Yeah, OK. From what I've seen here, (you know. Because I'm somebody that MAKES youtube videos. I'm a nobody I guess, but a nobody with the inside info on what this looks like from the creator's side of things), I did read the announcement.
It's... I don't know how to take it. Google claims they're offering the same terms as advertisement based revenue. 55% of the money, based on the proportion and duration of views that people that have such a subscription use to watch your videos.
In that sense, it would appear to be a transparent swapout for advertising. I would still get paid (in theory. I don't have any monetized videos) based on the number of views and such, it's just coming from direct subscriptions rather than advertising.
Of course, this still leaves us at the mercy of google and it's 'content-ID' and general unfair, heavy-handed, biased nonsense when it comes to copyright issues, but... That's the exact same situation we have now, except with the money we might get coming from a different source.
Obviously, the big mystery in this is what is the payment rate for a view from a youtube paid subscriber? But that's about the only thing about this that meaningfully differs from advertising based revenue for the creators of content...
At least, as far as I can tell from the information I've been given about this as a verified partner (Not as impressive as it sounds, but that's how they describe it.)