I just heard about this new thing Google is introducing, "YouTube Red", a $10 a month subscription to watch videos on YouTube without the ads. YouTube Red What do you think? Do you think it'll be a success?
There is an advantage though that AdBlock doesn't get you. You'll be able to access licensed content that otherwise wouldn't be available through the regular website (due to copyright claims) and the ability to download videos for offline play. For that alone I may consider it but then again, I've refused Pandora and Spotify subscriptions even though I get similar perks.
I don't think it'll be that successful. Maybe that's just because I'm cheap but I definitely wouldn't pay $10 a month for more convenient youtube watching. But who knows?
IMO YT Red will be a failure, because usually if something is blocked on various grounds which are premium only, people find another way around it than paying 10$ a month. For example, if it's a film which is blocked, then there is various ways of streaming films. Or if it's music, then there's also various ways around that. A lot of people are not going to pay $120 a year for benefits which have always been there, and better, for free. Besides, if they decide to make it so that normal YouTube is like really bad, such as making ALL music a premium feature etc, then people are really not going to accept this, and could even revolt against Red, a bit like when the Internet revolted against SOPA. Either this or people will stop using YT and use other sites, such as Dailymotion, Vimeo etc. While these are honestly fairly crap atm, if the demand was there then they'd improve to the likes of YT as it is now.
Unless these ads are 2 hours long, I don't see why paying $10 is worth it. Aside from what others have said about ad-blocking, those ads don't often go beyond 15 seconds if you don't block ads. I can wait. Because if it does well, all of YouTube will go that direction, and become a paying service. They're testing to see how people will respond but, more importantly, how they will pay. I hate that nonsense. It's YouTube, not Hulu Jr. or Netflix 2.0.
