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Google describes YouTube Red as "the ultimate YouTube experience." The $9.99 subscription will cover all of YouTube products, meaning YouTube, YouTube Gaming, YouTube Kids, and the newly announced YouTube Music. The new service will let you watch YouTube videos without ads, save videos to watch offline on a mobile device, and play videos in the background on a mobile device.
There is a big catch about that $9.99 price: $9.99 will cover Android, desktop, and the mobile Web, but if you purchase a subscription via Apple's in-app purchasing on iOS, the price goes up to $12.99/month. Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all subscription revenue on its platform, and Google is passing that cost directly onto the consumer. (Most likely, customers will be able to bypass the higher price by paying $9.99 directly to Google and using the service across all platforms, including iOS, simply by signing into the app.)
YouTube won't talk about revenue sharing with content creators, but the company says it will pass on the "majority" of the revenue. In lieu of ad revenue, subscription revenue will be split up among creators by view time from Red subscribers. The subscription service changes things for YouTube creators, and anyone that doesn't agree to the new subscription terms will have their content set to "private" on YouTube.
darkfeline suggests the following specific points and topics for discussion:
1. iOS support costs extra, YouTube is passing the cost of Apple's cut directly to the consumer.
2. Up-to-date ad blockers and youtube-dl bypasses all YouTube ads to the best of my knowledge.
3. youtube-dl allows you to download videos for offline play.
4. How do you feel about exclusive paid content?
5. Who the heck is Pewdiepie and why does he make so much money? (How do you feel about YouTube "celebrities"?)
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 23 2015, @07:30AM
I'd do it, hell, I'd pay more than 10 bucks for it, as long as I could download ALL content rather than just selected content from few participating agencies. If I could download anything I wanted I'd probably pay thirty bucks a month if I could afford it. The peace of mind coming from it all being legit is the icing on the cake.
This is the perfect opportunity for Google to drag Big Media kicking and screaming into the present with regard to content accessibility.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by anubi on Friday October 23 2015, @08:26AM
Only if its in a .MP4 or equivalent format playable on a generic player. No DRM. None of this proprietary codec crap!.
I already take steps to keep my collection of stuff clean, often shunning paid sources because paid providers insist of wrapping what I want in something I do not want, and making it very difficult, if not impossible, to remove and discard the wrapper.
I would love to see a "Gags" episode of selling some RIAA execs a meal, but serve it in a damned near indestructible wrapper that takes at least ten minutes to remove.
Providing a paid service of cataloging content and making it available without irritative packaging will go a long way to killing off piracy.... I feel it would be far more effective than the "attack your customer" approach the **AA's have been taking.
If there is one thing people will pay for, its convenience. So far, a lot of groups have completely missed the boat on that one. If Google can pull this one off and serve up a menu of freely downloadable content and keep the rightsholders happy by sharing the proceeds of content that would have otherwise remained dormant, more power to them!
One thing Google ( YouTube ) has going for them - big time - is a veritable army of quite dedicated "YouTubers" which have done an excellent job of transcoding and uploading content to YouTube. Damn near everything that has ever been produced shows up there. I was really surprised to find that really old (1936) Chevrolet video on their production line on YouTube. My hat's off to all you guys who took your time to upload and share these gems.
Here's hoping Google and the rightsholders can come to terms, quit bickering, and give us all one big library where we can upload to or retrieve a copy of stuff.
And no, I do not expect to see first-run movies on YouTube, but I would expect ten year old movies to be left up - the DVD's of overruns of 'em are a buck at the discount stores anyway. But the DVD, for the reasons mentioned above, is not worth the trouble to mess with, and I leave them in the bin.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Friday October 23 2015, @06:02PM
I used to do the same thing for the CDDB database.
Then, the people that ran that closed it and started to charge for access to their content.
I learned a lot from that, because I cataloged many many things and often was the very first to do so. I made more new entries than corrections.
I for one am upset with a company that opts to sell and continually re-sell the results of my work that I had intended to have volunteered for the greater good. Being locked out and then expected to pay for access to the resources I provided was not part of that whole free work thing I expected to get rewarded with. karma yes. Paying to use the fruit of my efforts, when there was no reason to think I was going to pay for upkeep (such as a subscription here at Soylent)... no. They just locked people out and called it a crime to use the data without paying.
There may be more exciting details to it, but I have to admit I simply avoided things like that going forward. I have found a few other free ones, but do I contribute to them? Not as much as I could. It only took one bad apple to ruin that barrel.
What google is doing in this case is different, but there is no doubt that for this, and for many other things, they are being rewarded handsomely for being the self-appointed gatekeepers to numerous and varied types of content they have received mostly for free.
Maybe they are in the business now of making quality stuff and wanting to make a buck off it, but only chumps broadcast on TV for free I guess. Google can now own (in select markets) :
The content
the server its on
the distribution network to deliver it end to end
the set top box to display it
the router in the home to stream it
the OS on the devices that use the streams
and one ID to tie it all together
How this relates to anything I am not sure, but it's part of the reason I don't want to pay for their content. It seems like they already have enough influence into the system already.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday October 23 2015, @06:04PM
What's stopping you from downloading anything now? Aren't there utilities for that?
Whenever I visit youtube with Flash disabled I get served an HTML5 version of the video which causes a WEBM file to appear in my browser's cache directory. After restoring some missing bytes from the file's header it will play in VLC.