I think Google/YouTube made a huge strategic mistake by not introducing a serious competitor to patreon. Pretty much all youtubers these days make a significant chunk of their income through patreon, and its main features wouldn't have been that difficult to integrate into yt. They started to do a small rollout with yt red with "red only" and subscription options ("join"), but it's far from widespread and they did it after patreon had captured a sizeable chunk of its userbase.