As of 28th October Google’s new ‘YouTube Red’ subscription service came into play. The service costs $9.99 per month and, at this stage anyway, is only available in the US.
What is YouTubeRed
According to the YouTube Red site, $9.99 per month provides users with the following benefits:
- Ad-free Videos: Watch videos without interruption
- Save offline: Save videos and songs on your mobile device to watch [or listen to] offline
- Background play: Keep videos or music playing when using other apps or when your screen is off
- Google Play Music subscription: Included at no extra cost
Well woopy-dooh!!
It should also be noted that: “YouTube Red benefits won’t work on YouTube videos that you pay to view, such as paid channels, movie rentals, and pay-per-view purchases.”
- More information on the YouTubeRed site here: https://www.youtube.com/red
Personally, I see no value here, Mind you, I am not exactly a heavy YouTube user so perhaps I’m missing something. YouTubeRed might be worthwhile for existing Google Play Music subscribers who can take advantage of the so-called “benefits” for free. Or even may entice those who have been contemplating a Google Play Music subscription to actually take the plunge. However, that aside, I can’t see how this even comes close to something like Netflix at roughly the same cost per month.
Personally, I see this as a money-grabbing exercise by a company whose wealth is already measured in the billions of dollars with enough yearly income to sustain a small country. Sure, YouTube is extremely popular, but why Google would need to monetize it is beyond me, apart of course from sheer greed.
Anyway, I am obviously one person who is less than impressed with what YouTubeRed has to offer. What about you, would you consider signing up?
I doubt if I will ever pay google almost 10 dollars a month to watch ad free youtube content.
That’s the object of these companies, to make profit in any shape or form. Greed is part of their culture. Don’t expect Google to be an angelic service, it’s been known as an Advertising company.
As for YouTube, sure, I wouldn’t pay them a dime, and put on my AdBlock. I liked YouTube when it was owned by On2, Google just keeps messing-it up but making developers update frequently, messes-up the layout.
Aside rant: How Google makes it forceable for us to have to resort to Chrome to get the best experience possible and putting aside the competition. Firefox has had to struggle heavy with YouTube change, over the years. Chrome has some favoring acceleration methods that make it load videos faster than Firefox, reminds me of Intel optimized software the cripples AMD hardware. (An add-on can fix the Firefox video-loading problem)
I don’t know, I use Palemoon, but Google knows better than to be closing-off the competition.
As for users, grow up! Stop comparing YouTube Red with an adult site, sick pervs really need to use that as a reason why YouTube’s team chose a wrong name. YouTube’s logo has red, so why not?
They’ll probably scrap it after a few months anyway when they realise it wasn’t such a bright idea after all.
Same here Jim,
I am not impressed, and I am not on Earth to make the Google owners more wealthy than they already are.
I use adblock plus in firefox and haven’t seen a video since. Why would you pay? Maybe they are just hoping to catch the uninformed about ad blockers. Anyway, sounds like a crap deal…even if it only cost $5 a month