When it first launched in 2007, the suggestion of paying a monthly subscription for YouTube might have seemed ridiculous. But fast forward nearly two decades, YouTube Premium is actually a solid deal. With this, you get a mostly ad-free experience with exclusive features and features like YouTube Music. Of course, those benefits may only be worth the right price.
on fridayYouTube began informing subscribers that it would be raising premium prices for all account types. Going forward, individual YouTube Premium plans will go from $13.99 to $15.99 per month; Annual plans will increase from $139.99 to $159.99 per year; Family plans will go from $22.99 to $26.99 per month; And student plans will increase from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. This is only taking into account YouTube’s pricing. If you subscribe to Premium through the YouTube app on iOS, YouTube applies an additional fee to offset Apple’s 30% cut. This Is This Redditor’s Personal Plan Going for $20.99 per month. For its part, YouTube informs users that they can sign up directly through YouTube at the new price of $15.99 per month.
Interestingly, YouTube hasn’t actually made any official announcement regarding the press increase. Instead, this change has been spread entirely by word of mouth, as users have shared their emails with the company in frustration. Users are already angry this week, blaming the company Unskippable 90-second long ad breaks are being rolled out. YouTube is adamant that it does not have such long non-skippable ad breaks and says that wild examples of this are actually bugs. But whether that’s the case or not, the situation isn’t exactly prompting the company’s announcement of a price increase.
up to that point, Users are not happy with this news. Scrolling through the Reddit threads, I see nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction, with many people threatening to cancel, or confirming that they have ended their subscriptions right there. One user called YouTube “greedy (bastards)”, while another praised the virtues of ad blockers – which thwart one of the main benefits of subscription. As such, in recent years, Google has started a war against ad blockers, making them more difficult to use with YouTube.
What do you think so far?
$15.99 isn’t the most expensive streaming subscription, and YouTube Premium still comes with all the same benefits as before. But I’m not sure YouTube can keep squeezing them for more money before the subscriber exodus starts.
