Google Unveils New 'YouTube TV' Streaming Service for $35 per Month

[Solomani]

So the average nerd now pays like $35 + $40 + $19.99 + 29.95 + $49.99 = total of $175 for all their monthly media content subscriptions? When does it end?

Never mind that doesn't include other hardware services, like the cable TV bill, or the gas and electric bills, the heating bill, etc.

 

[hallux]

Considering I pay the cable company nearly $35 for the privilege of DVR service with a limited amount of recording space, I'd say it's worth it. Yes, I tried the BYOD DVR using a PC as the cable box/DVR but it just didn't work out as I'd hoped.

 

[Sevendaymelee]

Hmm, OP isn't wrong, without Napster Apple would have never had the chance to strike the needed deals so early.

So yes, whilst Napster executed the illegal digital download revolution (maybe even started it, not sure, I used WinMX back then), they certainly STARTED the legal revolution.

Apple was the first to execute said legal revolution.

Glassed Silver:mac

You can't start a "legal" digital revolution whilst being an illegal service. Apple pulled off the impossible by creating a marketplace for digital music. Prior to iTunes, no one and I mean NO one paid for digital music. Apple deserves the credit for figuring out a way to popularize selling digital files. Napster was just a black market application. Two totally different things.
[doublepost=1488390068][/doublepost]

What is "depriving a sale?"

There is no data to support the assertion that an illegal copy would have been a sale but for the illegal download. There is a ton of data that shows the opposite, actually. Thus, the deprived sale must be someone else's future sale.

All one needs to do is look at pre-internet sales of music and post-internet sales. As soon as stealing digital music became a thing, the bottom fell out. And even though illegal sharing is no longer vogue, it's effects are still killing the music business via paid streaming services because the overall value of music, thanks to said illegal sharing, has all but bottomed out.

In short? Without the advent of illegal sharing, album sales would still be healthy.

 

[LordVic]

You can't start a "legal" digital revolution whilst being an illegal service. Apple pulled off the impossible by creating a marketplace for digital music. Prior to iTunes, no one and I mean NO one paid for digital music. Apple deserves the credit for figuring out a way to popularize selling digital files. Napster was just a black market application. Two totally different things.
[doublepost=1488390068][/doublepost]

All one needs to do is look at pre-internet sales of music and post-internet sales. As soon as stealing digital music became a thing, the bottom fell out. And even though illegal sharing is no longer vogue, it's effects are still killing the music business via paid streaming services because the overall value of music, thanks to said illegal sharing, has all but bottomed out.

In short? Without the advent of illegal sharing, album sales would still be healthy.

Apple didn't create the market.

Apple just capitalized on the existing market by providing a reasonably affordable and legal means for distributed digital music.

They also were not the first ones to do so as even Sony had a download music store before.

What Apple managed to do at the time, was be able to provide synergy between music acquisition and their iPods. The ability to click a button, purchase music then have it installed automatically on your iPod. This is the service almost nobody could do at the time. That and the iPod was the most popular MP3 player helped push iTunes to the forefront.

But no. Apple did not invent the market. They did not invent the idea of a digital music store. Nor did they invent digital distribution.

They did provide (a tleast IMHO) the best of the services.

 

[oneMadRssn]

All one needs to do is look at pre-internet sales of music and post-internet sales. As soon as stealing digital music became a thing, the bottom fell out. And even though illegal sharing is no longer vogue, it's effects are still killing the music business via paid streaming services because the overall value of music, thanks to said illegal sharing, has all but bottomed out.

In short? Without the advent of illegal sharing, album sales would still be healthy.

The evidence says otherwise.

First, the facts don't fit your narrative. Napster was released in 1999. Unit sales plateaued started in 1994, began the decline in 2000, and the legal digital rise began in 2004. At this time, Kazaa was all the rage. So the industry stopped growing far before Napster, and the bottom fell out when illegal downloading was still in infancy and had very few users, and indeed legal digital sales began to skyrocket during peak illegal downloading.

Second, if you remember, in 2000 it was discovered that the major music publishers and distributors Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music, Universal Music as well as retailers Musicland, Trans World Entertainment and Tower Records, were busted for price-fixing and other related antitrust violations occurring between 1995 and 2000. This heavily inflated the price of music. It is estimated customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million and up to $5 per album. Note the years - 1995 to 2000. They correspond pretty well with the trend of sales data showing a plateau of unit sales at that time. Makes sense: overinflated prices would drive down unit sales but would drive up profits, as shown the dollar sales were very high at this time.

The way I see it, the music industry today is about where it was in the pre-80s and -90s corruption period. Whether illegal downloading helped right a wrong, whether it was irrelevant to the whole course of events, or whether it chopped the industry down at the knees, I do not know. I do know that it is impossible to say that but for the advent of illegal sharing, album sales would still be healthy because album sales in the 80s and 90s were not healthy to begin with.

Being a musician has not changed. The top 1% are wealthy, and the rest get by barely. This has been true for centuries, and is true of all the arts really.

Also, to be clear, I am not arguing that music has no value. It does. Hard work should be rewarded, and it is critical to support the arts. This does not mean, however, that I must take whatever crap product Viacom tries to shove down my throat and thank them for it. Sorry Trevor Noah, if you come to my city I will gladly pay to see you do live standup, but it will be a cold day in hell before I pay Comcast for a cable package which is half advertising that includes Comedy Central in order to watch the Daily Show. I was happy paying Hulu for the ad-free streaming, but if that is not an option, I will do the next best thing.

 

[MrNomNoms]

I think it has to do with Google being an American company... thus they're building a "US television system"

But let's think about this for a second: how could Google build a "global television system" anyway? And would it even work?

Wouldn't folks in India want Indian news channels, and Indian comedy channels, and Indian cooking channels?

What about China? Brazil? Indonesia?

I don't think that's Google's job. Nor do I think they would be good at it.

I hear you... global internet services are better than single-country internet services.

But in this case... I don't think "global television" is very practical.

Well, if you're going to bring up something as ridiculous as that scenario then sure but how the hell does one explain why Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and Ireland (aka 'Anglosphere') are deprived from receiving said channels. I don't want to turn this political but we keep hearing from Trump about 'bad trade deals' and how 'America is being taken advantage of' but here is the most blatant example of America businesses deliberately screwing themselves over with their idiotic decision to be America centric rather than offering their content to all those who want it; I'm sitting here, willing and able to pay for it and they're turning down my money. No Mr Trump, America isn't being taken advantage of, your businesses are run by morons.

I guess the challenge is getting people to pay for something they are accustomed to getting for free. If you want to skip ads, there are a ton of options from adblockers to using third party youtube clients.

But even then the problem is that the 'original content' isn't worth it either; the ad free nature of the offer alone isn't worth paying for but if they had good original content or they included it as part of a large 'premium bundle' then I might actually be interested in it but so far there is nothing compelling about YouTube Red for me.

 

[SeattleMoose]

So $35 per month to watch all the stuff I no longer watch because of of "free" content on YouTube and the internet?

 

[winston1236]

They should've just made an app for $2-3 a month in which you can watch/download YouTube videos anywhere without connection... Instant buy from me.

That's called Youtube Red and it includes Google Music for 9.99.

 

[LordVic]

That's called Youtube Red and it includes Google Music for 9.99.

Except in Canada

Google hates Canada

 

[Harloh]

Hulu's price point is way under Google/youtube... you'd think with their billions, they'd be able to achieve a lower price point.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Well, if you're going to bring up something as ridiculous as that scenario then sure but how the hell does one explain why Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and Ireland (aka 'Anglosphere') are deprived from receiving said channels.

The second part of all this is licensing deals. Not all channels, studios, and content creators have deals in said countries.

This is nothing new.

Again... I see your point. But I think this is beyond the scope of what Google wants to do or perhaps is capable of doing.

And do you think people in those countries give a crap about American ESPN or whatever?

Like I said before... those countries have their OWN channels. Just because they speak English doesn't mean those people would pay for American content.

Some of it, sure. But not 30 American channels.

Look... this is literally the 2nd day of YouTubeTV in the US.

Perhaps Google will someday offer YouTubeTV Canada and YouTubeTV Australia.

But they can't just push a bunch of American channels into other countries. It's the licensing that prevents that.

 

[Abazigal]

I don't get the appeal to these services. Where's the market? I assume there aren't a lot of people who don't have cable but are also willing to spend 35 dollars on a cable-like plan. Might as well just give that money to your cable provider you get your internet from, you'll probably get more content with all the bundling they do.

There isn't any.

This bundle is horrible. Glaring lack of content.

I think Apple did the right thing by rejecting the very deals which Google agreed to.

 

[AppleScruff1]

There isn't any.

This bundle is horrible. Glaring lack of content.

I think Apple did the right thing by rejecting the very deals which Google agreed to.

And if Apple had the very same deals Google has, it would be the right thing.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

What is "depriving a sale?"

There is no data to support the assertion that an illegal copy would have been a sale but for the illegal download. There is a ton of data that shows the opposite, actually. Thus, the deprived sale must be someone else's future sale.

If a store has 3 widgets and individuals A, B, and C want to buy those widgets, then the store has 3 sales. If Z comes in first and takes 1 widget without paying, A and B buy the remaining widgets but C cannot, thus the store is deprived of a sale and C is deprived of a widget.

If a digital store sells digital files and individuals A, B, and C want to buy a file, then the digital store has 3 sales. If Z comes in first and illegally downloads the file without paying, A, B, and C can still buy the file, thus the store is not deprived of any sale and no individual is deprived for the file.

As said above, there is no evidence that Z would have paid for the widget or the file had it been impossible to illegally download or take without paying.

So in another thread you said you were a patent attorney. It's unfathomable that someone who protects intellectual property by day, goes home and steals intellectual property by night. I really don't know how you reconcile that. "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" doesn't fly with me. Neither does, "other people can still buy it if they want". If you aren't willing to pay for it, then you shouldn't get the benefit of it either. Especially since if you are an attorney, you are not destitute. Taking and using something without permission and without paying for it is stealing no matter what hoops you jump through in a vain attempt to justify it.

Do you run a cable to your neighbor's house to take their cable TV too?

 

[Abazigal]

And if Apple had the very same deals Google has, it would be the right thing.

I believe Google and Apple were both presented with the same deals and terms. They each wanted lean content bundles to keep the price down, but the content owners wanted to cram in as many channels as possible and drive up the price.

Google capitulated. That's why the package announced by Google is conspicuously missing some of the more popular cable channels. It was either that or jack up the price considerably.

Apple passed. That's the difference between the two companies. I don't see Apple executives losing any sleep over Google's latest offering.

And if this is anything like YouTube gaming, it may well be the one and only time we hear of it.

 

[oneMadRssn]

So in another thread you said you were a patent attorney. It's unfathomable that someone who protects intellectual property by day, goes home and steals intellectual property by night. I really don't know how you reconcile that. "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" doesn't fly with me. Neither does, "other people can still buy it if they want". If you aren't willing to pay for it, then you shouldn't get the benefit of it either. Especially since if you are an attorney, you are not destitute. Taking and using something without permission and without paying for it is stealing no matter what hoops you jump through in a vain attempt to justify it.

Do you run a cable to your neighbor's house to take their cable TV too?

I never said I "steal" anything, I do not commit any crime.

I am arguing to make the point that internet piracy is not stealing by pointing out the fallacies in analogy. Analogizing internet piracy to stealing does not lend itself to finding a proper solution - it's an improper identification of the problem and thus begs for wrong solutions to be tried. Internet piracy is bad - no debate. Protecting intellectual property is important - no debate.

I believe there are policy mechanisms to actually get rid of most internet piracy, and the first step is calling it what it is - an illegal copy is the best I have been able to come up. No matter how you analogize it to the physical world, illegal copying of digital media is not theft precisely because it is so difficult to identify and quantify the specific loss. The law supports this, as the crime statute for copyright infringement is very different from how theft is defined. I think the RIAA and MPAA made a huge mistake in their campaigns to convince the public that it is theft - it set them back years.

The second step is treating illegal downloads as a competitor to legal purchases. Afterall, illegal downloads are not really free either, right? It takes time to set up, to find, to convert, to do whatever is needed to get it on your TV or smartphone, yada yada. Time is money, and there are costs with usenets, proxies, or vpns. I really think the subscription streaming services which focus on easy of access are the way to go. Accept that piracy websites will offer the same shows, movies, and music as the legal stores. But what can piracy websites never be able to offer? Ease of use? Apps? Great UI design? Curation? Insider specials? You can get pretty creative here.

Sure, I can search for a new album, find the right source, find the high quality source, download the new album, tag the files correctly, import them into whatever software, find the right album art, and load them onto my smartphone. But when a new album comes out, I have to wait to do that before I can listen to it. Or I can pay a relatively small $/month and get at all my favorite music right away, with the value-added bonus of have curated playlists which I cannot get from piracy.

Viacom is moving backwards, I think. By taking their content off Hulu, they are making it more difficult for fans of their shows to consume the content. It is indisputable that Hulu is easier to sign up for, and to use, than cable. It takes what, 5 clicks to sign up for Hulu on the Apple TV? How long on the phone does it take to set up a comcast account and wait for a guy to come out and set it up? Viacom should be making it easier for us to consume their stuff - not harder. As an aside, I find any ads to be a barrier to the content, thus increasing the difficulty of actually getting to the content.

The third step is pushing out the middleman. In order to control costs, get everything between content creation and distribution out of the way. Everyone is concerned with protecting content creators, right? So the musician, the composer, the sound board person, the mastering person, etc. And we also care about the distribution channels, right? I.e., the software engineers, the networking engineers, the UI designers. How do we get the content from the creation to consumption, without having to make any stops along the way? I'm not sure, but I think figuring it out is essential to this puzzle.

As for how I plan to get my Daily Show fix, I am hoping to find an easy way to strip the commercials out of the web stream. A Terms of Service breach? Yes. A crime? Not at all.

 

[Floris]

Let me guess, nothing is available to anybody outside of the US?
Dutch YouTube TV app will be available like what, ten years later again? And then it will just have repeats from shows out 5 years ago?

It will be the same nonsense, no matter who makes this service, as long as the industry is anal about distribution, licensing, and availability.

If whatever is available on pirate sites on a "one hour later after it aired somewhere in the world" for $35 to $100 a month, but legal .. then give me a call. I'd love to pay for that. But unless i move to san fran, and spend the most on subscriptions and add-on subscriptions and extra subscriptions etc.. none of this is viable to anybody ini my opinion. It wasn't 15 years ago, nor 10 years ago, nor 5.

They finally added HBO to Dutch tv, year later or something they pulled it again, and now we have to pay for some belated ziggo service for TV accounts i don't want and have cancelled in the past, just to get hbo again.

Apple GO with HBO .. just not for you, or you, or you .. because you're ont from the US, that's the story with spotify, pandora, itunes, and so will it be with youtube tv and many others.

 

[purfikt]

Meh, I'll stick with my $35 grandfathered rate for 100+ channels on DTVN's streaming service. It's been a rocky start, but things are already starting to improve and DVR is expected to arrive this year. I think for that price point Google is going to have to bring more to the table.

This space is heating up and I welcome the competition, hopefully it will help drive down prices for us.

I signed up for DIRECTV Now and prepaid three months to get the free ATV4. I agree that the service has gotten better. However, there have been many times it was completely unusable for me. On-demand is seriously lacking, and what they are supposed to have often doesn't even show up or work.

I recently decided to try PS Vue since my three months are nearly up with DTVN. PS Vue is miles ahead of DTVN. It's not even close!

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

I am arguing to make the point that internet piracy is not stealing

Which is why it's called Internet charity instead of piracy, right? The term is called piracy for a reason. That being said, your further clarification sounds much more reasonable then the earlier examples. I agree, these old stodgy companies need new ways of thinking and need to make things easy for people to use. Thinking of piracy as another competitor is a good point. Spot on.

As for ads, well, that's how TV has always been paid for to keep things cheaper. Just like newspapers, magazines, and radio. But I think giving options to pay more for no commercials is something that should be offered to those who want it.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Which is why it's called Internet charity instead of piracy, right? The term is called piracy for a reason. That being said, your further clarification sounds much more reasonable then the earlier examples. I agree, these old stodgy companies need new ways of thinking and need to make things easy for people to use. Thinking of piracy as another competitor is a good point. Spot on.

As for ads, well, that's how TV has always been paid for to keep things cheaper. Just like newspapers, magazines, and radio. But I think giving options to pay more for no commercials is something that should be offered to those who want it.

Wanted to add that in my earlier examples I was (probably poorly) paraphrasing a book on this subject that I like very much, called Thirteen Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age. In it, the author who is somewhat of an expert on the topic argues that digital media is different in such important ways that applying old analogies to it leads down some odd and unworkable paths. This includes clarifying that internet piracy is not the same thing as stealing.

Another good example from the book is this:
- Imagine a regular indoor concert venue. A person sneaks in to a general admission concert without paying. This person takes up space, thereby depriving someone else of that space, and maybe a good view. This person also deprives the concert venue and the band of a sale, assuming the venue continues selling tickets until the inside looks full. This is stealing.
- Imagine a similar concert venue, except where the rules of physics don't apply, where the space is infinite in all directions and every standing spot has an equally good view. A person sneaks in to a general admission concert without paying. This person is taking up space, but not depriving anyone else of that space because space is infinite, and not depriving anyone of a view because all views are equally good from all spaces. This person is not really depriving the concert venue and the band of a sale, because there is infinite space and therefore no willing customers were turned away. This person is causing some economic harm, but what that harm is exactly is really tough to define. It's greater than zero, surely. This is not stealing, per se. It's different. Understanding the difference is key to addressing the issue.

 

[jonnysods]

I haven't had cable since 2005. I couldn't handle those nights of channel changing looking for a decent show, and then after paying a monthly fee for TV people shoving advertisements down my throat. I prefer to just pick what to watch, and if I don't get access to a show I'm interested in seeing because it's not on Netflix, I'll live.

 

[TehFalcon]

Oh, come on. It's not. Streaming to your device, only to restream to your Airplay receiver, draining your device all the while? That's not better.

What are you going on about? Why would you need to stream to your device and restream it? You can just airplay off your Mac natively or Windows Machine with an Application, OR Stream straight from an iOS Device. You seem to be making something more complicated then it needs to be.

Airplay doesn't lag and uses hardware acceleration, it's works amazingly well.

 

[dsut4392]

The second part of all this is licensing deals. Not all channels, studios, and content creators have deals in said countries.

This is nothing new.

Again... I see your point. But I think this is beyond the scope of what Google wants to do or perhaps is capable of doing.

And do you think people in those countries give a crap about American ESPN or whatever?

Like I said before... those countries have their OWN channels. Just because they speak English doesn't mean those people would pay for American content.

Some of it, sure. But not 30 American channels.

Look... this is literally the 2nd day of YouTubeTV in the US.

Perhaps Google will someday offer YouTubeTV Canada and YouTubeTV Australia.

But they can't just push a bunch of American channels into other countries. It's the licensing that prevents that.

While there's nothing wrong with what you say, you're kind of missing the point.
Yes, it's the licensing deals that are the root cause, but beyond that the whole model of 'channels' is (or should be) obsolete. The channels exist because broadcasting (or cable streaming) used to require expensive infrastructure belonging to the channel operator. The channel operator would license content from the creator in order to sell advertising and or pull in subscribers. The reach of the infrastructure had physical limitations, which meant that it could only earn revenue in restricted areas, hence licensing by region made sense. In the context of online content delivery, the whole concept of the 'channel' is superfluous, and geofencing is just an artificial construct to enable the old licensing model to continue. Aside from the original content they create, old fashioned channels don't offer any real consumer value in the online delivery space. Everything else the channels used to do (licensing, programming etc) is obsolete.

So while it's true that I don't want 'American ESPN', or 30 American channels, I also couldn't care less about YouTube Australia - what I want is one searchable interface where I can find any content I want, 'a la carte'. Not a whole bunch of monthly subscriptions to different channels, most of which I don't use. Basically like we have for music now in the iTunes store which has the vast majority of content from the majority of record labels, but for video with all of the video content from all of the creators.

 

[Abazigal]

As for ads, well, that's how TV has always been paid for to keep things cheaper. Just like newspapers, magazines, and radio. But I think giving options to pay more for no commercials is something that should be offered to those who want it.

Does that not sound like a contradiction?

The people who would be willing to pay for no ads would be the very group of people that advertisers will want to target, because these are presumably the people with more disposal income. And now you are removing them from the demographic to be targeted? Sounds like that would simply making advertising far less effective.

 

[Michael Scrip]

While there's nothing wrong with what you say, you're kind of missing the point.
Yes, it's the licensing deals that are the root cause, but beyond that the whole model of 'channels' is (or should be) obsolete. The channels exist because broadcasting (or cable streaming) used to require expensive infrastructure belonging to the channel operator. The channel operator would license content from the creator in order to sell advertising and or pull in subscribers. The reach of the infrastructure had physical limitations, which meant that it could only earn revenue in restricted areas, hence licensing by region made sense. In the context of online content delivery, the whole concept of the 'channel' is superfluous, and geofencing is just an artificial construct to enable the old licensing model to continue. Aside from the original content they create, old fashioned channels don't offer any real consumer value in the online delivery space. Everything else the channels used to do (licensing, programming etc) is obsolete.

So while it's true that I don't want 'American ESPN', or 30 American channels, I also couldn't care less about YouTube Australia - what I want is one searchable interface where I can find any content I want, 'a la carte'. Not a whole bunch of monthly subscriptions to different channels, most of which I don't use. Basically like we have for music now in the iTunes store which has the vast majority of content from the majority of record labels, but for video with all of the video content from all of the creators.

Believe me... I totally think the idea of live linear channels is outdated.

It's a silly delivery method for a show to play at 8pm on a Tuesday... and you either watch it as it's being broadcasted... or DVR it for later.

All these online services are simply mimicking old-fashioned cable TV... albeit over the internet instead of a copper wire or satellite. It's the same outdated idea... in a different wrapper.

I wish we had a complete on-demand experience where you can watch any show, at any time, on any device... worldwide!

But no one has been able to do it. That's all I was saying earlier. If it was easy... it would be done already. It's 2017 forchristsakes.

I think it's gonna be a while for any major change. There are still thousands of hours of programming created for the traditional model of broadcast television.

But far less content is created specifically for on-demand services a la Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.

For some reason.... there are always new shows popping up on linear cable channels like Spike, Bravo, etc. And network TV as well. Why?

I guess it's the advertising money. And that's why linear ad-supported TV will be around for a while.

It's kinda hard to turn that ship around.