Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month

fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1272 points –
Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month
9to5google.com
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Does…. Any one, actually, you know, subscribe for YouTube?

I have a YouTube Premium subscription

Why

It really boils down to a few reasons:

  • I don't like ads, and I prefer not to see them
  • Running a platform like YouTube is not cheap, and I understand that Google needs money to keep things running.
  • The revenue of Premium is split between YouTube and the creators, much like ad revenue is. So it also supports the channels that I follow.

You pay and you're still the product, they continue with all the tracking they do.

That hasn't stopped me from using other Google services like Gmail, Docs, or Drive either.

If I ever decide I want to opt out of Google's ecosystem I'll just serve them a GDPR data deletion request.
That's what I did when I deleted my Twitter account as well.

If you don't want to be tracked, you shouldn't own a smartphone.

Because let's face it, you're never going to be able to stop it unless you get rid of all your tech.

Imo it should be a choice whether we are tracked for monetary gains or not, and not a necessary evil. But with most basic services/devices you are not even presented with that choice. E.g. when buying a phone.

And if you do have a choice, sometimes accessibility is restricted so much that you can't participate in our networked society.

I think we have to find ways to provide access to the most basic services with a minimum of tracking. Anything else should still be an option of course.

How to achieve this? I don't know. But EU regulations certainly wouldn't hurt for now.

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Tracking != taking all of your data and selling it for profit. That’s what Google does with YouTube, even if you pay for premium. So I see no reason to pay for it.

Not to mention a premium sub costs more than most streaming services out there, including double the price of lots of Plex shares that have thousands of movies and shows to watch.

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I didn't know the channels get some of the revenue. Do you get to influence who the money goes to? Like a twitch prime sub?

It replaces the ad revenue the channel would otherwise have gotten from your view, at a higher rate than an ad impression.

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Basically a percentage of your premium is divvied out based on watch time. When I signed up it was half of my payment went to creators, I don't know the current split though

I'm not entirely certain, but as far as I'm aware it is divided based on watch-time.

On your watch-time? I mean then it's cool, cause you don't even have to do anything. On the other hand I would probably have to log out to watch content I don't want to support financially.

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For me its solely because of a ad free experience on my TV, since its the primary device I’m using it on. And i got it relatively cheap from turkey so it's not that big of a deal. I might reevaluate if the price increases though.

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It’s not bad if you max out the family subscription (5 members) and use YouTube music.

Still, I’m a hypocrite because I absolutely hate their habit of hiding features behind the paywall, and making ads more obnoxious to irritate users into paying for premium.

Ya'll should just VPN to Argentina and get the sub for cheap, it's a few bucks per month compared to the obnoxious 13.99.

I pay around 2€ for mine per month plus the VPN fees, it's a no-brainer

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How does it compare to a Netflix subscription, or whatever you got?

I would dump Netflix before cancelling YT Premium. Everything on Netflix I can stream for free from pirate sites to my TV. YouTube actually has tons of informational and educational content and a premium subscription lets me support it without the ads. I probably watch YouTube twice as much as all my other vid subs combined.

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I'm technically still sharing a Netflix account with my parents, though I rarely use it at this point.
Whenever I want to watch a movie, and I check Netflix, they don't have it. (It's worth pointing out that I'm not in the US)

In contrast, YouTube Premium gives me pretty much exactly what I seek from it. Videos from channels that I follow, but now without ads.

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Ditto. It is my most used subscription.

I watch more YouTube than cable (never) or Netflix (maybe one binge a month).

I use it for music in the car and at work.

I play audio from some sciencey channels while I try to goto sleep.

I’ll probably keep paying. I do get value out of it.

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out of all the subscriptions, it's probably the best one. you can get youtube for free but either you're gonna get ads or you'll block them, and the creators you like will start seeking other forms of revenue that are just as/more annoying, or just quit.

yt-premium makes youtube an actually nice experience and keeps money flowing to creators. There's a limit to how much that nice-experience is worth but it's better than paying for netflix, and a bunch of netflix execs get paid, and the creators don't. then the show you like is cancelled and removed anyway.

I fee like premium is really the only way to make youtube more sustainable for content creators and the platform alike. However, youtube has currently deemed that demonetized videos should lose all youtube premium revenue. That’s incredibly stupid.

Imagine if premium revenue went to creators you watched, regardless of monetization status. Premium subscribers would be highly sought after for content creators, since it’s a more reliable revenue source that gives them the freedom to make what they want. It’s good for YouTube/google too because thats less reliance on advertisers.

It could use some adjustments, maybe taking some inspiration from patreon.

I fee like premium is really the only way to make youtube more sustainable for content creators and the platform alike.

I really don't see how, unfortunately. You give Youtube the money and they decide what to do with it and they won't do it in a remotely fair way because they want profits for themselves. There are many better ways to support content creators directly than over whatever Youtube decides to pay them at any given moment. Most content creators know that of course and are already linking to other services that you can use to help them out. At least for as long as Youtube allows it...

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Personally I become a member of the channels I’d like to support or join their Patreon if they have them and then use AdBlock+SponsorBlock and uYou+ on mobile.

If you pay for premium Google is still collecting all of your data and using it for their own gain. Why support them at all?

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Yea I've been kinda watching youtube through this whole social media moment, suspicious that they've successfully taken a middle road here that will probably last. Ads and profiteering? You bet ... but it seems that there's a monetisation model for "creators" that kinda works (though I'm not sure at all about that). And so, for anyone that actually wants to make any sort of living doing the creative stuff that the rest of us lurkers want to consume, the inevitable question of how do you live within capitalism seems to have an answer of some sort in youtube while all the other platforms perhaps don't have healthy or appealing answers.

As for the fediverse, I think there's a massive opportunity for donations and crowd funding to become a much more central and normal aspect here so that making some sort of living by contributing to and being a part of this space is actually viable. Even some sort of subscription model for platfroms that are essentially non-profit creator-driven would make a lot of sense here.

That's a problem that goes beyond any single platform though, and at the moment, cross-platform or fediverse-wide work seems to be lacking behind a little bit.

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I do, you get Youtube Music as well and no ads, which is a great combination.

YouTube music is superior to Apple Music and Spotify. Change my mind.

Now i haven't been subscribed to spotify since at least 2015 so things may have changed but when i'm controlling someone elses phone with spotify i pretty much always prefer it to youtube music which has been my main player pretty much since it launched (i wont change for as long as i have yt premium though :p).

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Yeah I do.. family plan so split the cost with the fam. I find it worth it. But the price increases are certainly concerning. If it keeps going up I’ll drop it.

The combo with YT Music is a good deal.

I primarily watch YouTube on tv, it is my most used video streaming platform, so yes I do. As does all my friends.

Yes, a family plan makes it cheaper. You won't see any ads on your devices, from your TV to your PC, and you can listen to YouTube videos even when your phone is locked. It also includes YouTube Music. It's a great deal, and I'm not sure why some people don't see it that way. Sure, you could get a different YouTube client for your phone, install an ad blocker on your PC, block ads on your router to get rid them on your smart TV, and listen to music on Spotify for free. But the value of a good service is that you pay a reasonable amount of money and get all these features without any additional work on your part.

If you already have a paid spotify/apple music subscription, and already have a buttload of streaming apps subscription (netflix, apple tv, etc), suddenly the prospect of adding $13.99 youtube subscription into your list of monthly subscriptions seems a lot less appealing.

Yes, and you could even switch from Spotify/Apple to YouTube, because it essentially offers a similar service, but with added benefits. That's their proposition. It's up to you to decide whether you want to accept it or not. However, I find it hard to agree with the common online sentiment that YouTube Premium is worthless.

It's not that easy to migrate from Spotify premium to Youtube Music, especially with how Spotify somehow got more and more podcasts into exclusive contract. I also use spotify premium on various 3rd party clients as well, not sure if youtube music support that use case. But yeah, from pricing alone, youtube premium which includes youtube music sounds like a good deal if you're ok with switching away from spotify/apple music.

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But you don't have to have all those subscriptions. You get YouTube Music included so you don't need a separate music subscription. You also don't have to worry about working out the latest app/add-on/plugin/site that lets you play YouTube without ads. It's pretty good value actually. I get more from it than I do my Netflix subscription. I rotate my other subscriptions based on the shows I'm watching. I always have a YouTube subscription and don't foresee stopping it just coz I can't go back to ads haha.

I wonder if most of the complaints of ads on YouTube are coming from people who subscribe to something like Netflix, but spend just as much (or more) time streaming YouTube.

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Out of all the streaming services I pay for I get by far the most value out of yt premium, I probably spend 10x longer watching yt vids compared to movies and TV shows, and it has a dedicated music app that links nicely with my android auto.

OP here. I do in fact confess that I share a YT Premium subscription with a friend, though I myself eschew the bog-standard YT apps with those patched using Revanced Extended just because of long-standing QoL issues on said regular apps.

I do. I watch a ton of YouTube. Revanced and NewPipe are rad but there's no effortless way to have an adfree experience on the TV.

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Yeah, got YouTube music after they shut down Google play music. All my friends dog on me for not having Spotify but not having ads on iOS is so nice. I tried it once without youtube premium subscription and idk how people can sit through advertisment hell for every video.

Also having the creators I watch get a larger share of the YouTube money pie cause I watch them as a YouTube premium sub is a nice feeling too.

That being said though, I'm on a family plan and not this specific plan that got its price raised (although I'm pretty sure the family plan prices have also gone up recently if I remember right).

I do, and YouTube is my primary Media consumption for both video and music.

That said, I have the family plan which went from $15-23 back a few months ago and it was difficult to keep. I actually cancelled it and used Spotify and some of the available ad-blocking apps, but ultimately didn't like Spotify, so I came back.

If it were to go up again anytime remotely soon I'd be gone.

Subscriber here. I use YouTube pretty much all day long. I usually have it playing something for background noise while I'm working. I've got a family plan with 4 other people on it, who all also get the benefits of ad-free viewing.

I also use YouTube on several devices of my own. TV, PS5, phone, tablet, three laptops... Trying to manage adblockers on all of those is such a pain in the ass. I'll never go back to troubleshooting Pi-holes and adblockers and adblocker-blocker-blockers. It's an objectively worse experience having to manage all sorts of goofy tools that keep getting circumvented by Google every week.

Also, the content creators I watch get paid for my views. I spend hours watching these people's content, so making sure they're getting paid means something to me.

I actually dropped my other subs (Netflix, Deezer) in favor of the YouTube family plan. My kids watch a ton of Minecraft vids and I don't really care to have them digesting all those ads. My wife also uses it a lot and I get a music service that just works with all my casting devices flawlessly.

I also love the ad free experience when I use a how to video etc.

I have one through my legacy Google Play Music subscription. I get YouTube Music and YouTube Premium for $7.99/month

I pay ~£1 a month for it by 'being Argentinian'.

This is on top of already using ReVanced and SmartTube because I actually use the download feature of YT Music.

I strongly dislike ads, but want to support good platforms and content creators. I eagerly waited for it to become available in the Netherlands back when it was still called YouTube Red. I subscribed the day it became available.

Ethical ad free YouTube: you support creators and the platform that hosts them, much better than through ads.

Too bad most videos now feature sponsored segments so creators are effectively double dipping in my premium support and advertiser money. That is honestly more annoying. I have more respect for creators who have Patreon and don’t feature sponsored content.

I couldnt agree more. The money has to come from somewhere and i'm not watching any ads so it's the obvious solution. I frankly just use sponsorblock so it autoskips the sponsor spots. But the whole thing is just absurd tbh.

I sub from Turkey, or whatever the new name is, for barely more than $2pm for a 6-person family plan in Australia.

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My YouTube subscription costs 0. ublock Origin.

Unlock origin and ReVanced is great, but it doesn't allow casting to the TV without ads..

Smarttube Next works great on my TV with FireTV. No ads.

Its the only way we can watch TV in our house.

Im just afraid that they might remove thr ability to install custom apks altogether.

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That's my secret, Cap. I don't own a TV.

I’ve got one! …but it’s only connected to a computer. All of our screens have computers connected. Computers that can install adblocking software and play videos are insanely cheap. I’m astounded anyone uses smart TVs’ rubbish software or a stick of any sort.

If u have an old Laptop colleting dust you can always install a light weight Linux on it and use it for YouTube or even pirated Films or series on your TV

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They started blocking users with advanced adblockers completely in some places. It's expected they'll roll out that policy in most countries. Prepare to either ditch Youtube completely, watch dozens of ads as well as sponsored segments every couple of minutes (because why would Google pay content creators who make them a huge pile of money by providing content for free adequately, right?) or pay hundreds of dollars a year. Even then they might start showing you some ads because why the hell not? Big tech stole the internet from us and now they're banking in on it big time. Needlesly to say this is not a sustainable business model, but since when did that ever bother mega corporations?

It's a cat and mouse game, and history has proven that in this case adblockers will win. Or we'll get ad blocker blocker blockers.

Firefox is pretty much the only browser Google doesn't own directly. I'm afraid all of the other browsers will soon malfunction on that front so we'll have to see.

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Prepare to either ditch Youtube completely

Your terms are acceptable...

Unless they put YouTube content behind a paywall there will always be ways to block ads.

Probably that would be their future take, free 3 minutes of the video, if you want more... pay.

And then will the era of pirating and downloading YouTube videos begin.

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Personally, I like it when the content creators I spend time watching get paid for their work.

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I don't have the money to sustain the "everything is a subscription" simple as that. So adblockers and piracy is the only way to get media content.

I still go to the cinema, but some cinemas over here are already experimenting with subscriptions.

I'd be willing to pay for a few subscriptions if I didn't feel like subscription services are trying to gouge me left and right. I miss the days when subscriptions to Netflix and Spotify gave me access to 90% of content online.

Contrast this with Steam, which gives me centralized convenience, seamless updates, online sync, achievements... No wonder that's where I spend almost all of my entertainment money these days.

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Software subscriptions are what really bums me out. Back in the day you could just buy your software and have it forever. Now Microsoft Office is a subscription, Adobe Photoshop is a subscription, and so much more. Nothing pisses me off more than when I install a basic app on my phone and find out it's actually a subscription app.

Literally the only major software I can think of right now that isn't subscription based or insanely expensive is Apple's Final Cut Pro at $300.

"buy your software and have it forever" was not really true other than in the very early days. everything that was in active development like office, photoshop, all the pro music software i used, was updated regularly and had an upgrade cost. my music app had a paid upgrade every year like clockwork for $150. it was essentially a subscription in all but name. yeah i could stop paying and stay with the last version forever but operating system and hardware advances would make it so those versions would stop running on newer machines eventually.

This right here is one of the biggest reasons I turned to exclusively open source software, cuz man the amount of internal rage I feel any time I have to log into software is unreal, like I open the software I want it to just go

Fortunately Microsoft Office isn’t fully subscription yet, but with how much they’re pushing Office365 it’s not too surprising that people don’t seem to realize this. You can still buy a permanent license from MS directly (with some digging around to get to the correct page) or from 3rd party websites. Only downside is it locks you into the current version of Office, but for the average user (me) that’s not too much of a big deal - I can’t recall them releasing any major must have features over the past 10 years.

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I just don't care 🙌

I seriously couldn't give two fucks about supporting influencers or tech companies. Uploaders can pay for the infrastructure for all I care. Like people use to host websites out of passion, now everything is about profits, and politics, why would I want to support that? Why should I give two fucks about making someone else rich?

Fuck that shit. You can get cracked copies of the YouTube App that give a much better experience.

I do pay for a couple subscriptions, but in the 2000s I had a subscription service for video games called GameTap and it was great except they could add and remove games on a whim and when you stop paying you lose access to all of it. So you need to remember a subscription service is ephemeral and there's long term benefits to having the files yourself.

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I pay $22 per month for the family plan because I don't want my kids or my folks to have to be constantly inundated with ads. And I enjoy being and to play free music that is exactly the songs I want.

I was really upset when they raised the price on me, and kicked me off the grandfather plan. But in the end I decided it was still worth it.

But what the real cost to Google is here is that they have evaporated my loyalty and good will. I now see them as a company that will squeeze me when they know they can get away with it, and that my loyalty and being an early adopter means nothing to them.

That will definitely affect every future buying decision I make for future products and services.

Yeah I love Youtube Premium on the family plan. People on the internet act like there's no benefit to it as long as Adblock and Youtube Vanced exist. Meanwhile I have an iPhone, smart TVs, and my whole family does too. My nieces and nephews don't have to get bombarded with ads, and that's well worth it to me. But the way they silently jacked the price up $5 per month was a total dick move that I'm not happy about. If they keep pulling this shit, it's only a matter of time before I find another solution.

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Doesn't matter to them what you think, since they can simply buy any good alternative that show up.

Basically these companies are similar to kings now. They own our services and our data. And the peasants may whine a bit but can do nothing.

At least on Lemmy we are left alone for now.

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The amount of downvotes on comments trying to help people not get price gouged and comments supporting these subscription price increases shows me just how many corporate shills are actually out there. No wonder these corps keep getting away with this bullshit.

Edit: Wow so many people took personal offense to this...almost like it they know it's true but are afraid to admit it. Everyone is hurting financially right now, some more than others. Yet year over year, the prices keep going up even with record inflation and record profits. Keep shilling folks, enjoy emptying your wallets for the millionaires while you struggle.

I'm not going to defend the price increase, but a lot of comments in here are just aimless hatred of the idea of paying anything, ever.

Pound for pound, YouTube Premium has been a decent deal at $10. Has been. This is pushing it, but there's a lot of comments that seem absolutely indignant at the idea of paying YouTube period (and by extension the content creators).

There's got to be some room for nuance here. The internet is plagued by advertising and paywalls, yes, but it can also not exist without them, so we find some middle ground.

It can definitely exist without advertising and paywalls. It just going to be smaller.

I've been using the internet for over 24 years. I can tell you that the internet can survive without ads or paywalls. Ads and paywalls are a product of greed. Ads are way more efficient these days but many used to take up so much memory. I remember when AdBlock or whatever it was called came out. It made browsing the internet smoother.

The only way the internet can survive without ads or paywalls is for the person/business hosting the content to pay for everything out of pocket.

A platform like YouTube could never exist without some form of revenue. I understand that there are small platforms out there, such as PeerTube, but they will never be comparable to the scale of YouTube without some form of revenue. Sure, people could grow PeerTube by spinning up their own instances, but then they need to provide their own hardware and storage. At which point you’re spending just as much, or likely more, than you would on a subscription service.

I think its possible it will just be slow and requires people to sacrifice a bit just like we are trying to do with lemmy. maybe find a different route for ads like how Brave the browser does it where it give the user the choice to see ads and give them and the content creator a cut if they agree to it, not that I trust that browser but its an interesting concept

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Poeple think they are sharing their enormous profits with creators. Maybe they get a few bucks from the billions.

It's surprising to me. First moment I've thought maybe Lemmy is a worse place to be. Is there really that many astroturfing trolls here? Yikes.

I can afford $13/month on my income and watch YT on a daily basis, much more than any other streaming service by a wide margain. Does that somehow make me an astroturfing troll?

Yet year over year, the prices keep going up even with record inflation

Well yeh, that's what inflation is...

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Revanced still costs $0/month.

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They gave me 3 months free and it was just the same broken website without ads.

Youtube is completely broken. The algorithm doesn’t even auto play undiscovered music or videos. It’s just serving me the exact same videos I already watched. It used to be a really fun and good service that was free and now you get shit and have to pay for it.

Why would anyone pay for that?

Is anyone running the company or are they all just doing drugs?

Good for the users =/= good for the shareholders

Unfortunately you need to (at least in my experience) purge the feed couple times a year. Just use "not interested" with a heavy hand and a light heart. It tends to recommend new stuff after that.

My wife and I watch certain YouTubers more then we watch TV, and use a TV to do it, so it's pretty nice not having any ads and we don't really rely on the algo at all.

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I'd rather have a cheaper version premium just for Youtube without ads though. I've heard there is or was Premium Lite in some countries, but not where I'm from. I don't need Music, I already pay Tidal for that.

Or is YT Music with Premium so much better than the free one? When I cancelled my Spotify and were looking where to move to, I gave the free YTM a try. It would be two birds with one stone - YT without ads and a replacement music streaming service. But I just hated the whole experience. The UI, that my music "follows" get mixed with YouTube subscriptions, and that it always plays a video with every song.

That's why I got Nebula. It's not everyone I watch on YouTube, but it's a lot of the best people, and they get a much, much larger amount of revenue from me specifically than they do from even YouTube Premium at a better price since you're not also paying for YouTube Music on top of it. I was a devoted Google Play Music All Access listener, but true to form Google forgot about it and then replaced it with a worse service that costs more money. Spotify and Nebula as separate subs is as close as I'm going to get to the old school GPMAA/YouTube Red bundle and I don't have to give a penny to Google for it

Yeah basically the same. The video thingy only does it when the song is not available on YouTube Music and it's playing a video.

Which honestly is the only thing why I switched to YouTube Music, on Spotify if the song isn't there that's it, but YouTube music there is always a user or band uploaded video.

When is available there is switch to choose if video or music and well on the phone you can always use the audio only option as you can do with YouTube. The rest the same as you said it.

I don't like YT music at all, but it is a nice double dip and I learned to live with it. I'd certainly switch to a plan without music if given the chance.

We believe this new price reflects the value of YouTube Premium

I disagree. YouTube offers nothing without the content creators. While reason I ever started using it because TotalBiscuit made a good case for it. But I have to say, while they keep jacking up prices I don't feel like I'm getting anything more. I never asked for YT Music and would gladly take a discount to have it removed.

Keep fucking around and find out Google, I got no issues going back to ad blockers. Whole reason I got premium was to support those I watch and all I ever hear is how Google is fucken them over.

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I really wish they'd drop the YouTube Music aspect of this and just do an ad-free YouTube sub. Happy to pay content creators for their work; less happy to give Google money for a music platform after what they did to Google Music.

I'm the opposite. I'm still grandfathered into the $7.99 Google Music sub, which turned into YT Music + YT premium. The cheapest music service with basically free YT premium is nice

I wouldn't pay more though

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I like YouTube music though? I refuse to give Spotify money because of Joe Rogan, and if you're a classical music lover YT is just better.

That's cool. I'm not saying they should only offer it without YT music, just that they should offer an alternative way of supporting YouTubers without buying a service you don't need.

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Switched over from Spotify after they went too hard on Joe Rogan, so I never used Google Music. I like YouTube music. That said, they’ve just started adding podcasts - really hope they don’t go the way of Spotify.

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My adblockers are holding steady with a 0% rise! I still ain't paying!

Lol. Theres already no way I'd pay for YouTube premium. Raising the price more and more just entrenches that more and more.

Exactly. If you want me to subscribe, lower the price! Don't these corporations do some kind of analysis, where if you lower prices, you get more subs and more money...or raise prices, less subs, and overall less money. The soda companies are the same way. It used to be $3 for a case of soda, now it's $7+. I've noticed that since they did that, the soda aisle at my local grocery stores is about half the size it used to be.

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Google’s really been on one lately. They’ve also been laying off staff, increasing ads while trying to ban ad blockers from YouTube, raised the pricing of workspaces yet again and closed the unlimited drive storage loophole. Removed photos from the album archive thingy. And I feel there’s been a few other things within the last couple months I’m forgetting.

Increasing the price of a service that is already piss-poor value for your money is incredibly smart. Who the hell is gonna pay 14$ per month just to get rid of ads?

It also includes YouTube Music. Yes, I know, many will say they value proposition it's still poor even with that. Honestly it's worth it to me. I subscribe to the family plan because we watch a lot of YouTube and listen to a lot of music. No ads plus unlimited music for 4 people is worth it to us.

Yeah same here, I use the hell out of my Youtube Premium. Though the biggest feature lately has been 0 ads on content, as the majority of my video streaming is from Youtube.

Same I get a lot of use out of the family plan. My group of friends just exchange various family plans to save money. I take care of YouTube, another friend Spotify, etc. I absolutely hate ads and can work around them but still like supporting my favorite channels. I've been on YouTube for well over a decade and is pretty much my main video entertainment, so well worth it.

Well, I pay money to get rid of ads on Twitch, but I watch.... a lot of hours of Twitch.

I imagine if someone watches as much Youtube as I watch Twitch, it'd likely be worth it for them.

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I will (and do currently). I watch a bunch of YouTube on my TV through an AppleTV, and it’s the easiest way to get no ads and also support the people I watch.

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I really wish they’d decouple it from YouTube Music. I don’t use it and if just Premium was about $10 or so I’d at least consider it.

I'm pretty sure this is good old fashioned bundling. They have all the data they could ever want on who uses it and how much, and made the decision to include it. And by that I don't mean they're being benevolent because most people want it. I mean they likely know it will make them more money overall because more people won't use both.

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Newpipe has me covered on my phone, and a few extensions in FF has me covered on Desktop, and I've already got Spotify. YouTube Premium offers me nothing, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of people.

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It increased a couple months ago to like $25 CAD lmao. Still worth it, though. I watch so much YouTube.

It's weird how people are fine paying for Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, Twitch, etc, but draw the line at YouTube, the platform that has infinite more content and actual value.

It's still less than my parents pay for satellite. Also comes with YouTube Music if you wanna ditch Spotify. Kinda a 2 in 1 deal.

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Good job YouTube, I was considering picking up your subscription but now nooope, expensive enough in NZD as it is

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They want people to start using YT Premium while slowly blocking ad-blockers, but they increase the subscription price... what?

That's why they increased the price. They know soon you won't have a choice

I chose to go spend my idle time somewhere else then. When even Facebook and TikTok serve ads in a more civilized manner why torture myself with YouTube?

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That a bold strategy to say the least

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When Google announced Play Music in 2011, I got in early and my subscription price was locked in at $8 USD a month. They gave me Youtube Premium (and Youtube Music) when that launched as part of that subscription. When Play Music was killed, my Premium membership continued at $8 a month.

At the moment, I'm fine paying this very specific early adopter price since I watch a lot of Youtube content. If they ever raise the price on me, it's getting dropped.

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Wait… people PAY for YouTube?

Yes. YT Premium costs me only 1.20€ more than Spotify so I use YT Music and also have no ads and can listen to videos with my screen off on my phone.

But if they'll increase price here too then I'll just stick with NewPipe which I also have installed and no music app.

Btw... I pay 7.19€ for YT Premium. Spotify is 5.99€.

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I never understand the practice of increasing prices to stuff like this when you have less income, because all it does is drive away current and potential customers.

It's like with cinemas, if you reduce the ticket price enough you'll easily fill up screens. If they want more money from YouTube premium they should reduce the price to increase membership to cover the cost and then some for what you reduced it by.

It's not rocket science.

Similar to rocket science, there are mathematical formulas you can use to analyze how many buyers there will be for a product at a given price point. Clearly Google did the math and found that this was the optimal amount to raise the price to without losing too many subscribers and that it would result in an increase in overall profit.

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So I have a question for YouTube Premium haters:

How is this any different than what most people pay for both another music service and another video service? It's about half the cost of other music + video services (when combined), even with the increased pricing over the years. I've been paying for YouTube Premium since the awkward Google Play Music transition and it's a bargain, especially when I had my student discount at like $4.99 a month.

Well, I guess I bought the yearly sub in Turkish liras just in time (about $20/year)

Exactly. 14 a month is better to just download Adblock and work on the alternatives. 20 a year, considering the amount of youtube and youtube music I use is a great deal.

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Youtube premium is pretty pointless when ublock origin exists.

Edit: sorry should have clarified. I meant in terms of blocking ads. I realize that you still can't play youtube videos and switch apps.

I meant in terms of blocking ads. I realize that you still can't play youtube videos and switch apps.

Yeah, good thing ReVanced gives us that instead.

I use it to listen to things while I drive without having to listen to ads or keep my phone’s screen on. The music is a bonus, but I do quite miss Google Play Music

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I would never pay google for anything. They’re making enough money taking all your data and selling it. I will always use an ad blocker with sponsor block and donate to any content creator that provides good content for me.

They emailed me thanking me for being a part of their journey for so long and as a gift they are delaying my rate going up by 3 months. Cool…..

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Uhm, so what extra value to subscribers did they add recently? Is it just a case of Google's costs going up or simply their need to make more profit to delight shareholders?

Is it just a case of Google’s costs going up or simply their need to make more profit to delight shareholders?

Yes. Everyone else is raising their prices due to "increased costs", even if they don't actually have any increased costs, because it's a "get out of jail free" card for raising your costs at the moment. Everyone is doing it, so you're less likely to get negative media coverage if you do it as well.

I have a YouTube premium subscription for one reason: I travel a lot and you can't put an adblocker on an old hotel TV that only has the YouTube app

Once I get to travel less, I'll go back to only using ublock origin and sponsorship block.

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First they try to block ad blockers, now they milk their users even more. Who didn’t see it coming? I guess people will just pay up.

The monthly savings from boycotting youtube continue to rise.

Sucks for me. I use iOS (I'm sorry) and that's the original reason I got YouTube Red (back then): they make iOS users pay for background playback. Most of my YT consumption is documentary / essay / spoken word stuff so I need that feature to treat it like a podcast player, basically. Most of the rest of my YT consumption is in my living room, where ad blocking isn't an option (and I hear even if it was, they're catching up fighting ad blockers).

I hate the Web 2.0 "enshitification" of platforms, and I hate advertisements, and I'm willing to pay for a good, useful service. But this is a mixed bag. It's still 'enshitified' because most of what it serves me is algorithmic and nothing to do with the hundreds of channels I've subscribed to over the 13 years I've had this particular account. It's still chock full of ads because videos do sponsor blocks these days.

And the worst of it is they've got you by the balls and there's really nothing stopping them from being Netflix and just continuing to raise and raise the price. I was an OG Netflix Instant Streaming for Xbox 360 user...years later when they finally booted me off my own family plan, we were paying like...$23 a month? For what had at that point become the worst video service? What stops YouTube from bumping up to $19.99/mo a couple years from now? It's the only game in town.

OH and they're also selling all your metrics. That's the other thing. If I'm paying (through the nose) for a service, it shouldn't be double-fucking me by selling predictive measures of who I am and what I care about to filthy fucking "advertisers" (for-profit behavior manipulators).

YouTube (like every last piece of Web 2.0) was fun while it lasted. But it is now barely better than worthless.

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Wait, what the FUCK!?!

This price increase is live for new subscribers as seen on youtube.com/premium. Instead of $11.99, YouTube Premium now costs $13.99/month. Meanwhile, it’s $18.99 if you’re subscribing from the iOS YouTube app.

I’ve been paying $4/month over market rate this whole time?

Yeah. That's normal if you subscribe to things through (iOS or android) apps.

Google and apple don't allow apps you roll their own payment methods to "protect their users". Apps have to use the Google/Apple payment system where Google/Apple take a 30% cut of every payment.

With YouTube being owner by Google they probably don't have to pay those 30% on Android, but they have to on iOS.

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Apple tax.

I’ve heard about it but didn’t realize someone like google would blatantly do this. SMH

On PC, I’ve never watched ads. Only bought premium after getting an iPhone 2 years ago.

Appreciate being able to support creators while not watching ads ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ , lot of good that did me.

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These services think people get their money from trees. Also seriously who even pays for YouTube Premium? There are both adblockers and website download tools, both of which are completely free.

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Thankfully the price of my YT free account is still only the cost of everything I've ever written in email or a web browser so all good 👍

I'm still not going to subscribe, weren't they worried about the amount of subscribers the other week!?

Oh well, too late to join now. Thought about that subscription in the past, but now it’s clearly out of the question.

I cannot imagine paying anything for YT Premium, let alone $14 lol.

Why? It gives the creators more money than watching ads and you get no ads on Smart TVs etc.

I mean yes you can watch youtube with vanced, Sponsorblock etc pretty much without ads everywhere, but because I hate ads and did that I like supporting the channels without having to manage a ton of little donations

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If you watch a decent amount of youtube, remove ads is worth it imo. Maybe not $14 a month worth it, but I can't fucking stand ads.

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Anybody on this thread on iOS, check out Vinegar. It’s a Safari extension for YouTube that converts the YT media player to a generic iOS one, removing ads and allowing PiP and other stuff. Best 2-ish bucks I’ve ever spent.

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I pay ~$6.50 a month for a family plan following the guidance on cheapies.nz to sign up with a VPN and pay in Ukrainian currency (had trouble with turkish) - because google screwed me over when I was paying $19.99 a month on the grandfathered plan. if that ever stops working ill just cancel the lot and go back to sailing the high seas.

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Wow, they really didn't have much reason for me to want to use it before. I dropped Amazon Prime because it was getting too expensive and I was at least using that regularly!

Just stated using Revanced Extended YouTube. One of the best apps there is. Makes everything so much more convenient and with zero cost.

Just so that everyone knows:

Dont download patched apks from the internet. Instead, install the patcher from github and a vanilla youtube APK to patch it yourself.

There are no official sites providing revanced APKs and the unofficial sited may contain unwanted software.

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Oh I thought about subscribing for a couple of months, then again I have cancelled Netflix because money is tight. Now I have another reason not to subscribe to YT Premium.

Thanks, Google!

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Want to fight back? Ask a friend to delete google chrome, switch out of gmail and tell them why.

I only had the lite version of premium so I could watch youtube adfree on my phone and tv, but then they started pushing shorts so hard I had to scroll past them to see my subscriptions so I cancelled. Using adblock in desktop browser now so I can block the shorts shelf.

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Christ. I am a premium subscriber for years but it’s always been on the edge of too expensive even as it is. They’re really pushing it.

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I cancelled yt music subscription today after hearing about the price increase. Musi is a much better iOS app than yt music anyway bc the interface is simpler and it actually lets me play all the music while yt music is like you can't play this song right now due to copyright.

F*ck no. I was finally seriously considering buying YT premium for Google not f**king anything up in the past few months, bringing back sort by oldest, and knowing I'm not part of the anti AdBlock trial to make their anti AdBlock efforts less effective.

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I feel like this is the best money in streaming. I mostly watch you tube, and primarily on the tv and phone in the app. Frankly I would prefer to have much more of the internet paid for with you know money instead of ads and not use a blocker.

You tube music also has a much better algorithmic playlist than Apple Music.

I agree completely but you won't get much support on this site as people don't think about how things can cost money to run.

Which is weird considering how the fediverse is paid for at the moment appears to mostly be people paying out of their own pockets.

That's great for now. Scale that up to billions of videos and that won't be sustainable. Video hosting, especially at the scale that youtube does it, is incredibly expensive.

This feels like they are trying to recover revenue lost from the NFL Sunday Ticket deal they made.

People actually pay money to watch YouTube? I thought that was some kind of elaborate practical joke

Honestly by far the best subscription I have.

13€/month to never see ads on any device, give a lot more money to creators and free access to YouTube music so I don't need Spotify anymore. It's amazing how much you get for comparatively little money.

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I mainly use FreeTube on PC and NewPipe on phone, not to avoid ads, but I just find it a much nicer and more peaceful experience (free of recommendations, Shorts etc).

I actually do pay for YouTube Premium family subscription, but its mainly to protect my less tech-savvy family and friends from ads, and to avoid seeing ads on my Android TV projector.

oooh I can feel something big is coming - them testing the anti-adblock and raising the prices at the same time. Spotify is going to be in a weird place for me if this goes through.

Youtube blocks adblockers ➡️ More people are "forced" to subscribe to Youtube Premium ➡️ Because of higher price that includes YT music, not sure whether I'll need Spotify too ➡️ Youtube wins

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I was grandfathered in from the Google Play Music days. I enjoyed being able to upload my CDs to my library. still locked in at $8 a month. no YouTube ads and no music ads.

Huh. I wonder if they will increase the grandfathered price I've been paying as a Play Music early adopter. Hope not, because at $7.99 it still feels like a pretty good deal.

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I was grandfathered into their oldest pricing model back when Google Play Music was at its peak, and now they're hiking my price too. I'll be glad to see the subscription go and use revanced, but I need a better music streaming platform that's 10 dollars or less

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And I'm pretty sure their youtube premium ads are going to be more annoying.

I pay 12.99 and that was my max :( Gonna be hard pressed to cancel the subscription. Guess I'm going to learn how to use those workarounds and just save the 12.99. Well now 13.99 starting in September

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I've cancelled my google subscription when they killed play music. Bunch of wankers. They went from one of the best tech companies to the worst in the span of ten years.

People actually pay for this crap?

Well yeah, I have a family subscription and I don't need to pay for another music subscription like Spotify etc. YT music has come a long way since it's release (i've been with it aince the start) and it's great now. I like that you can watch the music video version too.

I quite enjoy YouTube premium. I was an avid Adblock/YouTube Vanced user before, but now that I am a little older and make more money, I realized it's worth it to me to get premium. I don't pay for any other streaming services, and YouTube is what I watch the most so I figured why not support it.

It makes me feel better knowing my money gets distributed to creators as well through YouTube. That did not happen before as I always blocked ads. Plus I don't need Spotify if I want to stream music because I have YouTube music. And YouTube music actually seems to have more of the music I like anyways, plus I already liked finding music through YouTube channels anyways.

I'm not advocating that everyone should buy YouTube premium, I'm just saying that it can have its merits for some people.

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I started several years ago with the YouTube Premium family plan. It gave me:

  • YouTube Originals
  • YouTube Music
  • No ads
  • Background playing

My kids are fine with it. It saves me and them a Spotify subscription. Having YouTube Originals disappear somewhat, lessened the value for me. Once the kids are not under my roof anymore, I'll have to rethink this subscription plan. But that will be in eight years, or so. In that time so much will change, it's not even worth thinking about it.

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