YouTube TV gets $8 price hike, now $73 per month

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,240   +192
Staff member
In brief: YouTube is once again increasing the cost of its streaming television service in a move that's sure to generate some cancellations. The streaming provider said it is adjusting its monthly rate from $64.99 to $72.99 in the wake of rising content costs and continued investments in the quality of its service. The new pricing goes into effect immediately for new members, and will start on April 18 for existing subscribers.

YouTube further noted it is lowering the price of its 4K Plus add-on, from $19.99 per month to $9.99 a month. If you were already paying for the 4K add-on, you will be saving $2 per month overall.

For everyone else, the $8 price hike is not insignificant as it works out to an extra $96 per year. It is not a ton of money, sure, but you can do a lot with $8 per month like invest in another streaming service.

A Netflix basic with ads membership is $6.99 per month, Hulu's ad-supported basic plan is $7.99 monthly, Disney+ is $7.99, an Amazon Prime Video membership is $8.99 each month, and an individual Spotify Premium membership is $9.99 (if you are a student, you can get it for $4.99).

The price hike is YouTube's first in three years. The service debuted in five major markets back in 2017 at just $34.99 per month. YouTube added more channels in 2018 and bumped the price up to $39.99 and eventually became available nationwide. In early 2019, the price increased to $49.99 and in 2020, it shot up to $64.99 where it has sat until today.

What does your television strategy look like these days? I personally cut the cord with my local cable provider close to a decade ago and have relied mostly on streaming and OTA broadcasts ever since. Come college football season, however, I do resort back to paid live TV but only from late August through early January.

Image credit: Logos by Javier Miranda, TVs by Levi Stute

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Who? Who is paying this a month, when comparing tó the monthly of others. I mean WTF?!
Not sure what you mean. What "others" are you comparing to? YouTube TV gets high marks for channels, sports, DVR and multi-user support. I have 2 homes and paying YouTube is far cheaper than paying 2 cable subs for the houses.
 
Mean while my YouTube Revenue is down 150%. Yet views are up 10k on average...
What a load of garbage this is. They also put the price of premium up a bucket load too...
Just the usual greedflation from the top end of town...
 
Great, the digital revolution which was finally going to offer us a reasonable cable package has now successfully become just as bloated and overpriced as the legacy analog version. Good job Google.

And I believe that price still doesn't include Lifetime, which makes their service a non-starter from my GF's point of view (no Married at First Sight).
 
Great, the digital revolution which was finally going to offer us a reasonable cable package has now successfully become just as bloated and overpriced as the legacy analog version. Good job Google.

And I believe that price still doesn't include Lifetime, which makes their service a non-starter from my GF's point of view (no Married at First Sight).
If lifetime is her favorite channel, reconsider before it's too late.
 
IPTV FTW! You have to be a fool to be paying $73 a month for Youtube TV
IPTV looks sketchy as hell. I've seen multiple providers advertising thousands of channels but no one seems to have an actual channel list. For me, the big thing is sports and I know professional sports regulate where games can be shown. I have to wonder as to the legality of IPTV, not saying it's not legal, but a lot of the things they claim are suspect.
 
100%+ increase in just 6 years? It's no different than regular cable/satellite now. Take it or leave it. They need to start offering sub-packages instead of this all-or-nothing approach. How about: Locals, Nerds (science, documentaries), Newsies (news, crime, documentaries), SportsFans, Designers (home shows), and then the Full Enchilada.
 
74 seems so expensive. YT TV users, is it worth it even?
It was worth it to me because I use it in 2 different homes in different states. This way I don't have to have 2 cable subscriptions which would cost more. So, it's like paying $35/mo for each home. It has drawbacks, which are not controlled by YTTV, such as certain sporting events not being shown in certain areas.
 
IPTV looks sketchy as hell. I've seen multiple providers advertising thousands of channels but no one seems to have an actual channel list. For me, the big thing is sports and I know professional sports regulate where games can be shown. I have to wonder as to the legality of IPTV, not saying it's not legal, but a lot of the things they claim are suspect.
I have a friend who has been using them for years without issue. He swears by them. he moves around from time to time. I tried one for a couple of weeks and the selection is insane. The only reason I don't use one now is because I don't watch much content. I game or visit tortuga for the odd things.
 
"YouTube added more channels in 2018 and bumped the price up to $39.99 and eventually became available nationwide. In early 2019, the price increased to $49.99 and in 2020, it shot up to $64.99 where it has sat until today."

When will YouTube TV and other streaming services wake up to realize that adding un-necessary and useless channels is not what most people want...?! The useless or repeated channels will never be watched...! Instead, people want the channels they would like to watch...!

I would welcome the day streaming services sell their channels individually, say $1 per channel per month, for the channels you choose to watch...! Otherwise it is the waste of money...!
 
I have a friend who has been using them for years without issue. He swears by them. he moves around from time to time. I tried one for a couple of weeks and the selection is insane. The only reason I don't use one now is because I don't watch much content. I game or visit tortuga for the odd things.
I'll definitely check them out. I don't watch a lot of "TV" content but I do like live sports. Not having to have multiple subs for different locations is attractive. I don't care about 1000s of channels, just the right mix of probably a dozen channels.
 
Great, the digital revolution which was finally going to offer us a reasonable cable package has now successfully become just as bloated and overpriced as the legacy analog version. Good job Google.

And I believe that price still doesn't include Lifetime, which makes their service a non-starter from my GF's point of view (no Married at First Sight).
I don't think Google is the villain here. The problem, which many people don't want to admit to, is that they don't want to pay for content and they don't like ads. You can't have it both ways. Someone has to pay to create content. Certain content, like sporting events, are controlled by the leagues and someone has to pay for those multi-million dollar player contracts. Other content is speculative, you dump a few million into a show and it flops, but then you dump 1/3 of that into another show and it is a smash hit. I don't know if there is any "silver-bullet" solution, but what I do know is that entertainment content is never going to be free.
 
We can and did have it "both ways" for many decades when broadcast TV was free to the viewer in exchange for advertisements and promotions. This remains an important TV market and plenty of people will proudly tell you they do not like paying for basic TV. FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) is once again a growing category with companies like Pluto, Tubi, etc.

Then there were earlier cable packages that contained fewer channels and cost less. This was before broadcast channels got aggressive about demanding significant costs for their content. I'm an example of a viewer for which this was a sweet spot - the two to three dozen channels may feel like a small roster now, but it was enough to cover my bases and a reasonable fit for many household budgets.

Then came the modern era of much larger channel rosters and much more aggressively priced content on even the "basic tier" of them, I.e., broadcast TV. I believe this also aligns with the spike in consumer dissatisfaction, because for many the extra costs & channels are not in proportion with perceived extra benefit, especially if they aren't big sports fans too.

My current house can't get OTA signal, but my last house did and that felt OK. The networks were there when you wanted them (which is less and less for us these days), and you could pay for the particular streamers you wanted to, and end up with lots of content at reasonable price.
 
We keep paying more and getting less. And for me, this adds up to an additional $120 per month.

But what choice is there for the price?
YouTube TV's hook is bundles and lower cost add-ons.
Each of my subs includes the base plan, HBO, Starz, MGM+, AMC+ and Screambox for $110 per month.

(AMC+ full is AMC, BBC America, IFC, Sundance TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, and IFC Films.)
 
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We keep paying more and getting less. And for me, this adds up to an additional $120 per month.

But what choice is there for the price?
YouTube TV's hook is bundles and lower cost add-ons.
Each of my subs includes the base plan, HBO, Starz, MGM+, AMC+ and Screambox for $110 per month.

(AMC+ full is AMC, BBC America, IFC, Sundance TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, and IFC Films.)
Is it any wonder that torrents are so popular? :laughing:
 
We can and did have it "both ways" for many decades when broadcast TV was free to the viewer in exchange for advertisements and promotions. This remains an important TV market and plenty of people will proudly tell you they do not like paying for basic TV. FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) is once again a growing category with companies like Pluto, Tubi, etc.

Then there were earlier cable packages that contained fewer channels and cost less. This was before broadcast channels got aggressive about demanding significant costs for their content. I'm an example of a viewer for which this was a sweet spot - the two to three dozen channels may feel like a small roster now, but it was enough to cover my bases and a reasonable fit for many household budgets.

Then came the modern era of much larger channel rosters and much more aggressively priced content on even the "basic tier" of them, I.e., broadcast TV. I believe this also aligns with the spike in consumer dissatisfaction, because for many the extra costs & channels are not in proportion with perceived extra benefit, especially if they aren't big sports fans too.

My current house can't get OTA signal, but my last house did and that felt OK. The networks were there when you wanted them (which is less and less for us these days), and you could pay for the particular streamers you wanted to, and end up with lots of content at reasonable price.
My point was you can get free (ad-supported) or pay (no-ads) but you can't get free (no-ads) TV, which it seems a lot of people think is possible.

When cable came along and offered dozens of channels, people thought this was great. So much more content for a small uplift in cost. Some of that content was ad-free, eg Showtime, HBO etc. Then they started adding channels in an effort to sway people to pay for cable instead of using the old TV antenna. It seemed like a good idea right up to the point you had 200 channels, 90 percent of which you never watched but now the cost was approaching $100/mo.

At that point people said, I don't want 200 channels, I just want the dozen I watch, but I want a lower price. The problem is that many of those "bundled" channels were loss leaders and weren't capable of sustaining themselves on a subscription basis. So, everyone wants to cut-the-cable assuming you could buy the content you wanted at a more reasonable price point. The problem is the dozen channels you watch still cost $100/mo because they all want to charge $8-9 a channel, more or less.

What I think needs to happen is they should bundle shows, not channels. I don't care that Hulu has movies, as I rarely watch movies on Hulu. I do watch a couple of shows there. Same with Disney, I'm more of a series than a movie watcher there. Let me pick the 15-20 series I want to watch, but at a reasonable price point. Some services, like Prime, will let you do that for non-Prime series. The issue is they want $15-30 per season, and it again becomes cost prohibitive. They need to go the way of the Apple iTunes store, $.99 per episode. Then it might make more sense for me.
 
IPTV looks sketchy as hell. I've seen multiple providers advertising thousands of channels but no one seems to have an actual channel list. For me, the big thing is sports and I know professional sports regulate where games can be shown. I have to wonder as to the legality of IPTV, not saying it's not legal, but a lot of the things they claim are suspect.
Negative, ive used about 4 different ones. I only use it for Sports and UFC. Family uses it for basic channels. But I only use it mainly for sports. No issues what so ever.
 
Negative, ive used about 4 different ones. I only use it for Sports and UFC. Family uses it for basic channels. But I only use it mainly for sports. No issues what so ever.
What sports and what locations are you watching? I know that certain professional sports, Baseball and Football in particular, cannot be legally watched outside of the home area, unless it's a nationally televised game. I have this issue with YouTube TV, I can watch Seattle games when I'm in Washington but not Arizona and vice versa.

Looking at IPTV options there are warnings about possible issues depending on the vendor. Not all vendors follow proper copyright laws. It also appears that many vendors are off-shore which could make it difficult should you have any sort of legal problems. It's interesting, to be sure, and cheaper than YTTV.
 
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