YouTube Premium is getting a huge price hike in over a dozen countries, sparking user backlash. Some countries are experiencing hikes between 30% and 50%

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 632 points – AlternativeTo (@alternativeto@mas.to)
mas.to

YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14.

Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.

242

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

just cancel all subscriptions. None of them are worth it

Bitwarden is worth it. (Yes, I know, I should self host it. I do, but I still see it as a good deal.) Also Hetzner is a good subscription. So yes, some are worth it

Agreed:

-Bitwarden

-Storage Share

-ControlD

-Real debrid

Backblaze as well. Can’t believe they let me store 20TB of backups for $10/mo.

By there site its more like $120 a month?

Just do the cheap unlimited personal plan and hook up a shit load of external HDDs to your PC. I have a system where my NAS syncs to my PC which syncs to Backblaze so I can sorta hack my way into unlimited NAS backup for $10/mo.

3-2-1 backup where the primary source of data is the NAS, on site backup is desktop PC external HDDs, off site backup is Backblaze.

So, only cheap services are worth it?

Are there some expensive services that are worth it? not just that they increase their price just because.

Don't get me wrong, I want more examples (and I am a happy subscriber of Real-Debrid for years already).

As I have said previously, Hetzner is most definetly worth it and it can be expensive. I can't think of any more examples tho 😅

Well, I use what I need. I'm not going to pay an expensive service just because. For instance, I wouldn't pay for Proton. It'd be quite useless (and expensive) for my use case. I do have a paid Zoho email account, tho.

That's an insanely good deal! I should move pict-rs to backblaze on my Lemmy server

Out of curiosity, what do you do with all that storage? Can't imagine I'd ever need that much personally

What do you need that isn’t in the free version?

Authenticator. Also, I would like to support the devs. Running a server and developing the software itself is far from free.

Fair enough, but does having your passwords and 2FA on the same service not defeat the purpose of 2FA?

Good point. 2FA is quite useless if you have a randomly-generated 256 characters long password for every service. I guess Bitwarden is worth it for the advanced security reports (it costs them money for this) and supporting the devs?

You don't need to justify a purchase! If you like the product, paying for it is ge best way to ensure it stays around.

I pay for it because it was required to share passwords with my SO. That's now in the free version, so I don't really need it anymore, but it's $10/year, so I keep the sub to support the devs. I'll probably end it once I self-host it.

I like SimpleFIN ($1.50/mo IIRC) + Actual Budget. I can pull in transaction data from multiple sources into my self-hosted Actual Budget service, which is super nice (or I can DIY if I want).

I used to use Tiller ($80/year I think?), which is basically the same, but it pulls transactions into a spreadsheet (Google Docs or Microsoft Office) and they have some budgeting tools around that. I'm trying to move away from Google and Microsoft, so I ended up cancelling, but I really liked their service.

i meam the payment for a domain name is kinda worth it. as well as a functional vpn

Agreed. Mullvad is absolutely epic. A question: why do we have to pay for domain names? And why do some providers offer a domain at a lower price than others, while offering the same services? it doesn't make sense to me, an explaination is welcome

a couple of reasons, some being that 1, ip addresses are limited on the internet, and making it free would instantly fill it up. another is that there is still some work involved,because once you register for a domain, internet service providers and DNS providers around the world need to also add your newly established domain to ip to their DNS so that people get redirected to your domain correctly. the domain endings also have a cost attached to them due to popularity and who is allowed to hand them out. e.g country related domains (e.g .kr for korea, .fr for france has their reasons to charge or without handing a domain out, but some countries may get lucky and happen to have a domain thats desirable (e.g Anguilla has .ai) and thus will charge more

you also want to prevent domain name ransoming. if domain names were free, there will be people registering for all domain names to use as bargaining chips against a person or company similar to social media handles

And it's really not that much, it's like $10/domain/year, though it varies by TLD (vanity TLDs are more, less desirable ones are less).

I have about 10, and I'll probably free up half of those the next time I need to pay for them (they were for a business idea that I've largely given up on).

Because it's a monopoly created by international agreement. It's like a phone number - it needs to be routable in the system, but if you follow the standards, you can get integrated into the system as a registrar

The top level domains are owned by countries - the UK has .UK, the US has .com and .gov, the UK has .io (because they stole it), but most countries have just one. They charge a fee to register a secondary domain, and the registrar can charge whatever they want to their customers to register on their behalf

This is just the centralized system though - you could build your own, AOL tried to do that through "keywords" back in the 90s

I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).

I'd say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.

Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like YouTube, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.

Sorry if you get this a lot, but have you tried Bitwarden? It's been a while since I compared but last I checked I found it miles better than LastPass.

Or Proton Pass, they already use Proton for email

Proton has a password manager and VPN. May be worth bundling over paying for all 3 separately

So, steal everything or something else? Content isn't free. The ad model exists, but only works if people see the ads.

If everyone blocks all ads, and doesn't pay a subscription, how's that work for those providing the service?

I'm not defending YouTube here, just curious what your solution is to have a service and not pay for it.

I do pay for YT family Premium in the US. I watch mostly YT, and it is my music streaming service. I definitely​ liked it more when it was costing me $15/mo for that and was mad when that went to $23. I even tried switching to Spotify and using ad blocking on YT. I didn't jive with Spotify, and while ad blockers work for YT, it's a bit of a pain installing them on TV boxes and managing subscriptions across devices, asking with which videos you've seen etc.

Youtube revenue in 2023 (before these price hikes) was 31.5 billion USD.

The revenue for the entirety of alphabet in 2023 was 307 billion USD.

Youtube alone generated 10% of the entire revenue of alphabet’s portfolio in 2023.

Yes, revenue is not profit, but I could not find profit figures for youtube.

Alphabet’s operating income for 2023 was 84.3 billion USD. Assuming a similar proportion of revenue to operating income (I know, hella extrapolating, but again no direct sources for youtube) that would put youtube’s operating income in the ballpark of 8 billion USD.

It’s not that they aren’t making money because people are “stealing” as you say from poor little indie company youtube. It’s just that they want more more more MORE MORE MONEY.

Because of course they do. It’s never enough.

Edit: because I forgot to link my source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204424000014/googexhibit991q42023.htm

YouTube is but one, and as I said while the story is about yt I was talking Mir in general. How do you pay for content/services in general?

Right now with via ads or a subscription.

It’s one thing to pay, and another to be squeezed dry.

When ads were mostly static banners on websites almost nobody was blocking them, because they were mostly unobtrusive.

However, they would often link to shady websites that would install random crap, so the usecase for blocking them was already there.

Then they became animated, and they multiplied. It was one at the bottom of content at first. Then a couple. Then two vertical banners on the sides too. Then more rectangular banners here and there for good measure.

Then they became unkillable javascript popups, then proper new browser windows. Then autoplaying videos with audio were added. And this is just the visible stuff. Add tracking pixels, tracking cookies, browser fingerprinting, and tons of other spying technology deployed under the guise of “but the content is free”.

After every step the use of ad and tracking blockers became more legitimate as serving ads moved further and further away from paying for free content and squarely in the space of selling user data collected without consent for huge profit margins.

If ads and subscriptions were enough to just make a normal amount of profit, very few would be blocking ads or pirating content, because the amount of ads or the price of subscriptions would be reasonable and affordable.

But since everyone wants to make a 1000% markup on the content they generate, they will drive their very own paying customers away.

Youtube could have served me a couple ads per video and I would have kept using it forever. Instead they served me a minimum of 20 ads per video, so now they will serve me zero, forever.

Netflix could have gotten 12 euros every month out of me for their dwindling and dwindling content selection. Instead they wanted 14 after a while. And 17 after a while. And 19 after a little while more. All the while refusing to serve me the 4k content I paid for.

So instead they now get zero too.

I am very happy to pay for content, and a lot of people like me. But the comment you originally replied to was in reference to youtube increasing the price of their subscription by ludicrous amounts. You replied there content isn’t free, and I replied that youtube has no problem making money. The increases are not to keep youtube afloat, is to make youtube make 10 billions in profit rather than 8 next year.

It’s not about paying a fair amount of money for content, it’s about making you pay all that you can give and suck you dry.

So to your question “how do you pay for content/services in general?” I answer “with money”, but that is not what is happening here.

Not op, but I think a solution would be having AI watch the videos and tracking what the people are saying, wearing, using etc and posting links to purchase those things in the description. They get a cut of sales and can also sell links for competing products if companies want more exposure. This could be effective and noninvasive. Give a cut to content creators and it may be even more effective.