Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare.

Believe it or not, YouTube Premium is one of them. A Premium view is worth more than an ad-supported view to a creator.

(Obviously Patreon is better, as they can’t make a living off of only Premium views because it’s a smaller group; the population of ad-supported users is much much larger. But YouTube Premium does benefit the creators more than ad-supported YouTube does.)