As my three-month free trial of Apple Music expired, I found myself spending more time on YouTube, because I had the access to a wide variety of free creative content. However, with the introduction of YouTube Red, their premium subscription service, will I still have free access to all of this content in the near future?
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In my opinion their current approach of focusing on consumer satisfaction over profitability is what propels YouTube’s popularity and encourages new users. The success of YouTube is accredited to the fact that this video sharing platform is free for both users and creators.
Personally, these premium features are not enough to justify the monthly subscription fee. YouTube Red is offering music streaming and offline downloads for their premium subscribers. However, I disagree with Brendan that these features are points of differences for YouTube Red, seeing that Spotify and Apple Music offers these features as well.
Another notable feature YouTube Red offers is exclusive content to their premium subscribers. Current YouTubers may be hesitant to create exclusive content because it simply would not reach to the majority of their viewers. They’ve built their success on the accessibility of YouTube, and that’s the main selling point of YouTube’s current brand. As an avid viewer of YouTube, it frustrates me that I would now have to pay for “exclusive content” that I would otherwise be able to view for free.
Lastly, the premium subscription service removes all advertisements from videos, which is indeed a convenient feature, but again, does not justify the $10/month. For most users, time spent on YouTube is leisure time and the extra few seconds watching ads, especially that many of the advertisements are skip-able is overly cumbersome.
Yes, this feature may enhance the experience of a small user base, but I don’t think this introduction of YouTube Red will work in the interest of the majority of the YouTube’s audience.