Surely this attention economy model must be a loss for humanity as a whole, no?
A YouTube Premium lite is available in a few territories, but where it isn't that's because the music situation means it could cost single cents a month less than the full service and therefore isn't worth doing.
Google is notorious for snuffing products they consider unprofitable. Yet persisted with Youtube for 16 years. Why?
And you still hasn't given me a straight answer. Let's say YOU are Youtube, and you are trying to be an honest businessman (while staying alive). What would you do?
1. Turn it into a fully paid service. Which means you will probably never take off and some other guy will create an ((((free)))) alternative like Youtube.
2. Free service with premium features but people apparently don't like it because they feel like they are missing out.
I personally prefer 1 because that would remove 99% of the shitty videos that plague the website. I was saddened when I saw that people don't share my sentiment. That was the one moment where people have the opportunity to say "yes, let us pay you and you give us a direct and simple service". I easily "watch" around 12 hours of HD Youtube videos counting all the music in the background that I listen to. It is _definitely_ worth the premium price.
They have almost no competition.
... and HD behind compression.
I believe it shows as a different line item in their revenue dashboard.
Super basic official answer: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7060016?hl=en
Edit:
From a creator at https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/xv8k6n/i_have_yout... (so take it as you will):
> Income from premium is distributed by your watchtime. YouTube takes a portion of your monthly fee and divides it between the videos you watched. You watch only a single creator, that creator will get all of it. You watch only few videos, those videos will earn a larger chunk each. You watch hundreds of videos, each video will only earn a small amount. You pay a lot for premium, more will be paid to creators. You use a vpn to buy premium from india or so, only a fraction of that payment will be distributed accordingly.
> If you are not using premium creators get paid from advertisements that are actually watched. So either you have to watch the full advertisement, if it is shorter than 30 seconds, or at least 30 seconds from a longer advertisement, before you skip it. Skipping an advertisement after 5 - 29 seconds means no payout to the creator.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-cr...
You can build a creator career on YouTube, but on Vimeo you'll pay for the privilege.
