Maybe both?! And I’m okay with it.

As someone who was always OCD about how I treated my cds, this hits home.

I hear your point - you’re not wrong. But I believe that any service that you enjoy is worth paying for. Services cost money and at the end of the day, it’s a for profit company. That said, as a very casual viewer I’ll do what I can to avoid paying, since, to your point, they make plenty of money off of us. If I were a heavy YT user, I’d probably just pay to avoid dealing with all of the ads.

Premium just seems like too expensive a proposition for the casual viewer. I use an adblocker but if they made premium five bucks a month I’d probably just do it. And I think many people wouldn’t mind paying that to avoid ads.