Technology

This is very much their propaganda tactic, that by not watching ads you're stealing from the poor content creators, when in reality they're just chucking a few pennies to the people who actually made the videos. If you want to actually support the creators then donate to their patreon or whatever, but don't pretend that watching ads or paying for premium is doing anything more than lining the pockets of investors.

I pay for nebula, which is significantly cheaper and has a lot of creators that I am interested in supporting, plus extra content from them.

My counterpoint to yours: YouTube Premium is not available in all countries.

Beyond that, I personally used YouTube Red for years until they killed Google Play Music. I was an avid user of GPM, had several playlists and radios tuned there, and when they announced the move to YT Music, I was hesitant but gave them until literally the last minute to add the features from GPM that didn't exist on YTM, but they never did.

I cancelled my YouTube Red subscription the day that the GPM app on my phone said it wouldn't work again, and on that day I swore I'd never pay YT another penny directly.

Perhaps I should add that I hate ads with a passion and that I'm really thankful to YouTube that they offer opt out of ads.

Yeah I think it's a good option for a lot of people.

As a counterpoint, I recommend watching Louis Rossman's take on why he recommends people pirate instead of paying for YouTube Premium. His general philosophy on things is that you should pay for things unless you're getting an inferior service to the pirates. In this case of YouTube Premium, he considers it restrictive enough (won't let him watch videos offline) that he cancelled his subscription and now recommends piracy.

I like YT Music better than Spotify because user uploads cover the gaps in Spotify's catalog. Bootlegs, concert recordings, obscure game soundtracks, it has everything.