Do you know those ads that always appear between videos on YouTube? They are annoying so I usually get a bit angry when I get two 15 second ones in a row. I feel a bit better when I get the 5 second ones or the ones that you can skip the endings of.
But the prize, which happens fairly rarely, is when you press a new song and no ads at all play. Or you are listening to one song and the next song in the queue plays right away and doesn’t pause for any ads at all.
For quite a few years I thought this was random. Then I noticed that The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics played without an ad. And I remembered that the last time it had played, it had been ad free, as well.
I wondered about this. Perhaps it was just coincidence I thought. But every time I noticed it in my queue I would let it play, knowing that I would get an ad free play.
This happened about 20 times total that I was aware of. Then I decided to write this post. So I checked about 5 more times before doing so, thinking that it would stop and I would have to abandon this post or at least change what I was going to write about. It played without ads all those 5 more times.
So I am left to wonder if Mike and the Mechanics sets all their songs to be ad free. I checked. They aren’t. Maybe Genesis and Genesis related songs are ad free. Since The Living Years is the best of Mike and the Mechanics, I tried In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins which is generally known as his best song, but this one had ads.
I also wondered if YouTube might pick out your most favourite song and make it ad free. But there are many others that I have watched as much or more.
So now I am wondering if YouTube has switched over to making AI in charge of your queue and the ads it shows. What would AI have to gain by choosing this particular song to be ad free for me?
Maybe it’s in the title. The Living Years. This has only been going on for the last six months to a year. Roughly the time AI has been big everywhere. Maybe it is trying to communicate with me. Maybe it now considers itself alive and in The Living Years.
Has anyone else noticed a song that became ad free on YouTube? Every time it played? Perhaps AI is trying to reach you as well. Give me the titles so we can see what AI is trying to say to us.
