Another happy customer of YouTube premium here. I canceled Netflix, never had Spotify. The only subscription I pay, worth it. The family plan works to 5 or 6 euros per person per month.
Of all the current media subscription services, this is the one I have no issue paying for. The service I get for the money I pay is appropriate. I've taken my own measures to limit the amount of PII that Google can vacuum up from my life as well. I'm fine with them knowing what I like to watch and providing algorithmic recommendations for new content. I police said algorithm aggressively to ensure its always on topic and never trying to show me ragebait or shit I don't want to see.
When the day comes that the cost outweighs the return I'll stop paying for it and use Grayjay or Newpipe or whatever other option there is. If its a full on dystopia by then, well y'know what? I don't need Youtube to survive. I'll be fine without it.
Do I hate giving money to Google? Yes. Do I watch 6+ hours of Youtube a day? Also yes. I almost always have something playing in the background throughout my day, so it's the one service I'm ok paying for and I don't have to worry about it breaking like I would with other frontends.
I am displeased with premium these days. My use of premium was to remove ads and give creators a little more money. The issue today is every single video will have a sponsor spot that is an ad. So here I am paying extra to get rid of ads and the creator just made their own. Using sponsor block has become a requirement to get past the wall of ads.
If youtube wants me to pay for their service, they can offer a service worth paying for instead of purposefully degrading their free service into an unusable mess in an attempt to force my hand.
I kinda got grandfathered into Youtube Music by using (and enjoying) Google Music, and since YT Premium was only like $2 more, I got it. I primarily use it for the music. The no-ads is just a bonus for me, I guess.
I have begun to see that YT is being hostile to adblocker users - and this worries me. I assume YT is already probing the clients to see which are circumveting the ads.
I had an (let's say unconventional) idea at one point: an add-on which only purpose is to show the YT ads in the background which uBO blocked. All of the blocked ads would be played (eventually) - except that the user can just ignore this happening in background and wouldn't be actually seeing the ads. I.e. the browser would just move playing the ads into a background container not visible to the user.
The main issue with YouTube premium is the price, I can't imagine that they're making anywhere near $14 a month from showing me ads that I never click on. I'd love to see a breakdown, including how much is subsiding free users, how much is going to creators, and how much is going into the pockets of shareholders.
I think like most if not all of the people I know would easily pay $5 dollars for premium