Remember that scene in The Sopranos where Tony struts out on to the driveway to remonstrate with Carmella about the orange juice variant she purchased?
“This says With Pulp” he contests, pointing at the offending half gallon of Tropicana. When Carm’ points out that he likes the one with pulp, he quickly corrects her.
“Not this much. I like the one that says Some Pulp,” he reasons, a second before a cordless phone is careening towards his head.
PS5 surprising price cut
This sale price, which is 14% or £55.99 lower than usual, is among the cheapest we’ve seen this console drop to and represents excellent value for money.
- Amazon
- Was £389.99
- Now £334
The moral of the story is that while “some” might be a valid choice when it comes to orange juice pulp content, it isn’t when it comes to advertisements.
So news that YouTube is testing a Premium Lite subscription that will cut down on the number of ads you see, but not get rid of them entirely, is mystifying.
According to screenshots posted to social media, YouTube would charge $8.99 a month for Lite in Australia instead of $16.99 a month for Premium. For that would get you ‘Limited ads’ on YouTube and YouTube Kids. It’s YouTube Not Very Premium.
The company says with Premium Lite “most videos are ad-free but you may see video adds on music content and Shorts and non-interruptive ads when you search and browse.”
That’s fair enough, I suppose. But, I’m not going to get uninterrupted YouTube music videos on a Friday night after a couple of pints? There’s no way I’m going to pay nine bucks a month for that! Or whatever it ends up being in the US or UK.
For your Lite subscription you’re cutting down the number of ads you see, but not getting any of the other Premium perks, like access to YouTube Music, the ability to download and play offline, or play in the background. That’s a pretty raw deal overall for more than half the price of Premium.
As consumers, we’re getting used to paying extra for no-ads, or getting our subscriptions cheaper if there are ads, but paying for some ads? That’s a new one on us.
It is a bit different, I suppose. YouTube has always been a free to watch platform, so has to do things a little bit differently to Netflix, Disney, Max and the like to monetise it’s content.
YouTube has been on a crusade in the last couple of years, to stop users deploying ad blockers to get around the commercial interruption that creates its profits and revenue for content creators.
And this may convince more people, who are scared off by the high price of Premium, to take the half measure to cut down on ads and remove them from “most” videos.
However, Premium Lite is unlikely to please anyone. Even Tony “Some Pulp” Soprano.
