses for YouTube than what you called out.

*throws mic at the narrow-minded generalist*
 
Usually when I am forced to watch an advertisement to see a video I close the window instead. If I really want to see the video I mute the advertisement and switch tabs until later when I know it is over. And no annoying me like this will never generate a sale.
I'm the same way. Thankfully μBlock Origin takes care of the embedded ads in Youtube videos. There are other sites that are more clever with their ads, though. NoScript usually takes care of those. But the point is: no content online is important enough for me to waste my time on waiting for ad content play that I'm not even going to watch anyway. On the paywall, I'd rather support a content creator through a tipping system like Patreon where the creator gets the majority of the money.

Further, I agree with this comment in the article:
"Pay? In general, I won't even sign up for "free" access to premium articles. It's just easier to go elsewhere and I do not want more spam."

I'm sick of visiting websites that require you to sign-up for a free account to view content for the same reasons. Again, your content is not important enough for me to jump through hoops for. On a side note, I still get a kick out of the bewildered facial expressions sales associates get when I say "No, thanks" to their requests for my e-mail address.
 
Usually when I am forced to watch an advertisement to see a video I close the window instead. If I really want to see the video I mute the advertisement and switch tabs until later when I know it is over. And no annoying me like this will never generate a sale.

Oh I agree.

In fact, I never feel badly for blocking ads, because I know I am doing everyone a favor.

If I see an ad, I am LESS likely to buy a product.

I WILL NOT be "sold to" under any circumstance. If anyone has the audacity to try to advertise or sell to me, I will double down and if I have to buy something in their market, buy from their competitor instead.

I am also very stubborn about this.

I blame the advertising company directly for ruining my online experience. After all, if no one pays for ads, there are no ads to annoy me.
 
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