DRIVE+

I just gave up on the whole drive+ deal. Was supportive of them in the start, but as time goes by I just cant help to feel I'm being suckered into something. Now when I see a new /Drive video i just go on PirateBay and download the show. Made a new folder and dumping stuff into it. And actually I like it more than youtube, no lag, no ads etc. Something good in the end after all . . .
 
The only way I have seen Youtube "Plus" subscription type services work is to have special added content to premium members, not cutting down their existing content and then offering what used to be their standard content at a price. I just don't see this working out for them honestly. Not only do I not have any interest in paying for Drive+, since they made this move I have pretty much stopped watching ANYTHING and have unsubscribed from their page.

I wish them luck I guess, but they just are not offering a service I'm willing to pay for.
 
I just gave up on the whole drive+ deal. Was supportive of them in the start, but as time goes by I just cant help to feel I'm being suckered into something. Now when I see a new /Drive video i just go on PirateBay and download the show. Made a new folder and dumping stuff into it. And actually I like it more than youtube, no lag, no ads etc. Something good in the end after all . . .

Or you can go to dailymotion. Found pretty much any video there in HD whereas on piratebay most of it seems to be in a lower definition.
 
Or you can go to dailymotion. Found pretty much any video there in HD whereas on piratebay most of it seems to be in a lower definition.

User on piratebay by the name "Driveplus" says :

Native 1080p YT rip. Enjoy.
Also available on DailyMotion.
Soon to be seedboxed.

The quality is good enough for me, i watch 720p youtube vids anyways . . .
 
I don't get how downloading a torrent manually and then opening it through a video player is more convenient than visiting YT, but I agree that /DRIVE have fucked up a good part of their reputation lately.
 
I don't get how downloading a torrent manually and then opening it through a video player is more convenient than visiting YT, but I agree that /DRIVE have fucked up a good part of their reputation lately.

Dunno, to me its more accessible that way, its two folders away and no waiting to cache it, eats my bandwidth only once, faster to open it, faster to find something cause i know exactly where it is. Call me crazy :D
 
i also prefer downloading over youtube

if there is an hour-long vid on youtube i want see, most likely i'll download it anyway
 
You want to watch their awesome videos, but want to do so for free. How very entitled of some of you. I can't imagine that any of you would work for free?

I'm a day one subscriber, no regrets. They definitely could have handled this better, though. Instead of pandering to those who never have or never will pay for content, they should concentrate on giving people more reasons to sign up.
 
The quality is good enough for me, i watch 720p youtube vids anyways . . .

Well it might've changed. Only looked on piratebay at the very beginning of drive+.
 
I'm a day one subscriber, no regrets. They definitely could have handled this better, though. Instead of pandering to those who never have or never will pay for content, they should concentrate on giving people more reasons to sign up.

Well who knows. Might've subscribed since day one aswell if I could but YouTube wouldn't let me, and to be honest, having seen some of the drive+ videos, I'm still struggling if I want to.
 
As you brought it up, I do work for free sometimes. Even go out of my pocket to help someone.

But not all the time, right? These guys aren't a charity and I respect them for charging for their work. This is something that all creatives should be getting behind, as currently it's a race to the bottom. You have people who have just picked up a camera for the first time, can't tell their arse from their elbow, offering free work to every outlet going. This causes those who have spent years learning their craft to either shut up shop, or cut their rates until it's not financially viable anymore. In the end, we will all suffer when all that we are offered in the media is pure crap.

FWIW, I've no problem with someone not subscribing because they don't feel the quality / quantity of content is there at the moment. That's a completely justifiable complaint. But people who are happy to download it from the internet and brag about not paying for it, can go eat shit.
 
But not all the time, right? These guys aren't a charity and I respect them for charging for their work. This is something that all creatives should be getting behind, as currently it's a race to the bottom. You have people who have just picked up a camera for the first time, can't tell their arse from their elbow, offering free work to every outlet going. This causes those who have spent years learning their craft to either shut up shop, or cut their rates until it's not financially viable anymore. In the end, we will all suffer when all that we are offered in the media is pure crap.

FWIW, I've no problem with someone not subscribing because they don't feel the quality / quantity of content is there at the moment. That's a completely justifiable complaint. But people who are happy to download it from the internet and brag about not paying for it, can go eat shit.

Great post. And you never downloaded a movie, song, cracked a program or game or anything like that and didn't pay to the artist/developer/whatever. You're eating shit with the rest of us.

I've paid for things i hold to be cool, awesome, important, close to my heart or for whatever reason. I bought their t-shirts to support them while back, gave feedback etc when i didnt have to. But youtube is a free service to upload for those who have something to show. Its a community of enthusiasts, or it was. Now people live off it by just filming themselves every day. In my mind, youtube money is a bonus for your work, not your main drive (no pun intended). Forcing people to pay for something is always gonna end badly.

I don't mind supporting them, or anything for that matter, its just the way they did it. I posted many times on their vids about it, got no response. Even if I want to pay for it, i cant cause i live where i live. So just because youtube doesn't like my money, i should not watch them anymore?
 
You have people who have just picked up a camera for the first time, can't tell their arse from their elbow, offering free work to every outlet going. This causes those who have spent years learning their craft to either shut up shop, or cut their rates until it's not financially viable anymore.

I wonder if you realize that you are describing the beginnings of quite a few /DRIVE shows there. For example, "my life as a rallyist" or whatever it was, was a student project, near-as-makes-no-difference free for /DRIVE to produce. The larger picture of your post just describes new media displacing old media which was precisely what /DRIVE was trying to do to car shows on television. Only since then they've embarked on the slow slide towards becoming an old media franchise themselves. Money ruins everything!

Besides, I don't understand your thought process where an oversized monthly Youtube subscription is the only option available for them to monetize /DRIVE videos. To be wildly successful, all they need is to readjust their business model. Like I said, micropayments per episode. Downloads in addition to VoD. Done.
 
Besides, I don't understand your thought process where an oversized monthly Youtube subscription is the only option available for them to monetize /DRIVE videos. To be wildly successful, all they need is to readjust their business model. Like I said, micropayments per episode. Downloads in addition to VoD. Done.

I still don't understand how this wasn't a viable option for them. Matt Farah wrote on reddit that they discussed literally every option possible, I do not want to believe that.
 
I still don't understand how this wasn't a viable option for them. Matt Farah wrote on reddit that they discussed literally every option possible, I do not want to believe that.

Do you really think they're that thick? They didn't get 1 million subscribers out of pure luck.
 
http://shoutengine.com/Hooniverse/hooniverse-gold-subscription-plan-3295

Everything is laid out rather nicely as to why they had go with the model they did here.
There's a big difference between pirating a large commercially backed entity and a small user pays one. If you don't want to pay, nothing wrong with that. Just don't watch every ep on another source and then bitch about them choosing to charge for it on the internet. But when you pirate something of this small scale, you're just fucking it up for the rest of us who are happy to pay for the content.
 
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Let me put it this way, if there's no one ripping it, I wouldn't pay for it. I would just stop watching and watch something else. But since there are some rips, I will watch until they stop.
 
Paddy....

at no point since /Drive started have they done ANYTHING for free. It has been a money maker from the beginning, they just got too big and fancy and expensive to live off of ad revenue and sponsorship. Stuff is rarely free, it just might not cost money. Sometimes you pay by being advertised to. Whining about people complaining about this is like having a problem with people being angry that their favorite commericial radio or TV station stopped broadcasting over the air and moved to a members only pay service.

I said it before, but I just don't see it working. My biggest issues was charging a premium fee for something that used to be a free to watch. I still say that keeping their /Drive content as it was, and having /Drive+ provide content above and beyond what they were offering before (Deleted scenes, extended footage, commentary, maybe a few extra reviews). You don't alienate your fanbase that way, and I'm guessing about the same number of people would sign up for the premium service as have gone to "+". I've seen quite a few other Youtube channels do it that way and it seems to be working great with few complaints.

I'll be honest and say that I don't have much problem torrenting stuff of "questionable legality" but I haven't done that with this and don't really plan to even though I felt jilted with the bad teaser videos they have up right now.
 
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