Ad-Free, Offline Viewing, Background Play
I mostly care about the ad-free features which won’t apply to paid subscription videos or content creators who choose to charge per video and not opt-in to the YouTube Red network. Obviously, in-video product placements will still exist. Zero adverts has me considering joining this. Offline viewing is something you can already do with a browser plugin and I do often save videos I’d like to watch years from now. Background play doesn’t make any sense unless you’re a teen who consumes all of their music on YouTube but man, paying data rates to play a video in the background so you can listen to Bieber’s new song on repeat seems like a waste and I like then that Google is throwing in their Play subscription service for the $10.
We’ll see how this plays out. YT has no shortage of users but what’s the conversion rate to paying? Even if it’s .25%, that’s still going to be a success story.