I mean they want you to subscribe to YouTube premium.
At least they’re being honest about this and give you the option. I have a few issues with google but this isn’t one (After being forced to spend many hours upgrading to google analytics rev 4….)
It’s expensive, but I’ve done it, but it also includes YouTube music which I like.
At least over here in Finland you can get premium light which is just 6.99e per month, and does not include youtube music.
Which was the thing that finally made me upgrade, as I already have a preferred music streaming service, I refused the premium bundle out of principle for a long time.
As a principle, I think each product and service should stand by itself and bundling things up just makes the experience worse for the end user (Teams etc). But that's a bit different discussion.
But that still does not allow for offline playback, background playback from a mobile app so they can still suck it.
It also makes no sense that you need a family account for more than one profile with a single paid account. At least price wise it is a tough sell against actual streaming services with actual (developed or licensed) content that do offer multiple profiles per account.
I found YouTube Music surprisingly full-fledged. The library is not as complete as Spotify or Apple Music of course, but, you also get the user uploads, which is a much more reliable resource for those few odd tracks.
With Premium you also get to minimize the YouTube app on the phone. It's nice for talks and discussions that are not uploaded as podcasts.
With Apple Music you can add your privately owned music to the library too. It even outdates Apple Music with a now legacy service called iTunes Plus that allowed you to stream your private music collection with iTunes from ‘the cloud’ for €25/year.
Back in the day I even used this to ‘white-wash’ low quality mp3 files to 256kbps acc files instead.
I think it is actually user-hostile to force users to pay for YouTube Music when you want access to ad free YouTube videos, probably why in Europe YouTube Premium Lite exists (without Music), because tie-in purchases (translated term) are generally not allowed here.
SponserBlock will block in-video ads. Also if you use Safari, the Vinegar plug-in replaces the video player with a native one which blocks all ads, allows Picture in Picture, background play, huge improvements overall
It’s expensive, but I’ve done it, but it also includes YouTube music which I like.