YouTube Premium quietly raises subscription price by 17%

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? YouTube has quietly raised the price of its Premium subscription service by $2 for those that pay monthly. The service will now set subscribers back $13.99 per month, an increase of nearly 17 percent over the previous $11.99 monthly rate.

YouTube Premium delivers an ad-free experience on YouTube and also allows subscribers to play clips in the background and download videos on mobile to watch offline. The membership additionally includes access to YouTube Music, Google's streaming music service.

Speaking of, YouTube increased the standalone cost of YouTube Music (if you don't have Premium) from $9.99 to $10.99 per month.

What we do not yet know if whether or not the new pricing will apply to existing subscribers. Some are reporting that their Premium membership price is still listed at $11.99, but it is simply too early to know for sure either way. With any luck, hopefully those users will get grandfathered in.

The price hikes come at a time when virtually everything from groceries to gadgets is getting more expensive. Earlier this week, Netflix axed its most affordable ad-free streaming option in the US and UK. Whereas it used to cost $9.99 per month for an ad-free Netflix experience, new and returning customers will now have to pay at least $15.49 a month to watch without commercials.

Late last year, YouTube increased the price of its Premium family plan by $5, pushing the monthly rate to $22.99. In March, the company tacked on $8 per month to YouTube TV, which now commands $73 a month.

A month later, Spotify chief Daniel Ek said the company was ready to raise prices. As of this writing, however, the music streaming giant hasn't made any changes.

Disney, Paramount, and Microsoft have all announced or implemented price hikes as of late. Fortunately, you can still get a good deal on some things like select PC hardware. DRAM has hit rock bottom and solid-state drives are expected to get even cheaper in the coming months.

Image credit: Alexander Shatov, Souvik Banerjee

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/99479-youtube-quietly-raises-price-premium-17.html

 

[bviktor]

Yeah, you still gotta reside in the same household, so I still refuse to pay a single penny. I'm in a family of 4 and we live in 3 different households. It's completely unrealistic to expect a family to live in the same house till eternity.

So I'll keep using uBlock and SponsorBlock, thanks.

 

[punctualturn]

Yeah, you still gotta reside in the same household, so I still refuse to pay a single penny. I'm in a family of 4 and we live in 3 different households. It's completely unrealistic to expect a family to live in the same house till eternity.

So I'll keep using uBlock and SponsorBlock, thanks.

I see your point but I also see theirs.

If you have one cable account, there is no way that they will let you share that account with 4 different physical locations for the price of one. They would charge full price for each.

That said, I do have a problem with limiting service to one physical household when you are adhering to the 4 users limit.

 

[Mark Fuller]

It's like I've been saying, best course of action is download to storage like external drives and play with media players like VLC. All of this can be done for free, you don't have to subscribe to Youtube Premium to download videos etc. You can use the basic Youtube and YTD downloader. You are limited to one video at a time with commercials but once you download them and edit them they are commercial free then with a player like VLC or any of the other free medial players You can also make your own dvds with free software like cyberlink but you have to be careful about file types to play on some media devices especially older dvd players. There are some excellent file converters like Format Factory for this purpose. All of this can be done for free, and the only downside is the time consuming process to get it done correctly. But once it is done you have instant access to them and have no problems associated with streaming on the world wide web like malware, inadvertent redirects, commercials, long buffering times and also rf interference. This can all also be done for smartphones or even the cheapest flip phone with software for these phones with the software that comes with the phones os or like vlc and an sd card, video or audio. I do both of course.

 

[Kam7r]

Youtube enhancer + sponsor block on your browser = no need for YT premium

 

[kira setsu]

Its good I added all that extra storage to my last pc build, I dont mind paying but all these subscriptions are starting to make the days of cable feel cheap in comparison.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I guess the billions of dollars youtube makes off ads isn't enough so they have to keep upping the subscription prices.

Eat me, youtube (Google), I'm keeping my money. You make enough off of ever single person's data that has touched your IPs.

 

[Nobina]

Adblocker on PC, YouTube ReVanced on the phone and SmartTube on TV.

 

[Mark Fuller]

Is it not true that adblockers have to be paid for as well as subscriptions? Most people take the path of least resistance when it comes to anything which is why they stream because it's easiest rather than go to all the trouble to download to storage devices or burn you own dvds. But if you do that you either have to take what comes with adware and commercials or pay for adblockers or subscriptions. It is really not that expensive to pay for a little convenience and it's much easier to get what you really want. There's really no such thing as a free lunch. No matter what you do to get something worthwhile it is going to cost a little bit anyway.

 

[Homerlovesbeer]

You are limited to one video at a time with commercials but once you download them and edit them they are commercial free then with a player like VLC or any of the other free medial players .

You have too much time on your hands if you download and then edit out the commercials. Who could be arsed to do that?

 

[Mark Fuller]

You have too much time on your hands if you download and then edit out the commercials. Who could be arsed to do that?

It ain't that hard and doesn't require so much time to do so. I work a 40 hour per week job and still find PLENTY of time to download, edit, and burn my own DVDs. If you can't stand the heat get out of the fire. Moreover, I worked for Dell Technical Support and DirecTV for years and that is not the attitude that they look for in a tech support agent. You must be one of the ones that take the easy way out. If Homer loves beer so much that says a lot.