Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month
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...
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
My adblockers are holding steady with a 0% rise! I still ain't paying!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 👍
Enshittification continues…
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.
Holy greed!
The monthly savings from boycotting youtube continue to rise.
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?
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?
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.
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.
So... another 50 cents if purchased through India?
Price hikes suck but; I'm happy with YT premium, we watch a lot on TV (apple tv) and I skip between ipad and iphone every day. By all means if there's an EASY alternative that doesn't involve some janky bedroom api side loading jailbreaking shiz, i'm all ears though...
I had some crappy youtube thing on firestick before I upgraded to appletv and it was crap, ad free was nice but it was horrible and would always stop working in some form or fashion, it was a pain to maintain so I just paid for prem in the end.
I never watch on PC outside of short tutorial videos so browser addons are kinda redundant.
Oh no. Anyway.
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!
Want to fight back? Ask a friend to delete google chrome, switch out of gmail and tell them why.
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
This is why I'm starting to use newpipe
So first.they butcher Google play music by making it YouTube oremtand now this. Fuck that. Unlock forever. And when it stops working I'll stop engaging. Sorry Google, but fuck you
Revanced is your new friend.
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 $19.99 a month on the grandfathered plan. if that ever stops working ill just cancel the lot and go back to sailing the high seas.
Oh no!
Anyway
I cancelled yt music subscription today after hearing about the price increase. Musi is a much better iOS app than yt music anyway bc the interface is simpler and it actually lets me play all the music while yt music is like you can't play this song right now due to copyright.
What's that? I couldn't hear you over revance
I mainly use FreeTube on PC and NewPipe on phone, not to avoid ads, but I just find it a much nicer and more peaceful experience (free of recommendations, Shorts etc).
I actually do pay for YouTube Premium family subscription, but its mainly to protect my less tech-savvy family and friends from ads, and to avoid seeing ads on my Android TV projector.
I started several years ago with the YouTube Premium family plan. It gave me:
- YouTube Originals
- YouTube Music
- No ads
- Background playing
My kids are fine with it. It saves me and them a Spotify subscription. Having YouTube Originals disappear somewhat, lessened the value for me. Once the kids are not under my roof anymore, I'll have to rethink this subscription plan. But that will be in eight years, or so. In that time so much will change, it's not even worth thinking about it.
This feels like they are trying to recover revenue lost from the NFL Sunday Ticket deal they made.
Nope
So Canadians can expect 20$ a month now?
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.
And I'm pretty sure their youtube premium ads are going to be more annoying.
Honestly, this is ridiculous. I'd consider it if this stopped Alphabet (Google) tracking/telemetry, and thus no ads on the entire platform. Though just for YouTube, and YouTube Music (a service I don't use, nor care for)... nah.
Honestly… YouTube Premium is just wasted money. It’s a difficult situation. You can watch YouTube for free and without ads already, by simply using a decent browser like Firefox and installing the uBlock Origin addon to block the ads. (Google is fighting adblockers and anything based on Chrome, so 90% of browsers out there will limit their functionality in the future, btw. Use Firefox or something based on it to keep at least a bit of your privacy and freedom of choice.) And you can even automatically skip the sponsorship messages in videos with Sponsorblock. But if you think you would support the content creators with YouTube Premium, think again. You’re mostly paying Google for their servers / platform. A platform that treats its content creators pretty bad, finds all kinds of ways to not pay them / reasons to demonetize their videos to grab 100% of the ad income and has become more and more privacy invasive and aggressive with ads over the years towards its users. And in terms of music, YouTube doesn’t license every single song individually from the musician. They just pay a royalty towards huge labels and companies like Sony, which in turn keep the absolutely most part of that for themselves instead of paying the artists. Yes, by watching videos for free with adblockers, content creators and YouTube aren’t being paid and in a way you are part of a problem. But consider this: Any subscription based content service like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Premium starts by paying its content creators at least a bit of money, but uses bait & switch tactics to lower that payment per stream more and more over time. Once they have all the creators, music / content and viewers comfortably on board, they start grabbing the money for themselves. It’s a systemic issue with streaming platforms in general and always the short end of the stick for the very people who create the content that makes the platform successful and useful in the first place. And if you feel guilty for cutting off the often self-proclaimed “content creators”… YouTube has mechanisms in place to directly support them (while taking a cut for YouTube), like “super chats” and “super stickers” and most of them these days have a Patreon account for direct monetary support and sponsorships going on. But yes, only those content creators who actually offer quality content will benefit from these things, what about all the others, you may ask. Well, let’s be brutally honest. A whole lot of content offered on YouTube is bullshit. It’s either copying successful people’s video style, low-cost, low effort, low quality beginners stuff, clickbait, disinformation, mentally unhealthy nonsense, copyright infringing stuff, and these days even AI generated crap with no value. If all of that would stop being made because no money is to be made on the platform, we wouldn’t miss out on anything. True quality will always be supported directly by fans and sponsors. And as harsh as it sounds… the rest is obsolete and may fall victim to natural selection. Might even raise the quality of content on the platform overall. Feel free to pay for YouTube Premium, if it makes you feel better. But know that absolutely most of it will only benefit Google. Personally, I don’t have the money to pay like 130 bucks a year just to feel like a good person. And those aggressive ads are bad for mental health and sometimes are a vehicle for malware, aside from the technology behind them absolutely shredding your privacy. I’m having none of that. I’ll watch that stuff with adblockers as long as it works, and if that stops working some day, I’ll spend my time with something better, maybe going outside and touching grass or something.
Is this their first or second price hike? I've had it since it was Red - I'll probably just hang in since there isn't a great alternative.
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.
Pain
I've also noticed now that the video quality option on some accounts requires YT Premium to watch in 1080 60
The only thing worth a YouTube premium subscription is probably the higher bitrate formats if you download/archive all the videos you care about. Latest version of yt-dlp gives you access to those (except the highest audio quality format, I think it was 256kbps AAC), but this will probably be patched sooner rather than later.
If they made YouTube paid only and lowered subscription to $1-2/month I might consider.
youtube has premium?