YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14.
Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.
I suspect the user content is the root of the problem. 500 hours of video is being uploaded every minute. YouTube has to transcode and store everything, and be ready to stream it at a moment’s notice, even though the vast majority of videos probably get only a handful of views (if any). That’s a lot of unused resources that have to be paid for by subscribers and advertisers.
If they were to charge just a little for uploads then content creators would be more inclined to consider whether their upload is of interest to anyone else, and that might take away a lot of the waste.
But then you potentially lose fringe interest videos which the creator makes for fun, only expects a thousand views from people with similar fringe interests and isn’t interested in being paid
And for that, PeerTube exists. They can also host their own if they want, which works great for things like family videos or instructional videos for niche B2B products.
I’m thinking they would upload occasional videos to YT to advertise the alternative channel.
Even something as small as $1/video/year would be totally reasonable, and that can be waived once you become a partner or whatever. Maybe also make the first 10 videos free or something.
Indeed