First off, I apologize for ‘click bait’ title, but hey! You’re reading this and it worked so lets jump into this complex issue.

First off, I’m coming at this subject from a consumer point of view rather than a Content Creator, this means that the monetary issues of their lively hood being taken away aren’t directly effecting me. Obviously, I care greatly about the incredibly talented video creators that could potentially have their income reduced but ultimately this article is from a watcher, not a creator. Although, factoring the effects this will have on upcoming YouTuber’s will be part of this.

Anyway, to start here’s a brief overview of YouTube Red and why it’s good for YouTube. If you don’t care or already know enough about it, feel free to skip to the opinion part, it’ll be after the embedded video!

YouTube Red is a subscription service offered by Google and YouTube. It is a monthly subscription which costs $9.99 and has a series of benefits, such as Ad Free videos and downloading videos. They offer a free trial for a month and, at the time of writing this, is only available in America.

Why is this good for YouTube? First off, CPMs (how much money a video generates per every thousand views) are dropping drastically and consistently. This means that not much money is being made from Ads playing before you watch. It’s dropping because Advertisers aren’t willing to pay a lot of money to have their ads displayed plus Ad Blockers take away a large percentage of money generated.

YouTube take around 40% of all money generated from each video, therefore the CPM dropping means that they are losing money. YouTube Red is a way of fixing this. Take money directly from the viewers and cut out the advertisers, it’s guaranteed money and could stabilize their income.

Right, that’s the boring part. Time for the opinions! The video above is made by YouTube and has over 30’000 dislikes compared to the 9’000 likes, which shows that people aren’t exactly thrilled about the idea.

Honestly, I don’t hate YouTube Red, I also don’t like it. It just doesn’t have much effect on me personally. I’m not going to pay $9.99 because it doesn’t offer anything that makes me want to buy it. The entire thing is incredibly lackluster and as a viewer, I’d much prefer them to be working on improving the viewer experience. The strength of YouTube is that it’s free, so keeping it free and innovating in ways to sustain it is how I think that should proceed going forward.

The part that makes me scratch my head the most is that it doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. There are already ways of legally blocking Ads for free and downloading videos is as simple as grabbing a quick app, also for free. If you’re like me and white-list those you choose to support or donate/support them via sites such as Patreon then that helps support creators more than YouTube ever has.

Now to the statements made in the title, is this the death or rebirth of YouTube?

Death: In a one word answer. No, this will not kill YouTube. Could it start a decline if they go against whats best for creators and consumers? Possibly. People once thought MySpace was indestructible, now look at it. This won’t be the death of YouTube but could be the start of a decline. Personally I doubt this very much.

Rebirth: If they do this right, then yes. If they make YouTube Red a must have subscription and then correctly support creators while giving newcomers the chance to grow then this could be fantastic.

The biggest problem I feel with YouTube is the new creators having a much harder time of being noticed and having the chance to make videos full-time. That’s a completely separate issue that I will talk about at some point!

Thanks for reading, remember to remain as awesome as you know you are and have a great day!

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