I hate commercials. I don’t like them on the radio so I stream Bluetooth from my phone. I don’t like them on TV so I don’t watch it anymore. I watch YouTube or other streaming. Now commercials are just as prevalent on those platforms as they are everywhere else.
YouTube Premium.
This is where YouTube Premium comes in. I’ve come to accept that most things in life right now are subscriptions. Food delivery, content delivery, web hosting, photo editing software, and even frozen meat. More on that later. YouTube Premium offers ad free viewing for $14.99 a month. It also offers the ability to download videos, listen to music with the app in the background, and play videos while you do other things. In other words everything you want to do with YouTube but can’t.
Why do I accept paying for Premium?
One reason. Ads. YouTube is by far the largest and frankly the best video sharing site available. Despite Google buying it and almost destroying it YouTube remains. I know they need to make money to keep paying their employees and if I don’t watch any ads I don’t make them money. Fair deal in my book.
I wasn’t sold on the idea at first. I was sent a 7 day free trial offer and decided to try it. Halfway through my usual binge watching of dudes welding old junk I realized I had not had an interruption or an ad of any kind in hours. It was then I realized I was going to have to pay for it, but this zen of uninterrupted watching and listening to what I wanted when I wanted could not end.
How much am I willing to pay for it?
That is a great question. I don’t know yet. If I have to answer right now $19.99 is my top limit. I would give up watching content rather than pay more than $20 for it today. With time we always tolerate higher prices so in a year who knows. The services know that and they will push the limits as soon as they can. Looking at you NetFlix. As a fair warning to YouTube we dropped NetFlix and won’t pick it up again so there is a real limit to what folks will pay.