I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads, but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information. Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time, I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways. Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else, but it’s inescapable from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
I pay for it as well. I started when it was Youtube Red because I absolutely fucking despise ads. I learned later on that YouTubers get paid a lot more per Premium view, and that’s helped to keep me paying for it. I tend to watch channels that don’t do sponsorships, and many of those channels have videos that are quite expensive to produce (Project Farm and Torque Test Channel stand out in that regard). I like these people and what they do, so I want to help them.
It’s expensive (I have the family version so my partner and her dad can be covered as well), but I have the means to afford it.
If YouTubers stop getting paid more for my views, I’ll probably drop it and switch to NewPipe (which I already use on occasion for videos that have intrusive sponsorships).
Source that creators get paid now for premium views?
I wish I had a better source, but it appears that the details are hidden in the agreement people sign to become partners on YouTube: https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/177353i/you_should_at_least_know_that_55_of_youtube/
Basically, YouTube does a 55/45% split between the individual and YouTube respectively. I’m not totally clear on how the actual value of a Premium view is calculated based on the contents of the contract snippet included in that post. All I know is that I’ve heard several YouTubers say that it’s much more than they get from ad revenue per watcher. That was enough evidence for me to continue on with Premium, but I haven’t done extensive research on this.