Some years ago ago, I was a happy subscriber to Google Music. But, they added it to the graveyard, and instead grafted on some music playing functionality to YouTube and called it YouTube Music. So, I went back to Spotify.

Then I started paying for YouTube Premium Lite. It wasn't unreasonably expensive, although it was a bit annoying I couldn't just have "YouTube" in the household, like with Netflix. So if wife would cast a video to the TV, it would play with ads.

It was about a year ago, when Google starting cracking down on adblockers, that they also removed an option to pay for the service. I think YouTube Premium Lite wasn't a thing in the US (correct me if I'm wrong), but they removed YT Premium Lite, and the only option left was a twice as expensive YouTube Premium bundle that included YouTube Music.

Tldr: fucked up Google Music, then removed an option to pay for YouTube premium, leaving a fairly expensive alternative with the pile of shit they replaced Google music with. It'll be a rough time if they manage to force ads. I won't pay for it, out of principle.

Edit: I looked at the numbers again. I'd have to pay more for YouTube than for the highest Netflix tier. It's more than Prime and HBO combined. They also don't have to front large sums to fund risky projects. If they didn't include YouTube Music, I might have considered it. But with it, it just pisses me off, they can go get f.ed

I think there's a couple things at play:

• You know enough to find a different app and make it do what you need it to. Not a hard thing, but something many non-tech savvy people could struggle with, or more likely--

• People often will just use what's there. We know we have options, we are aware of the privacy concerns... but many people simply aren't and/or don't care enough to do anything about it.

We spend a lot of time here, so it seems to us like second nature to avoid intrusive apps... I find in my day-to-day life not many people are talking about that kind of stuff, or don't have much knowledge/experience in that realm. (I realize that is anecdotal).

I 100% agree with your statements--just trying to rationalize how so many people end up using/staying with these ever-worsening services/apps...

To be fair, one of the apps mentioned, [Re]Vanced, is literally just the stock app with extra features patched in and the premium features enabled for free (like no ads and downloads). It makes sense that it would be more user friendly. Allowing that modified version doesn't get them any revenue though while still costing them to host and serve the content to those users.

At least with NewPipe it supports multiple sites and is its own app with their own code and UI.

I pay $4/mo, mainly for YouTube music (I'm part of a friend's family plan).

It's pretty convenient since you can use the background audio on an iPad as well - I don't use it often but it's nice when I do. And there's no ads there it's pretty insane seeing the level of ads when I try and use my work phone which I'm not signed into.

Also, you can make channels within your single goggle account so I made one for my mom and bro so they get no ads aswell. They have to sign in to my acct which can feel a little sketch but I trust them since they're just using the YT app on their TVs. They stay in their own user acct. and it doesn't affect my history or anything