I’ve always loved music videos since the groundbreaking ones of the 70s/80s though sadly many are SD quality unless there is film footage to revisit an create better quality ones.
For several years I suspect my main music listening with modern artists/bands employs HD YouTube videos via the projector to give a big screen experience with audio via the ‘system’. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Is it different mixes, or does video add additional visual cues for understanding lyrics?
Naturally non YouTube sources should be better, but are they as enjoyable?
Anyhow, the increasing problem is adverts between the videos or even interrupting longer ones.
Have you had experience with YouTube Premium as 30 sec adverts are annoying me.
If I didn’t have to create a Google account I’d probably have signed up long ago to give it a whirl.
How much personal info do they need when you sign up?
What made me snap is the game advert that involves a female enemy eating male adventurers that could last several minutes without a skip on my pc. I honestly don’t remember how much info is required for a google account as I’ve had one for years long before I subscribed. I will say that mine isn’t under my real name and google doesn’t seem to care. I pay for YouTube premium via PayPal so you don’t have to put your card details in directly. Just remember to set up your subscription via the website on a computer rather than the mobile app so you don’t get the google/Apple tax
That’s my concern, but I suspect they already know who I am from IP lookups, especially as mine is fixed.
I mainly watch via AppleTV, and I don’t think that currently uses the iCloud Private Browsing type tech that hides your real IP address - that would be handy.
I’ve used PayPal in the past for several things to try to have a bit of anonymity but I think they share your personal details with the vendor even if they don’t share card info - may be wrong.
Even if we’re careful, I don’t think we can escape all the data mining.
We’re a family of 4 with teens, one of each gender. Is it it any way surprising that the majority of ads I see on YouTube are for makeup, clothes, games, cars or feminine hygiene products? Or is that just the average family demographic?
Google is really terrible when it comes to policing their ads for example that several month long period where the ads were often using rocket ships taking off as a euphemism. It was as transparent as glass.
Our main source of viewing is now youtube so premium was a no brainer as they say. That they are watching me, probably, along with apple, microsoft, meta, NHS, etc etc. If this bothers you then you have to stay off the internet, its as simple as that.
Obviously, I don’t like paying for it, but YouTube has so much extremely good content not just in the music space, but in the space of high-level physics presentations and meetings that one can watch and learn from.
Also very good useful stuff on retirement and investments and Personal finance issues.
Information about food and exercise.
And various other topics of interest to me.
So as you watch and learn from the tiny proportion of really good material on YouTube, the algorithms Learn what you tell them that you like and what you tell it to store for future insertion into your play queue - and so search function of it gets better and better overtime.
I’m so used to no ads that I wouldn’t even think about getting back to free Youtube. Why do you have an issue with giving out personal info for Youtube? You don’t have any other services that you give your info to? Privacy is a lost cause these days.
Like you I can’t stand the adverts and the premium is worth it for that alone.
Just make sure you sign up through Google and not via the Apple Store because they were charging more for it that way a while ago - not sure there wasn’t some legal case about this and Apple were being fined for this practise but I’d check anyway. I had to delete the YouTube app from my iPad otherwise it kept routing me back to the App Store and then re-install after the subscription was active.
I just signed up for chess.com again and I did so This time directly via the chess.com website rather than downloading it as an app from Apple App Store.
Never sign up for any third party service via Apple. They usually charge significantly more for it, just because they can. There’s no transparency in this - if you sign up for Tidal for example you assume the subscription you pay goes to Tidal, but Apple charge you an extra £3 a month for which you get precisely nothing.
I posted this tip in the unsubscribed from Qobuz thread but might be worth repeating here: if you use a VPN and connect to an Albania server you don’t get ads on YouTube
Google does the same price hike on android for tidal and similar music services and unfortunately it still hasn’t gotten round to everyone this is happening. See posts on Reddit regularly and have to wonder how many people are overpaying
Anybody who doesn’t have a VPN but likes the idea, you can get 26 months of Private Internet Access VPN for £44 but buy through topcashback dot co dot uk and you’ll get 95% of that back as cash in your bank account so that’s over 2 years of service for a little over £2. That’s basically giving it away and yes it has an Albania server