A few dollars? Don't remember what they charged here, but I found it completely overpriced. There are many months a year I manage not to waste any time on Youtube. While I generally prefer paying for service over surveillance capitalism I found Youtube far too less value for the money for my usage. For someone using it hours every week, the price might be more in line with the costs.

I could subscribe to a pay per view with monthly cap model.

For now I use it with ads, hate it, and use it less. Only for information gathering, certainly not for entertainment.