

Speaking for everyone?
I pay because I use yt music and my PRIMARY tv watching is YT, and I use one or the other all day long.
YT has no ads, and I can skip with the press of a button most creator ads so it’s kinda nice and easy. (Yes I know what sponsor block is and it’s installed on Firefox so one less button press on my pc)
Do I pay YouTube FOR the creators? Nope I pay so I can sign in / watch yt or listen to my music anywhere without jumping through hoops.
I also have / sometimes use grayjay on my phone (and I paid futo for it to support it) I have smart tube next on my Nvidia shield too. My wife/son use it mostly.
I sync yt music to my Garmin watch for running, I run about 20 miles a week so add that to feature I’m paying for.
I downloaded a handful of videos before flying to CA earlier this week, but the flights had WiFi so that didn’t really give me anything special ;)
Can I do all this without paying, sure, but I don’t mind paying for stuff I get value from.
Am I happy about $4/mo increase? Absolutely not, but it’s not gonna break me either. $4/30 is .13c a day.
Not defending Google, but how many employees do they have? Did they all get raises this year? I bet license deals from the music industry probably went up too. (No proof but assuming)
But I agree 100%, they are without a doubt no longer following “don’t be evil”. But it’s disingenuous to believe they’re annual costs are not increasing along with literally everything else.