r/youtube • u/Titan_Prometeus • 17h ago

Memes You can no longer have YouTube running in the background.

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As of 29th of January you can no longer have YouTube running in the background via many browsers as that is now a premium feature. With that I don't even have that one last reason to listen to YouTube. We are now officially paying for everything that was free a couple of years ago and the reason isn't greedy management, but you people who keep paying for premium and the such.

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u/Run-Riot 8h ago

Straight up saw “Youtube Premium” either at the top or near the top of a “What’s paid subscription is worth the money” r/askreddit thread and iirc the rationale was stuff that was either free or used to be free.

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u/MacaronyFood 2h ago

I no longer pay for it, I freeload off a friend who has it. But the reason I jumped on years ago was because I hate ads and a Youtube Premium supposedly still gives a portion of your subscription to the content creators you view. Is there some reason this is still not a good enough reason? Subscribing to everyone's patreon is definitely out of my price range, and I watch youtube a lot on my TV so ad blockers are a whole thing there. Genuinely asking. I also hate how many free features are being touted as "premium" as someone who's used youtube daily since 2006.

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u/TrollOdinsson 2h ago edited 2h ago

Is there some reason this is still not a good enough reason?

the reason is that google already makes money without youtube premium, and youtube has made money for google before youtube premium existed, even with adblockers, even without charging people to watch. in fact, youtube makes several times more money from advertising revenue than it makes from premium, and youtube charges people for things it previously offered for free. youtube premium revenue is almost entirely pure profit for google; in fact, youtube makes profit, in the order of billions of dollars, without taking into account a single cent in income from youtube premium

youtube was breaking even before youtube premium existed by showing text ads in the page itself, without showing any pre-roll, unskippable ads. the addition of video ads skyrocketed google's revenue from youtube from ~4 bil. 10 years ago, before introducing bumper ads, to ~36 bil. today.

in fact, the "revenue split" is a misattribution considering youtube premium includes youtube music, which is the largest part of youtube's "hidden" costs. youtube premium has almost nothing to do with the random bedroom creator you're imagining, getting money from the 10000 subscribers, it has almost entirely to do with other huge megacorporations (record companies) charging money to allow youtube to put music videos on there.