Ben Popper, writing for The Verge, pulled together a highly detailed, long form look at YouTube’s new paid subscription service, Red. YouTube Red gives you ad-free videos, combined with ad-free music streaming via Google Play Music.

On the question of YouTube Red cannibalizing YouTube’s existing advertising:

If the most passionate fans stopped looking at ads, wouldn’t that make the service less appealing to marketers who want their brands associated with YouTube stars? “Let’s take it to the extreme,” said [Chief Business Officer Robert] Kyncl. Say every paid television customers in the United States — 100 million individuals — sign up for YouTube Red. That would still be less than a tenth of YouTube’s total audience, barely making a dent in the number of eyeballs that would be available to advertisers. Kyncl laughed — “and we have a very long way to go to that kind of number.”

In many ways, YouTube Red is facing the same challenges as Apple, finding ways to nail down permissions from the various rights holders:

Getting permission to include every single video on YouTube ad-free was no easy task. Kyncl and his team had to convince millions of independent creators, large and small, many of whom worried that their fans would be forced to pay in order to see all their videos, of the benefits of a subscription model. Independent musicians and labels whipped up righteous anger across the web. Fans and media glommed to the story. But for users who choose to opt out, the vast majority of videos will still be available on either side of the paywall, with ads for ordinary users and ad-free for subscribers.

YouTube also had to convince its big music label, television network, and movie studio partners. Many of these big media companies requested a more favorable cut of the subscription revenue than the service was offering to the average YouTuber, on the grounds that their premium content would be the main driver of subscriptions. But YouTube held out, and in the end almost all the big players came along. The only one that hasn’t is Disney, but YouTube plans to forge ahead regardless, saying it has 98 percent of its content covered by agreements with rights holders.

And on the split with the creators:

With the advertising model, YouTube takes 45 percent of the revenue, and the remaining 55 percent goes to creators. With Red, creators will be paid a percentage of the total subscription revenue, minus YouTube’s’s cut, based on the watchtime of their videos each month. The more devoted their fan base, the bigger that check could become. YouTube won’t share the exact percentage it plans to take from Red, but says creators will still get the majority of subscription revenue.

Jack Conte, the founder of the crowdfunding service Patreon and a musician who makes a large part of his living through videos, doesn’t think Red will bring about significant improvements for creators. “Subscription services are great for consumers. Pay 10 bucks and have any song or any video in your pocket, whenever you want,” he says. “But for the creators, there is still way too much of a middleman.”

Sound familiar?