I pay for nearly every streaming service you can think of, and even a few you’ve never heard of, but if you told me I could only keep one, that service would be YouTube Premium. Perhaps the most undervalued streaming service of them all. Here’s why.
YouTube Premium Saves Me Money
Ads take up your time. YouTube Premium saves you time. Time, as they say, is money. For between $13.99 and $22.99 a month, I watch more than enough YouTube that it would cost me more money not to pay for Premium. It’s as simple as that. However, what is your time worth? The Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, which means no one’s time is worth less than that. Once YouTube premium has saved you more than two hours of advertising, well then you’re the one paying to watch ads!
I Watch More YouTube Than Any Other Streaming Service
I love TV shows and movies, but most of what I watch using streaming is not covered by either of those categories. I have a ton of work-related videos to watch, such as tech news roundups, and lots of non-fiction content such as documentaries. YouTube offers the most diverse, most niche, and most engaging programming of all. Even if production values are low, the content is extremely valuable and, in many ways, YouTube has replaced the web itself, since I’m more likely to watch a video than read a web page these days.
I might spend an hour before bed watching some Netflix, but I spend at least twice that watching YouTube every day, since it’s really such a Swiss army knife of information. YouTube isn’t a passive platform spewing carefully pre-cooked programming at me. It’s a living connection to the world, and there’s nothing else quite like it.
YouTube Is a Genuinely Important Resource
I already mentioned that the content on YouTube is essentially my web, but it can’t be overemphasized how important it is as a resource. It’s a mind-boggling archive of video content created by individuals, uploaded for everyone, and spread all over the world. I think that’s something worth paying for, and again, since I draw so much more value from YouTube than the price of Premium, it feels like something I can never give up.
Almost every video on YouTube is created and is owned by someone like you or me. There’s a minimum of corporate interference, and for better or worse, people say and do pretty much what they want. At least within some pretty loose guidelines. I guess I see YouTube in a similar light to Wikipedia. Yes, it’s by no means perfect or anything, but it’s ours. We made it together, and for the most part it’s good.
That’s not saying there’s anything wrong with paying for YouTube with your time as the advertisements run, just that I personally feel I’m contributing more effectively by just paying directly, while getting the bonus of an ad-free experience in the bargain. For the same reason that I donate some money to Wikipedia every year.
Subscriptions Make YouTube Better for Everyone
There’s no arguing that the amount of advertising on YouTube has become somewhat ridiculous, and the cynical among us may even say this is a deliberate ploy to get more people to relent and pay for YouTube Premium. However, I can’t shake the feeling that if YouTube didn’t have a subscription service at all, the amount of ads that have to run to support it all would be even worse.
At the same time, people who use ad-blocking software make it harder for creators to sustain their channels and for YouTube itself to keep the lights on and the servers working, so there’s almost a balance between those who say no to advertising for free and those who do it by throwing a few bucks towards their favorite YouTube creators each month.
Clearly, YouTubers are monetizing up the wazoo as well, with paid “Super Thanks” buttons, advertising and sponsorships. As a YouTube creator myself, I’m just as guilty of trying to get as much juice from my content as possible. However, I think with YouTube Premium, I’ve found a balance in how much commercialization I can accept for a given amount of money. Unless YouTube itself becomes worthless to me, I’ll likely never cancel my Premium subscription.
