Long time years ago, vimeo was the first to allow "semi" HD free video uploads (1280 x 720).
So I used Vimeo for that, and it often matched the video cams back then.
Then all our cams got full HD, and YouTube were quick to react, and now you can freely upload full HD video to YouTube.
Just constrained that you can not upload more than 1 per day/week (or something), that is fair when you dont pay IMO.
So I've been using YouTube ever since, and dropped Vimeo because this lower resolution and low quality was not very usable anymore, IMO.
YouTube also has a compression that takes a lot of the "quality" indeed, but still way better than Vimeo
Regarding the music, in our country (as I believe it can be country specific ?), you can use any song you dont own, but you will get a notification about this after upload where you can accept or make a claim, and viewers will get a small ad at the buttom of the video (you can just click away actually).
If you own the music, use free music, or dont use music, there will be no ads.
Once the automatic song reckognition system made a mistake, when I used a piece of free music - but I just wrote exactly where my source came from, and that it was a mistake - and it solved the issue so no ads !
With my rare use of video upload I dont see any reason to pay, so chose the best "free" solution possible, and find it really okay quality
Still compressed somewhat of course, but okay.
Peter