YouTube Features We Needed
By Dewan Mukto
2026-04-18
Ah, the video-sharing platform that we all were familiar with for finding memes, cat videos, gameplay walkthroughs, try not to laugh compilations, travel vlogs, nightcore music and sports highlights has slightly become rotten over the years.
People rely on this monopoly as a substitute for TV in the 2020s and beyond. And yet, YouTube itself continues to disappoint us, eh?
Well, if I were in charge of YouTube, here are exactly the features and steps I would have "done right" if given the power to do so.
More Premium
YouTube Premium may not seem worth it for some of you guys out there, but it is just like Discord Nitro or any other premium subscription you'd purchase for a privileged experience. The real problem is that we consumers are not getting much for the price we pay. Look at Discord Nitro and how they keep on expanding their list of benefits and perks available to those who can afford $10 a month; makes it even more irresistable for NOT having that subscription, am I right?
So, how about we gain some more features for your dollars.
- YouTubers on a YouTube Premium subscription would be getting special access to market competitor analysis (so that they wouldn't have to rely on other third-party tools like Google Trends, SEMrush, vidIQ, etc.). Because if those platforms have access to such data, YouTube can, too. And ofcourse, it would be in YouTube's best interests to control their monopoly, right? So that it attracts high-value content creators from other platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) to be more active on YouTube. More transparency, more stakes, more rewards for YouTubers if they can break through the flow of the video economy.
- YouTubers with Premium would also have an exclusive "backup" or "archive" system for their videos, in case their original ones get accidentally deleted. Because the reality check is that creators spend hours or even hundreds-thousands of dollars per video in terms of investment (not to mention hours-weeks or even months of combined time and effort). If by any chance those videos were deleted, it'd be a huge loss! I'm sure YouTube can do better.
- Normal viewers with Premium would be able to have their comments highlighted (similar to how X/Twitter's Verified subscription perks work), alongside the default benefits like no-ads, videos downloads, etc.
- Users with Premium can have access to "themes", which can help customize their experience more - making them feel more comfy, more at home. A lot of people depend on YouTube as their source of information, research, knowledge and entertainment. With that many reasons to use the platform daily for hours at a time, it should be blessing for the users to have access to additional themes, customization controls, more video player layouts, structures. There might be third-party clients out there which already do these things, but hey! We're trying to bring more of those to this first-party platform to increase YouTube's own engagement rates.
More Monopoly
Instead of YouTube being only a platform for watching videos, what fun and joy it would bring to content creators if they had their own bespoke video editors, thumbnail editors, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and marketing tools! Own the whole supply chain and production pipeline and you own the empire.
Currently YouTube already published their mobile app YouTube Create, and their website in-app YouTube Studio Editor also helps with simple video manipulation. But these aren't enough! Imagine getting a professional-grade studio in the same platform, without having to rely on Canva, or Adobe products.
For the musicians out there, we could even fit in a whole DAW integrated into YouTube, so that they can generate music videos straight from the platform.
Paid Videos
Okay this one may sound a bit capitalistic, but this would provide extra leverage for both video creators and consumers.
Instead of being bombarded by ads in your face, YouTube channels with a Premium subscription (and significant numbers of subscribers, e.g. 1000) would be eligible to upload a "free version" and a "paid version" of any video they want. Prices would not be so significantly high, either. Just a few extra bucks and some marketing tactics, like $1 for 1 video or $5 to unlock 10 videos (on any channel), would be enough to attract users to pay for watching the paid videos. Also, users with Premium subscription would be able to watch any paid video for free. (See what I am doing here? Adding more and more entries to the list of advantages for being on a YouTube Premium subscription)
The real problem is not about costing too much. You can sell a greater quantity of items to more people at a lower cost to optimize sales, rather than staying stuck on a loop of maximizing profits. Even if YouTube faces losses (err.. they shouldn't, since the subscription is a virtual product) in one direction, they can be offset by greater sales from another part of the monetization system.
The real problem is how to monetize properly.
YouTube can also push content creators to produce higher quality videos by limiting their video quality range to 1080p HD if they are not on any Premium subscription. And every now and then, as soon as they enter YouTube Studio, they would receive lots of carefully designed, well-calculated psychologically stimulating pop-ups showing the reasons for upgrading to a Premium subscription.
Audience-Centric
If the Premiumness would only be getting more attractive for the creators, then the population density of the platform would shift towards a "60% creators, 40% viewers" (or similar) skewness. That's why we would need to add in more fun sparkly stuff for the ordinary Joe.
Even the most average user of YouTube with a Premium subscription would be smiling with excitement when they see these features:
- the ability to communicate with content creators inside special "groupchats".
- the ability for channels to also communicate with each other in-app, without needing any external social media. Better collaborations with more privacy.
- the ability to join livestreams (with approval from the host channel)
- gamification features (levels, xp, achievements, badges, etc.)
- official certification and tests from YouTube (imagine being honored by YouTube! You can showcase and transfer your content creation skills to other employment opportunities and industries)
- the ability to donate/fund channels to have "ownership" of YouTube channels in much the same way as private equity firms or stock market public companies work.
Basically, we would be combining features from Twitch and other platforms to the extent that YouTube becomes an essential part of everyone's lives. And that being a "YouTuber" with a high reputation would be regarded with as much credibility as any scientific researcher or Nobel Prize winner would have.
Now, there can be some flaws or drawbacks with a number of ideas that I had described above. And a handful of them might have already been implemented without my knowledge. But as of the date of publication of this article/post, they don't appear so.
If you're an actual human reading through all of this, I admire your patience and respect your habits of not relying on any AI tools to do it (unless it's for accessibility purposes).
Oh well, that was my take on this topic. Feel free to tag @ MuxDay on social media (use this page to find what usernames they use), so that your response can be seen by me or anyone from the PR team.
Please share this post to your social media feed to spread the word and begin a passive protest against YouTube, by demanding for these powerful features. With every new share of this article, the chances of it being discovered by YouTube's authorities increases by 0.5%. If you are the owner of a blog or website with your own custom domain, then a backlink to this post/website would be much appreciated!