Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month
The price of an individual YouTube Premium subscription is increasing $2 to $13.99 per month in the US. YouTube has yet to...
Does…. Any one, actually, you know, subscribe for YouTube?
I have a YouTube Premium subscription
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.
You should do an AMA
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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.
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 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.
Yup. YouTube is most of what I watch.
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 have one through my legacy Google Play Music subscription. I get YouTube Music and YouTube Premium for $7.99/month
I sub from Turkey, or whatever the new name is, for barely more than $2pm for a 6-person family plan in Australia.
I've had it for a few years. I watch a ton of YouTube via Chromecast. I also use the music service every day. For me it's a good value.
I did, sorta.
I subscribed to Google Play Music All Access from day 1, because (at the time) it was like Spotify but also allowed me to upload my own music. I added a family plan when that became available for my friends/family who wanted it as well, and was grandfathered into that price when GPMAA eventually turned into YouTube Music, which was also bundled with YouTube Premium. Ad-free YouTube isn't something I specifically sought out but it was bundled into a service that I was using as a perk.
I kept that subscription going at the grandfathered rate until I got an email from Google one day informing me that they were increasing the price, which was last October, and would only allow me to keep the grandfathered cost for an additional 6 months before hiking me up to the new price. That would bring me from $14.99/mo to $23.99/mo, so I said "fuck that" and canceled. The service only got worse after they killed GPM anyways.
MAN I miss Google play music. Uploading your own music was lit
I want to but the price is to high for what they're asking for. I could have gotten myself a subscription for crunchy roll or Netflix with the money they're asking
I do! Would probably give up my Netflix subscription before YouTube to be honest. As a family, we spend more time using YouTube than most other streaming services.
I have a premium family membership and I pay around 18 bucks and allows 4 people into the membership I think.
This includes youtube music, which I use to upload my music and play it anywhere.
I tried a free month, but it really didn't tingle me. I still prefer Spotify to YouTube music.
Yep, I watch YouTube all the time, and use it for music, so I could cancel Spotify.
Yes, the whole family watches YouTube on the TV, on the iPad/mobile phone apps, that it's worth it not to see the ads there, plus background play of audio, plus the whole family can stream their music from YouTube Music so no need for an aditional Spotify subscription.
Anyway, I just wish they'd remove the sponsor stuff on the apps like SponsorBlock does on the desktop for me.
Yep. Between YouTube Music and watching stuff on my TV it’s probably the most used subscription I have.
I do, YouTube is my most used video app and I pay for a family plan
I used to when I used have it when subscribed to Google Music—which was amazing but then they tried to replace it with YouTube Music and yet another big amazing Google product died—and there was no point anymore.
I've considered it to stop ads on the TV app, but always thought it wasn't worth it. I can't even be bothered ad-blocking the network to include the TV, so raising cost of Premium now may as well make the product cease to exist in my mind.
Yep, Family Plan here as well. It’s 4+1 of us, we all watch YT pretty much continuously at different age levels (two adults, one teenager and one preschooler), and since there was one extra seat left grandma also got ad free experience on her mobile. All 5 of us are also into different kinds of music so having access to YT music is also huge plus. The only other subscription I don’t mind paying for is Amazon Prime, for obvious reasons. Netflix, D+, Apple TV+ and such got the boot long time ago, with no plans to resubscribe any time soon.
YouTube has the creators I actually want to support. I don't mind paying for all the hours of content I'm getting for it
Yep. I watch more YouTube than TV. Once you get a curated list of channels set up, YouTube is great. And I don’t like ads.
People with overpaid white collar jobs do that plenty and there are plenty of them who will pay probably up to $50 a month or more. Youtube is already testing predatory measures to make chrome users ditch adblockers by giving out warnings to people who use them. Many more will go Youtube Premium in the near future because of such measures and Youtube will keep ramping up prices of course.
So you are pissed off that people are actually willing to pay for service? Youtube hosts millions if not billions of videos and streams them to billions of users, dozens of times a day and they do all this essentially lag free. That infrastructure is not cheap.
Additionally youtube actually shares their premium revenue with content creators allowing people to actually make a successful living with their creative pursuits and you control how that revenue is shared by which videos you watch.
i pay for youtube premium, i don’t like seeing ads on my phone
My YouTube subscription costs 0. ublock Origin.
Unlock origin and ReVanced is great, but it doesn't allow casting to the TV without ads..
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
This is when apple comes in clutch with airplay. Safari + sponsorblock equals casting supremacy. I don't even have the YouTube app installed on Apple.
I run Newpipe on a fire stick. No ads.
There's catt which can be installed in termux on Android or directly on your PC easily enough. AFAIK there's also a few (T)UIs for it out there. I personally have set up a bash script in termux as a share target and send the links from the revanced app to catt for casting. But yeah, it's definitely more work and needs more expertise setting it up than hitting the cast button in the app, fully agreed.
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?
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.
This right here. Crazy to me that people would pay for what ublock origin does for free. Especially people defending the need to shell out for the service to "support" a trillion dollar company like Google.
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.
By the time steam chokes and shittifies we are all doomed
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.
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
"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.
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.
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.
A single ticket to my local movie theater costs $16.50 for an adult ticket to a typical movie. That is already more expensive than a month of unlimited Youtube premium, even at the inflated price.
Video streaming is a consumable product. What model would you prefer. Ad supported is still available. A la carte is reasonable in theory, but doesn't seem like it would work well for a site like youtube (even though youtube does have some a-la-carte offerings such as movies)
We used to have a movie subscription service around here. It failed because it was essentially sellings dimes for nickels.
From an actual cost perspective, a video streaming on YouTube is not even remotely the same as a movie ticket. The company selling the movie ticket has to price each ticket to ensure that the company can make enough money to cover:
Google has its own costs of course, but for essentially the same thing (showing a person a video), Google's costs are vastly lower per person, because the video they are showing you is a digital file that lives on a server, and the same file is shown to everyone who wants to view it.
Another example: A book printed on paper requires a lot of physical materials - ink, paper, cardboard, glue, etc. Selling a paper book requires machines to print the pages, trucks and trains to transport raw materials to and from factories, and to locations where they book can be sold.
For a paper book to end up in your hands, lumberjacks need to be paid to cut down trees. Miners need to be paid to dig the materials required to make ink out of the ground. Printing press operators need to be paid. Truck drivers need to be paid. Warehouse workers need to be paid. Delivery drivers need to be paid.
A Kindle ebook is a digital file that has been uploaded from the publisher directly to an Amazon server, and Amazon is certainly able to provide itself with server space at far lower than retail cost.
A brand new printed paperback version of the lastest David Baldacci novel costs $19.99 on Amazon. The Kindle version of the same book costs $14.99. Considering that the Kindle version has almost zero of the costs associated with the print version, and is literally the exact same digital file that is sent to every single person who purchases the ebook, the ebook, compared to the paper book, generates almost 100% profit with almost zero additional costs or overhead.
Given this, should an ebook cost almost as much as a real book? Should a YouTube Premium subscription cost as much as a movie ticket?
Or are two of the most profitable companies on the planet simply charging "real" prices for digital products because they have a de-facto monopoly in their respective markets, and they can basically just do whatever they want?
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.
smart TVs
SmartTube can solve that issue, at least, assuming it runs any form of Android. I don't know enough about iPhone to know if there's an alternative there.
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.
Psst, Invidious and NewPipe don't have ads either!
I had that for $14 a month and they were going to raise it to $22 so I said bye just at the perfect time since ReVanced released it's manager to install.
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.
Yeah. We can’t have free, privacy, and creators that eat. Pick two.
(We might end up paying and getting neither privacy or paid creators… but at least it is worth the attempt to do things right.)
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...
I think what you are seeing here so far is the organic result of those dumb enough to pay this kind of money for youtube being personally offended and defending their bad decisions.
We will get there but I'm not sure that this platform is large enough to be a major target for corpo bots just yet. Just dummies.
Ya how dare people actually pay for a platform that hosts billions of videos and streams to billions of users essentially lag free and is actually decent and shares revenue with it's content creators. /s
Things cost money. You don't have to be a corporate shill to not expect everything to be free, you just have to be an adult.
I get that, but the vast majority of content creators seem to make their money with sponsorships or their own ads, so most of what google is doing is content distribution, not creation. Which makes the amount of money they want for that seem ridiculous when pretty much every other streaming service that produces high profile and expensive shows themselves is way cheaper.
This feels like your supermarket requiring entrance fees in addition to you having to pay for stuff you actually buy.
Firefox+UBO and Revanced users: Oh no... anyway...
They're blocking users who use UBO
That's what they want you to think.
I'll have you know I remain unblocked.
I am not blocked. I use UBO.
Didn't they already try to do that with manifest v3? They couldn't do shit within their own chromium platform, I doubt they'd be able to do it now.
And even if they could, UBO devs would just find a way around that.
Not all of them, currently. And if they were to do that, I'm sure some handy people will find a way around that.
That's nice. continues to enjoy effectively yt premium with NewPiped for free
It crashes decently often but still worth it
It has never crashed for me. Not once. In what device are you using it?
Seems like a good alternative. Do you know if there a way to import my current subscriptions?
Also, I've been using the music service for some time now as well. Do you have any suggestions for viable replacements for that?
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.
If you're using a smart TV running any version of Android (Fire TV, etc.) or you're using a device that plugs into your TV that's running Android, you can use SmartTube to watch YouTube if you want.
It blocks ads, it's got SponsorBlock, and it supports casting from somewhere else (like your phone's YouTube app). It's also pretty customizable, too.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
i wonder what is the ceiling price for most until they will drop it
It’s getting close for me…
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.
Still a good value compared to Netflix tbh
I'd argue that neither are good values.
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.
Have you checked the price lately? They upped the family plan for me over 50% in April.
They didn't upped his price because he's a early member
Same. I'll be keeping an eye on it. I really like having access to YouTube without ads, but I detest YouTube Music and opted to pay for a Spotify subscription a few months after they killed Play Music. I'm not going to pay that much for just the lack of ads. I may find another way.
In the article say that grandfathered accounts would get three additional months at their current price but would ultimately be raised?
Imagine paying that, damn.
Could be $20 I don't really care when I get music included. Yet you people are paying similar price for one music service aka Spotify lol
What do you mean "you people"?
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.
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.
How do you do that? Would like to do it too
You just need a VPN and a virtual credit card that allows for currency conversion (so you’re effectively paying in the target currency). I did this a couple of months ago, so I cannot guarantee this still works
Holy greed!
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.
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.
Yea, just look at the comments in this thread.
Enshittification continues…
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.
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?
I'm still not going to subscribe, weren't they worried about the amount of subscribers the other week!?
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 👍
So... another 50 cents if purchased through India?
Oh well, too late to join now. Thought about that subscription in the past, but now it’s clearly out of the question.
