(2025-05-29) Barton on YouTube Premium as ContentBundle

Jon Barton has been a YouTube Red/Premium subscriber since basically day one... YouTube Premium is the mega subscription (content bundle) model you're describing, and it already works brilliantly - Google just can't market it to save their lives... YouTube splits Premium subscription revenue 55/45 with creators, just like ad revenue. But here's the kicker: it fundamentally changes the entire ecosystem. Instead of viewers being the product sold to advertisers, we become the customers. Creators get paid MORE per Premium view than ad views, without worrying about "advertiser-friendly" content guidelines. I never get that "feels bad" moment of deciding if a video is worth X cents - I just watch what interests me, guilt-free.

The model removes ALL the friction: no ads, no ad-blocker wars, creators get stable income, and viewers can support creators without thinking about it. YouTube Premium is proof that the mega subscription model works. The only failure is that after nearly a decade, Google still hasn't figured out how to explain this to people. They've positioned it as "YouTube without ads" when it's actually "become a patron of every creator you watch, automatically."