YouTube SHOULD charge for 4K. Hear me out.

YouTube has been exploring the idea of putting 4K video playback behind their Premium paywall. At the risk of kicking the hornet's nest, I argue that, not only is this a defensible business move for YouTube, it could actually be good for creators and audiences as well...

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:21 I'm not a shill.
1:51 1.Cost
6:42 Enter YouTube Premium
8:22 How expensive is 4K?
9:19 2.Resolution isn't everything.
10:33 3.You probably don't need 4K
14:25 At least they're supporting Creators
14:55 5.Supports better content
16:30 But Google's RICH!
17:25 Pick your poison
19:58 Outro

[LinusTechTips]

We're sorry and will do better in the future. Thanks to our committed community for pointing this out and holding us to task :)

[baluk]

I don't care about 4k but the biggest crime they have committed is removing the dislike button....

[Alzorath]

would love to see more bitrate for 1080p especially, it's actually gotten to the point where the compression on it is worse than 720p on other platforms.

[kipchickensout]

the removal of the dislike button and the community subtitles is still the biggest crime yet, I've even seen some YouTubers post their own likes and dislikes under their videos for people to see

[chrisfix]

I'm just saying, I got you covered for the obscure washer machine fix... :P

[ThaGuus]

YouTube liked this video soo much that they increased the price of youtube premium

[preend]

The biggest problem here is no real competition against Youtube.

[XIIchiron]

If Google gave back features that cost them nothing like background play (actually it literally saves them money since they only need to stream audio instead of making you have the screen on and streaming both... wtf?), I think a lot of people would be fine with this. At least there's an argument to be made that 4K genuinely accounts for a lot of cost.

[chubbyemu]

i sometimes upload 8k videos. they're 150 GB files in Prores bc M1 Max MBP renders that in 8k faster than 8k H264. it takes more than 8 hours for YT to process 8k, 1080 videos process in seconds. for sure this is a value judgement call on YouTube's part, the K's might be redundant at least in today's landscape

[missingmiddlegames]

It would make this pill go down so much easier if YouTube simultaneously announced a serious improvement to the quality of the 1080p option, including less compression on both video and audio. There's a lot of content I don't mind watching in 1080p, I just hate that the bitrate is so obviously low on these options.

[themattenthehat]

I feel like the much more obvious solution to this is to charge a fee to UPLOAD 4k content. Even literally a $0.10 charge would stop probably 99% of casual 4k uploads from cell phones, while being a miniscule burden on the handful of actual professional creators who truly benefit from it. Charging to VIEW 4k content doesn't actually address the problem of infinitely growing storage costs at all. Also, this allows each individual creator (youtube is supposed to be all about the creators, right?) decide if their content benefits from 4k or not. It could even potentially be a deposit that gets refunded if the video does well enough to cover its costs.

[AlexZapata-]

I didnt realize that was a feature for premium because I have premium 💀

[masterspartan]

"More ads" is a really funny solutions when you know that at least 50% of the people saying to add more are also using adblock

[frankmthompson]

LInus, I agree with you about 4k, but I just got an email that YouTube is increasing my premium familiy price by 53% in april (from 14.99 to 22.99). That's a really big jump. I'm not only being asked to pay for previously free features, but also I have to pay 50%+ more than I was. That 's a lot.

[CreeperOnYourHouse]

My issue with the 4k/ bandwidth stuff is that YouTube seems to be reducing the bandwidth of lower resolution videos vs how it used to be. You're forced to use the higher resolution videos if you want the quality you used to get on the tier one step lower.

[pichu]

The thing that irks me with this is that today I got a notice that my monthly subscription for YouTube premium family is now being increased by $5 from $18 to $23 USD. They make people have to have premium for 4K and increase the price at the same time

[rodneyhershkowitz]

The only thing I want is YouTube to stop asking me every 5 seconds if I want to try something that I have to pay for.

[Goodmanperson]

AV1 codec actually seems to slot in nicely with this plan. Considering it's more efficient, 1080p and 1440p are definitely going to have more visual fidelity once they iron out the kinks and it becomes the standard encode. We won't have to rely as much on bruteforcing quality through resolution.

[kutlutortop]

I think that what google should do is to introduce more features to YouTube premium, make certain features purchasable on their own and transition more obscure features to premium. I'm really sad that 4k is now paid but I wouldn't care if 8k becomes premium only or a higher tier quality sound is introduced to premium.

[Coizu]

In the cost section they didn't even consider the jump from 30fps to 60fps which also adds data. Not necessarily double the amount, but it still makes a difference.