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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: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday October 23 2015, @07:35AM
Everyone is falling for Google's misdirection here. This is not a new service, it is a sweetener for Google Play Music since a subscription to one gets the other and the price isn't changing. They needed a way to make it clear they had the superior deal vs the others rolling out $10/mo (Like say, picking one totally at random... Apple) music. People simply would never pay $10/mo to skip the preroll ad on YouTube videos and the other perks aren't worth it either, the only possible way this makes sense is as a bonus. Hulu Plus only gets a couple bux upcharge to eliminate all ads and they stick ads in the shows as well as a preroll.
And passing through the Apple fee is pretty much required if they expect to pay the royalties and make a buck, you simply can't have some customers getting the same service and lose 30% to a competitor off the top. The fact they can manage to get the media to correctly report why they are doing it and thus stick it to Apple in the bargain is gravy. Normally you couldn't get the media to say a bad word about Apple if you put a gun to their kid's head, guess Google is able to get things done these days.