That might be true, but one of my use-cases for YouTube is listening to music, over a tablet, while I shower
So these 15-minute "ads" pretty much lead to the situation that halfway through my shower I won't be listening to music anymore, but rather some tutorial on how to best light a photoshoot or a "documentary" how Hezbollah is destroying Europe.
Don't get me wrong here: They can have their ads, but throwing 15-minute ads between videos that average out at around 3-8 minutes just feels like a very bold choice.
And it's not like watching that 15-minute ad means you won't be bothered by them for a while, you can watch it and after the next 3 minute song, there will be yet another ad.
Eh. YouTube isn't a very good platform for music, and it's even worse if you aren't paying for the premium service. Why wouldn't you use something like Spotify?
If your use case is using a video streaming service to listen to music then perhaps you should consider using something else instead of fighting against the tide. Don't get me wrong, I do the same from time to time, but typically when I listen to music I'm not loading up YouTube...
The dynamic playlists actually make YouTube a pretty decent music streaming service. I can find a song I like and just create a "mix" out of it, featuring similar songs, with just 1 click.
Having the actual music video with the music is also a very nice extra, some of these can make a song like 10 times as good.
If the YouTube premium wouldn't be so expensive (asking 16€ per month over here) I'd already signed up just for getting ad-free music.
I've gotten some 20+ seconds unskipable ads. That's the moment when I simply switched to MPV for watching youtube videos as the ads keep squeezing through every adblock filter I've tried once in a while.
While you can get ads that are 15 minutes long they can always be skipped within 5 seconds. That's not even comparable to television.