Grandfathered YouTube Premium users will see price increase in January

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 496 points –
Grandfathered YouTube Premium users will see price increase in January
9to5google.com
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That's not what Grandfathered means. Basically, original subscribers are being forced onto a new contract.

Ya. I was originally a Google Play music subscriber which got turned into YouTube music, for $9.99usd. Now they're increasing the cost by like $4 after December. So I moved to the spotify family plan and now I share with my love ones for only a little bit more than the new YT price.

YT music was turning to sit though. It would always play music video audio with long ass shitty intros when the studio album music existed in their catalog. Even with the music video option turned to off.

Yeah, I fell into the same situation. I had a YouTube Music family plan that they told me was no longer grandfathered in, so I also switched to Spotify and have been happy with it. In my case, though, I lucked out because I only needed to keep one other person on the plan with me, so I went with the duo plan instead of the family plan and ended up saving money in the end.

If Google wants me back they can offer ad-free YouTube for $2/mo and that'll be back as it was. That's really the only thing I still miss, because god knows the music player itself wasn't great.

Ya. This was my last straw. Figured I'd give them until the end of the original 9.99. So far the transition to Spotify has been good.

If you were in the beta. It's 7.99.

I've been paying 7.99 since day one of Google Play Music. They added YouTube Red (Premium) shortly after.

Damn. I was early to Play Music, but not beta early. That's an amazing price.

I moved over from Play Music, and if they had a music- only cheaper option that's what I personally want, but the rest of the family does use YouTube for other stuff, and only the penultimate child is into sailing the seas of content. Per user price is not bad considering how much music we listen to.

I am honestly less mad about the price and more still mad that they shut down the best music streaming app (best recommend algorithm, the glorious "playing near you" function that was able to find bands I would like but had not heard and only within a few miles of home, the way it would adjust the music for morning, night, weekend, it was so good) and pushed everyone onto the YouTube Music before it was ready. It's OK now but it's been years and no way is it as good as Play Music was.

Ya. I just want what I had with GPM. After moving to Spotify, was suuuuper surprised to see how it's changed. Audio books, podcasts, random gifs for album art, bunch of small changes that feels like it clogs up my music listening experience. I don't even intuitively know how to train the algorithm since I can't heart or dislike songs. Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon now?

Right? I'm gunna miss it a lil. YouTube was pretty much the last monthly service I was paying for purely because I was grandfathered in at such a price.

Oh well. Snip snip

Ya I was with the service for so long. I miss that little ugly orange triangle with those yellow headphones.

Why Spotify? They're the worst streaming platform with the lowest pay for artists.

They are a well known brand/ company with reasonably priced family plan. Since I wanted to give back to my family I figured it'd be the easiest transition for all of them since they're not very tech savy for the high seas or random other better ways to listen to music that take more time to learn, setup, and troubleshoot. (I'm not about to be tech support for everyone). Now another benefit is I can be basic and listen to spotify, on an apple product drinking my daily starbucks while driving my Tesla then scroll through insta and tiktok all day after eating Chipotle.

Also I think YouTube Music pays the least to artists... at least according to some random chart I saw a while ago.

Ahhh yes, brain off. You're one of those.

Grandfathered on the sense that the price increase was delayed compared to new subscribers. They were temporarily grandfathered in at their old rate.

Thank you. I was thoroughly confused by this title and the article’s use of “grandfathered”.

Maybe It should say grandfathered you tube users are to be estranged.

My understanding of grandfathered is that you pay the rate you signed up for, and when it increases, new users pay the higher rate but you keep your rate as long as you stay subscribed. If that is not what you think grandfathered means, what does it mean to you? And if my definition matches yours, how is this not the correct use of grandfathered?

You both got it right, but OP got it wrong. They're not grandfathered if they're getting the price increase, and they are.

We were previously which I believe is what op is referring to. I was one of the original sign ups for GPM back when it was $7.99 per month and I haven't received a price increase until now. I was "grandfathered in" to the old price.

People are paying $23 for this???

Honestly shocked.

And it's Google, so you know they are going to keep raising prices, probably adding some ads also in the near future. And of course selling your behavior to advertisers as well, that's a given.

Just curious: Where in the article does it say $23? It says $13.99, so I'm wondering if it was a typo.

They may be confusing it with the family plan? Which is $23 for up to 5 people, which imo is a pretty good deal if you know 4 other people to go in on it.

And it specifically allows sharing outside of a household. So me, both my parents, and my ex all share a subscription. And it covers YouTube Music as well. It was better when it was GPM, but that's been a while now.

That's the family plan. The individual price is $13.99. Absolutely worth it to me. 10/10, would shill again. I watch almost exclusively on Apple TV, so unless I had a DNS ad blocker, I would see ads. And even those will eventually be detected and blocked, I'm sure. This is how much I've consumed since signing up in August:

I love supporting the creators of the excellent science and math content I subscribe to. Plus I watch a ton of stupid Tim & Eric sketches, SNL sketches, kitten videos and such. I couldn't imagine seeing an ad for every 1:00 video!

Presented with a choice of paying or seeing ads, imma pay. The price is less than one movie ticket a month.

I’ll upvote you back up.

I’m the same way. I use YT on my AppleTV, and I’m an adult with money so $14 isn’t that bad. That’s basically one double quarter pounder meal these days.

Do I want to see the price increase? Of course not. But I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

Thankfully, It's only increasing for people currently paying just $10. They will now be paying the same $14 as us.

I had the grandfathered in YouTube Red plan from years ago, but I was paying just via the App Store so there was the Apple tax. The price there was going up to $18/m, so I canceled and will renew in about a week (when my normal payment is due) directly from YouTube. I honestly haven’t really thought about the price in a while so I don’t realize it was already $12/m that way (I think), and going this new route the price change is just $1 more for me.

But I think it’s worth the no hassle with no ads on every device. I go to friends’ houses and they put on YouTube with ads, and I don’t know how they live like animals like that.

I'll pay YouTube when they stop ducking over content creators with DMCA laziness and terrible royalties for music streams. A service that's worth it is one thing, but that service essentially exploiting it's employees who have no other viable alternative is bad. I'd rather pay my content creators directly through merch, Patreon, etc...

Even DNS blocking wouldn't work. DNS blocking only works if they serve ads via a different name server than they serve their content from (like content from videos.youtube.com and ads from ads.youtube.com). If they give you both ads and youtube content from the same domain, then your DNS blocker can't selective block the ads. So DNS blocking doesn't work on YouTube, and plenty of other streaming ad-containing streaming service.

I had no idea how expensive that was. I wonder when prices will max out. $23 is waaaay too much for YT.

$23 for a family account. Which is cheaper than the single user ($11.50 a person if you were to have two people, $4.60 if you used all 5 accounts).

Given the quality and quantity of videos on YouTube, it's probably the best streaming service.

YouTube have worked really hard this year to help people balance their media consumption with real life.

Everytime I am confronted with another irritating YouTube advert I close the App and say "Thanks YouTube. You are right, I didn't need to watch a detailed unboxing review for a product I neither want, nor need to know exists. I will do something in the real world and try you again in an hour"

I now find myself thinking twice before even opening the App.

Even better on my PC, because I use AdBlockers, YouTube doesn't even let me waste my time, even when I want to.

Truly, Do No Evil

You shouldn't get ads on PC. I use it daily for hours a day and never see ads.

You know things like revanced exist?

I mean, they're still not wrong. Same thing happened with Reddit, curbing my use of it made me think twice about what I was really using it for and it turns out it wasn't that much that was really necessary. It made me reach a better more healthy balance of how I use these sites (Lemmy too).

grayjay is better, it simultaniously blocks ads and chips away at the youtube monopoly on independent content creators

revanced is still $0/month

grayjay as well

NewPipe is freer. GrayJay is proprietary.

https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/blob/master/LICENSE

On GitHub != free or open source. It's missing vital freedoms to qualify for free software, and it doesn't meet the open source definition as published by OSI.

It's source-available and that's it. It's about as free as Minecraft (as Mojang provides deobfuscation mappings to enable you to view the source unobfuscated)

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms

https://opensource.org/osd/

The whole license is a problem, and there are some pretty nasty clauses.

The excuse for this is pretty weak too. As if malware distributors care about a pesky license.

I was grandfathered in at the announcement Google Play Music All Access price of $7.99. They better not raise it. They said during the announcement they would never raise the price for those that signed up then.

Edit: Class action anyone?

I’m in this exact same boat. I also remember them saying they’d never raise the price on us. I imagine their defense will be something about how GPM doesn’t exist anymore and YouTube premium wasn’t part of that offer or something. It’s still bullshit but I can’t imagine we’ll win.

I miss Google play, I used to actually buy music that way. I just kind of find MP3s now...

Oh bullshit. I've been on that 7.99 since Google play music all access first launched. They said it was a permanent 7.99 if you signed up that first month it launched. Guess I'm moving services or going back to piracy.

Your account might be exempted, because that's an old old deal, pretty sure "grandfathered" in this case are people who've signed up like the last couple years lmao

I've been slowly de-googling over the past few years.

If you use Plex+ plexamp, and subscribe to Tidal, you can get very close to the original Google Play Music experience.

Hope this helps!

This is disappointing. I was thinking of subscribing since I heard content creators got paid more per premium view, and $10 didn't seem like a bad price. But if this is the second price hike in a single year, that definitely gives me pause.

This is not the second price increase in a year. This was a misunderstanding on my part. I'm still uncertain on the $14 price point.

Youtube will never give their content producers a fair payout. Just get Nebula.

I have Nebula but it kinda sucks. Content is too narrow and too US focussed. I really want a YouTube alternative but until they start to let more creators on the platform, not sure this is it.

Nobody can afford to be a YouTube alternative. Upload whatever you want, as large of a video file as you want, entirely free for everyone (costs no money, not freedom free)? Nobody can afford to do that. If someone wanted to make something similar to YouTube without the resources of Google, they'd need to at least limit uploads. Potentially even charge for uploads. But this would be punishing for new creators, especially if their broke. Except new people are exactly who need the strictest limitations, because random people could use it as personal video storage, like many do with YouTube.

Then there's the matter of making money. Trying to get enough advertisers would be a pain in the ass, content moderation would be a nightmare and very costly however you decided to do it. If you tried to just make the platform a paid platform, then you're highly restricting viewership. To try and make a YouTube without Google's resources is nearly impossible. I'd love for it to be done, but not enough people care either. Most people who just say "why not just use YouTube" just like that insane masses sticking with Reddit.

I tried a trial a long time ago, and perhaps things have improved, but there was so little content on there that I didn't find any value in supporting it so broadly.

I've instead remained subscribed to YouTube Premium and make monthly contributions to four creators I especially like. (I especially love Climate Town, that is top notch content!)

This isn't the second price jack. There was one price increase, and then there is now the phasing out of grandfathered users. All users will have to pay the new price (which hasn't gone up again). Not defending YouTube, but just pointing out there isn't another price increase

Thanks for this, it made me go back and read through a second time. Just to explain my confusion, the article states that the price went up from $9.99 to $13.99 earlier this year, however, users that were subscribed through Google Play Music or YouTube Red were able to keep getting the old price for a little while longer. Then the article mentions "$9.99 – or even $7.99 – grandfathered users will now pay $13.99/month for YouTube Premium starting in January."

Somehow, my brain interpreted this all to mean that there was a $7.99 to $9.99 increase in July. I think maybe I was thinking that because it's odd to have an article about an old price increase. But really, the article is about the end of the grandfather period for Play Music and YouTube Red subscribers. All other users already had the price increase.

Welp time to cancel

Every cancel is worth 2 price increases! You canceling loses them more money than 2 other people taking the increased price!

It's cheaper for me to just bump up my Adguard DNS subscription on my home router. Though I've only done limited testing to see how efficient it handles YT ads. (so far seems to work).

Honestly, the $3 CAD I spend on Adguard DNS through my router has been incredible. I'm flabbergasted when I connect to someone else's Wi-Fi and see what the Internet looks like outside my door walls.

Are you speaking about Adguard Home? That's free, if you're talking about their premium DNS, there are free alternatives with ad-blocking.

You can't block Youtube ads via DNS for quite some years now.

Pi-hole is a beautiful thing...

I thought Pi-hole didn’t work on YouTube? Or has that changed?

I just meant for ads in general. As for YouTube, Firefox with ublock origin is still working wonders for me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is an ad blocker for, say, Roku, where I do most of my YouTube viewing

Really wish there was a viable alternative, and not just because of the ads, yt is the last Google thing I still consciously use

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why are you paying for DNS?

Nextdns was $22/year and worked very well for me for 3 years. I maintain my own now, but for many people it's perfectly fine to pay for a working service, not everyone wants or needs to fine tune their DNS like some. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's better and vice versa.

Never found a free one that works as well at blocking ads and trackers.

NextDNS is paid but quite versatile. $20/year.

My Pi does the same. 20€/year in electricity + hardware for a docker host.

I doubt the Pi costs that much in electricity tbh.

  1. Depends on the region it's operated in.
  2. I pulled a number out of my behind :D
  3. [Insert 3rd reason here]
  1. I doubt you could get that high, honestly. Even at a high energy cost. They sip power.
  2. Fair enough ;D
  3. Most compelling reason of all, you’ve changed my mind. ;P

I deployed it for a while on my home server, but in the end, the uptime wasn't really satisfactory and I didn't want to lose my ad blocker due to fibre damages due to poor weather or similar issues, so I decided to go for NextDNS.

How can the uptime be not satisfactory.
If it doesnt work, you either set it up incorrecrly or your server/home infrastructure has issues.

If the internet goes out due to bad weather, I think I you have other problems than no ad block, no?

Not regular bad weather, but torrential weather. ISPs do have downtime once in a while as well.

I can only do 3 9s of uptime for now, and it makes enough sense for me to pay for the convenience.

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Revanced is a bit of a hassle to install but really worth it.

I prefer NewPipe

I do like having recommendations though. Newpipe gives me the super normie feed and I'm just not that interested in the latest KSI vs Logan Paul.

Vanced still gives you a normal feed with recommendations. And I'm pleased to say I don't know who KIS is (no one tell me)

I got tired of trying to install revanced. Just uninstalled YouTube completely and open everything in my opera browser. Blocks ads does the same job.

Why is it a hassle? You can just use a pre-built one, and it's like installing any other APK.

There isn't an official pre build app. The one you get might be fine, but you can't be sure...

There isn't an official, that's so Google can't ask them to shut it down, as they technically are not disturbing it. The "unofficial" works completely fine. It's revanced-magisk-module by j-hc.

Still, why is it a hassle?

mobilism has the revanced apps already. i just go there to get what i need

Welcome to the club, I was on the $14.99 Family Premium from YT Red/GPM. I left in a fit to Spotify, but crawled back since I just do not get along with Spotify. It was quite an increase to $22.99, but I literally watch YT as my main source of entertainment, and listen to YT music via Android Auto in my car, as well as through the house all the time. So I am getting a lot of use out of it. but I am not sure I could stomach another increase anytime soon.

Jesus $23?? No thank you! Spotify and FreeTube is good enough for me 😅

It’s the most expensive major service. I couldn’t stomach it at even $20.

I mean it's a family plan. If you've got enough people it's a good deal, if not then it's not. That's how family plans tend to work.

Even with just 2 people it's cheaper than to each have your own account

Up to 6 users as it is a family plan but ya it's pricey

I mean, if you have a family it's a pretty good deal

I actually have grayjay on my phone (and paid for it). I don't mind paying for stuff I use.

I've also used revances, and smarttube tv. But as I said right now the value is still "ok" but reaching it's limit for sure.

Not even close to the experience.

One of those is ublock, literally the same experience minus the ads. How is that not close to the same experience? Do you miss the ads?

How do I install it on my TV? How do I sync? Do I install on every device I use? What if I don't have admin rights? What if it's out of date and the ads play anyway?

For less than a Starbucks coffee I have a month of premium, and I don't have to play cat and mouse.

How expensive are your Starbucks coffees? O.o

If you want a TV solution, look at iSponsorBlock, not as seamless but much improved. And free.

You don’t need admin rights, and it auto updates.

I have premium, but only because I can get it ridiculously cheap by using a VPN. I would never pay current asking price for premium, especially when they increased the price twice in a one year period.

A Starbucks coffee is around 5 euros.

I don't want to look into anything, much less if it's less seamless, I'm satisfied with the default YouTube app on my TV.

You need admin rights to install any software.

A Starbucks coffee is around 5 euros.

And YouTube premium is over double that, potentially triple come January.

You need admin rights to install any software.

A) This is absolutely not true.

B) It’s a browser extension

It's more than triple for a family plan, but you share it with people and you land well under 5 euros per person.

Please tell me how to install chrome or Firefox on a corporate laptop without admin rights, I'll wait.

Please tell me how to install chrome or Firefox on a corporate laptop without admin rights, I'll wait.

Firefox doesn’t require admin perms to install, so… double click the installer? Did you need screenshots on how to do that?…

Not familiar with Group Policies, I see?

If your work PC is that locked down, why are you watching YouTube videos on it? This seems like a manufactured issue at this point.

So let’s go down the list: Company PC, no admin privs, group policy forbidding any executable from running, no Firefox or chrome, I assume your next limitation is that edge addons aren’t allowed, but for some reason YouTube is fine?

Then you’re right, in the extremely tailored for premium situation, premium wins out over ublock origin. I’m shocked. Good job.

Now for the 99.9% of the rest of us we can still avoid paying Google by simply using ublock origin. Shoo.

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Ublock is simply removing adds & more things you might want to be gone and Revanced is literally the YT client with many of the PrEmIuM features for free. But sure, pay up and get milked if you're into that sort of thing.

What about my TV, where I watch most of my content? What about inter-device sync? What about paying the creators for their work?

I could also shoplift in my local supermarket, but I'm into "that sort of thing" (paying for people's work).

How would I know? I don't have a TV for well over a decade now and it isn't my responsibility to teach you how to use your hardware and software.

And please, you're robbing YT, not the content creators, which I don't care about nowadays either since YouTube became WhoreTube. It's all about cash and milking people with low effort clickbait garbage content. If you feel you have to pay for that then that's on you but I've been distancing myself more and more from the platform for how shit it and its content became.

Ah yes, the #worksonmymachine thinking.

If you watch low effort content you will get low effort content. I watch amazing content that is well worth the few bucks a month. Late night shows, stand up comedy, documentaries, news analysis, tech reviews, car reviews, programming news and tutorials, chess commentary and courses, architecture and interior design tours, sport summaries, popular science...

BTW, Walmart is a huge company, I assume you also don't pay there? Apparently robbing corporations and farmers it also would be fine, because "the products are so low quality nowadays" ...

Ah yes, the #imtooentitledtodomyownresearchandwork thinking.

Followed by a bunch of mumbo jumbo that clearly shows that you also have no idea how their algorithms work. A little hint, they're nowhere near as smart as you think they are, and neither are you.

Walmart left my country for not being able to compete here, so no, I don't pay there. Not that this false equivalency makes any sense at all because no one is robbed for me not watching a bunch of garbage ads. Maybe stop shoving your head into big corporate assholes.

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It went from 10 to 20 on me. Considering all I lost (YT red premium content, google play music, etc) I just canceled then enabled a single user free account I get via Google fi. With money saved, bought family a spotify family plan

That's with the $110/mo (for 2) Google FI plan right? And it's only for a year.

Dont pay. -In browser: https://docs.invidious.io/instances/ ,OR adblock origin. -Androidon newpipe: https://newpipe.net/ -Android tv smarttube https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ ;)

I think you meant uBlock Origin? Also, if you use Firefox on Android, it does support extensions so you can use uBlock Origin too.

If you do this make sure to support your favorite content creators in other ways, if possible for you. Ads are not just how YouTube makes money, it's how the people you're watching make money too.

True for monetized account of course but, speaking personally, I mostly watch/listen to non monetized channels. New pipe is a great experience.

How much is it now and how much is the increase?

It's like $23 for family in Canada.

Wild.

A year? A decade? Surely not a fucking month...

That covers 5 accounts. If you are using all 5 accounts, that's the cheapest it's ever been. Even if you're only using 2 accounts, it's cheaper than to buy two individual accounts

Am using it rn and it is for 6 folks. As much as I appreciate Spotify, I use wayyy too much youtube for media that it wins over.

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I hope I didn't miss the wave here: Does anyone else have a solution for their kids? I don't want them on un-restricted youtube, youtube kids is generally gate-kept enough that I feel comfortable they won't come across anything immediately damaging. I pay for YouTube family for now to avoid adverts.

Future headline: Youtube Saw Youtube Premium subscriptions dip in January.

Pretty sure I can soak it. I mean that's what, five bucks a month? If that's a hardship, kill the subscription and get a goddamn library card.

14 bucks per month is 5 bucks per month. Premium math of corporate shills checks out.

Or maybe they are sharing the family plan with 2 other people and rounding up. Or they have a different plan. Or they live in a country with different prices and converting to usd. Or a handful of other reasons that doesn't involve conspiracy theories.

Individually maybe. But every streaming company has been doing price hikes. And you're not getting anything more, just some useless "AI" stuff I doubt anyone asked for. If they had said the increase was 100% so they could offer more to creators I wouldn't blink. Or using it to hire the support staff creators need, also would be cool with that. But this looks like nothing more than the corporate bottom line

Yeah, could very well be. But corporations gonna corporate. If you don't like the product, don't buy it.