Google has quietly increased the price of YouTube Premium, its ad-free version of YouTube and YouTube Music that includes download capabilities and other perks, from $11.99 to $13.99/month. According to a message from a spokesperson that was received by 9to5Google, this price increase was required so Google could continue “delivering great service and features.” The price of YouTube Music Premium is also going from $9.99 to $10.99/month.
“We’re updating the price for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium subscribers in the US to continue delivering great service and features,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “We believe this new price reflects the value of YouTube Premium which allows subscribers to enjoy ad-free YouTube with background and offline play and uninterrupted access to over 100M songs with the YouTube Music app.”
YouTube Premium Features
- YouTube
- Ad-free YouTube: Watch millions of videos uninterrupted by ads. Learn more
- Download videos to watch offline: Save videos and playlists on mobile devices and play them offline
- Play in the background: Keep videos playing when using other apps or when your screen is off
- YouTube Music
- Easily explore the world of music with the new and improved YouTube Music app
- Ad-free music: Listen to millions of songs uninterrupted by ads
- Download music to listen offline: Save music and playlists in the YouTube Music app and listen offline
- Play in the background: Keep music playing when using other apps or when your screen is off
- YouTube Kids
- Ad-free and offline play in the YouTube Kids app
Toward the end of last year, family Premium plans saw a big hike to $22.99/month. That remains the same today. The annual subscription, which was introduced in January of 2022, goes to $139.99 in a $20 increase. Compared to paying monthly, you save $27.89.
YouTube last raised the price of YouTube Premium (previously called “Red”) in 2018 with the relaunch of YouTube Music.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Youtube Premium comes for free with my Fi phone plan, and I haven't even bothered activating it :p
(This is in part because it looks like it is one year free, and I don't want to sign up for something I would later have to pay for)
I noticed this morning when posting that Gran Turismo trailer that they've started locking the higher res/bitrate options to premium now as well. I don't know if that has been applied to everything on YT, yet, but it was on that video.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT
Gawd d4mn dude.
With everyone watching from their phones, and phone companies auto setting video playback on phones to 480p... I'm not surprised.
I don't get that sh1t. If someone sends me a video on my phone, I email or Discord the link to myself so I can watch it on my desktop PC. I can't really stand to watch anything on my phone.
I can watch videos in 4K from my PC, but anything that is recorded in 1080P doesn't allow me to watch their "premium" 1080P. Not sure I should care.
I saw that once as well. I had an option to view a particular video at 1080p60hz, but it was restricted to Youtube premium subscribers.
I was perfectly happy with the regular 1080p setting though, so that didn't bother me.
This was last week. I haven't seen it since though.
Actually, never mind, it's back:
This pops up once it is clicked on:
I just googled and found this article.
Might be worthy of a news story :p
Youtube is fighting hard to nosedive their platform, it's like they are working shifts to push the stick forward all the time.
Literally every change they make is for the worse.
Not to mention their totally useless and annoying features, like switching IQ to 480p if you seek too much in a video.
Or the reason i'd rather pay to not have premium, the "continue watching" feature. I signed up for the free premium trial because I was on the road and could only watch YT on a phone for a while. But this feature made the YT experience a living hell for me on desktop after I got back. I often pause videos to look at other things in between. But if I dare do that with premium when I load a new yt page it automatically pops up the video that is still paused in the other window, to continue watching it. But the same thing happens when I close a video because I've seen enough or didn't like it, the next YT page I load will shove the same video in my face. No, wtf do you think google? That I closed the video by accident? But the same thing happens even when I watch the actual video to completion only clicking away during the outro part. While this feature exist I'll never pay for premium.
If YT pushes hard enough, I'm perfectly willing to go on rumble or odyssey to search for content worth watching.
Yep, that's exactly what I saw, in both images. I might run with that article, it kind of fits with the slightly-offbeat stuff I sometimes do on the weekend.
Good to know. I'd be bummed if I couldn't watch GN in 4K. I don't care much about 1080p premium.
I have to agree. It's my go-to for watching concert videos, and a few odds and ends, and I've really been annoyed with everything they've done in the last few years.
In the past I mostly avoided YT like the plague. Looks like that won’t be changing anytime soon.
Ive left youtube long ago for anything that matters to me. There are no excuses any longer, if we chose to let you tube be the dominant plataform and let rumble, rockfin ,odysee, kick, so on to fail, so be it, but while I get to complain about it, anybody else who didn't move, shouldn't complain as freespeech is eroded, and control of the internet is solidified into 1 or 2 giants. The ' free market' is trying to work, the signal is very very clear on this. Its a complete disgrace to all of us as sheep we arent making youtube suffer, they should be suffering more than what they are.
Btw after the last big update, the rumble app is BETTER in everyway than Youtube's mess. Not the same, not.close, not similar, it is better.
One thing I could never stand about YT was that it won't load the whole video. In the distant past they used to give you the option for that. Then when they took it away, 3rd-party browser add-ons added it back. But I haven't seen any add-ons for FF or Chromium-based browsers in years that promised that functionality and actually worked. That sh1t would be extremely handy to have these days with the high 'Net speeds we got now.
I never even heard of a single one of these. So there are YT alternatives out there?
Yeah that sh1t is really f*cking annoying.
Woooooow, pay a subscription free just to be annoyed to death. Awesome. Glad you were able to find this out through a trial, so you're not out any money.
Hahahahahahahaha, what the f*ck man.
Well I mean get to downloading and searching those plataforms. Rumble is best and growing, Rockfin is a good app, but contents seem fairly limited, Kick has lots of contents that is not really for me at all, Odysee, I mean I tried, I can only call that app a mess, but I try when not finding anywhere else. Youtube is the last I will search now. Depends on what you watch, mileage may vary with those apps/ websites/ plataform, as creators are also guilty of inertia. Creators I get to an extent since youtube is where money is at right now, but that shouldn't stop them from mirroring and having backup plans for their presence.
Rumble is slowly working towards monetization, so that should help creators. Users have zero excuse this is all free. I will make more of a point to share videos on rumble if I can, i do so person to person , but will try and do so even here if I can find the equivalent (for relevant posts and such obviously)