YouTube Red faces mixed responses compared to counterpart services

Sophomore Selena Liu scrolled through the various YouTube Red shows unlocked for her with her new subscription to the service. To her disappointment, Liu could barely finish a single episode of YouTube’s original content.

“After all the advertising YouTube did to promote these exclusive YouTube Red shows, the videos just seemed [ingenuine], over-hyped and ultimately a huge letdown,” Liu said.

In 2015, YouTube introduced a subscription service called YouTube Red, which charges users $9.99 per month for four major components: access to increased variety of videos solely available to Red’s users, an easier avenue to surf music, an ad-free experience and the ability to play videos offline on mobile devices.

According to Business Insider, out of YouTube’s 1.5 billion monthly users, a mere 1.5 million pay for Red. Students sophomore Ben Ryan and junior Vittorio Morini Bianzino decided to use YouTube Red after Google started bundling the service with its music and app store, Google Play.

Despite liking most of the main services Red provides, Ryan and Bianzino agreed that Red’s shows — a main component to Red’s promotional campaign — failed to live up to the hype. But, for both, the perks of no ads and being able to download videos to be watched offline make it appealing enough to continue using the service.

“There are some fun YouTube Red specials that are available, but I never paid much attention to them,” Bianzino said. “But the service is super useful when I have to travel places where I don't have internet connection, because I can download as many videos as I'd like and watch them offline.”

Though much of Red’s original features have disappointed its users, Ryan and Bianzino were nonetheless surprised to find that the music surfing ability of Red, the least promoted component of the service, was in fact its most redeeming quality, due to it allowing users to access music not available on rival services such as Spotify or Apple Music.

“There are so many music videos and cool user-made playlists on YouTube, even a lot of songs that you would've never found on Spotify or Apple Music,” Liu said.

However, for many who already had browser extensions like “AdBlock,” which blocks out ads on YouTube, YouTube Red failed to provide enough quality services. Many complained of YouTube Red shows not being worth the $9.99 subscription and stopped utilizing the service after their three-month trial was over.

“Maybe if YouTube Red provided better TV shows with [a wider variety of people] and had more exclusive offerings like Spotify does, people might actually pay for the service,” senior Mervi Tan said.