this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023

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175

Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month (9to5google.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

134 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The price of an individual YouTube Premium subscription is increasing by $2 to $13.99 per month in the US for new and current customers.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's just like the old adage that history repeats itself. All the streaming companies are starting to do the exact same damn thing cable did. They're starting to bloat their own products and expense them completely out of normal working schmoes price bracket.

The early 2000s was Paradise for cord cutters. The whole purpose of moving away from cable was the smaller individualized payments. Now if I want to watch all my shows legally I'm approaching cable tv package prices again. I'll be damned if I ever get trapped into that cycle again. Now the streaming networks are bombarding us with advertisements that compare the cable was when I cut cord 20 years ago. And they're slowly getting worse.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Still better than cable ever was. No long term contracts, extra fees on bills, tons of useless channels and tons of ads.

I think people forget how bad cable TV actually is if they haven't used it for a while.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The month to month contracts for streaming content will go away soon.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't see the value in complaining about things that haven't happened yet.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

The general direction that streaming services have been taking in recent times is clear, though: Raising prices, locking down account sharing, splitting up the content across too many different providers and introducing advertisement in cheaper plans. Sounds pretty cable-y to me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They'll probably go the way other big subscription services like MS and Adobe are. Annual commitment with monthly payments of x.99 or no commitment with monthly pricing of y + x.99

I dislike that even more.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The early 2000s was before streaming was ever a thing. Netflix was still sending DVDs in the mail en masse.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I just canceled the Netflix account I have had since 2002.
They were great once...

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Not enough people are paying at $11.99. We need to charge more."

Just because landlords think they can push through 16% price hikes doesn't mean everyone got a 16% raise. So they're trying to steer people from uBO by ... enticing them with higher prices?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think they know people who aren't paying already won't buy it, so they are raising prices on those that found enough value in it to use it. There is YouTube music bundled with it that some like, so seems like smart strategy to me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

In reality they are going to find the limit where paying customers are no longer willing to be.

I have revanced and newpipe, and was still willing to pay as I get a TON of value out of YouTube. Im totally willing to not pay if they insist, however 🙂

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I need to have a serious talk about this with my girlfriend. I didn’t realize she was paying so much for our YT Premium plan.

These prices are getting ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What are you guys getting for that money? I honestly don't know. I just use either an ad blocker or the newpipe app.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a global solution, not just localized to specific areas. No ads on my account on my Xbox, PS5, Switch, Google Home speakers (YouTube Music), Fire TV Stick, Android TV, Roku, my roommate's Roku, or anyone else's devices anywhere else, in addition to places like my phone and PC where I just use uBlock Origin.

In addition, I'm actually just splitting the family plan across three people, so it's like $7.64/mo, which isn't bad.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah with that many devices that's worth the ease of use for the price. I'm surprised they don't block more than one device.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

While ad blockers are definitely a thing, I'd also like my favorite channels to get paid. And, honestly, it has to make money somehow -- it might as well be off my relatively stable back

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does your ad blocker block ads for YouTube and YouTube Music apps on iOS?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I use safari with adguard + sponsor block which lets me airplay videos to the TV. I don't even have the YouTube app installed. No need to try and set up smarttubenext or whatever on the TV.

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[–] DuckGuy 9 points 1 year ago

For YouTube, uYou+ blocks ads and sponsors.

For YouTube Music, YouTubeMusicUltimate blocks ads and sponsors, too.

Anyone can sideload those relatively easily. Still, if you don't want to bother with this, you can find apps on the AppStore that do pretty much the same thing, like Yattee or Video Lite (there's a paid subscription for this one but if you block ads at the DNS level you won't see anything.)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The big part for us is the multiple users, and not under a single home location.

My girlfriend, myself, her kid, adult daughter. That ends up being a fairly decent value proposition considering we’re pretty invested in Apple devices. There aren’t a lot of solutions to remove ads, and we take advantage of both the music and video sides of things.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

ReVanced, ReVanced Extended and uBlock Origin will always be free :)

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of course they are. Because literally everyone and everything is screwing all of us who aren't super rich.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

People tell me oh youtube prem is reasonable but I know that yt is just going to raise the price bit by bit and everyone will accept it because they have no other option.

[+] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Don't forget NewPipe for Android, Yattee for Apple devices, SmartTube for most Android TV boxes, Playlet for Roku, and Invidious for PC (if you don't like Piped).

The only (usable) platform I can think of without a ad-free YouTube client is maybe webOS for LG TVs.

(some of these clients are also missing some features because they are new, but they should all be better for watching than the official app)

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Front ends aren't really an alternative option. You are still using youtube. Youtube will continue to try and stop ad blockers and shutdown these Frontends. Eventually they will be successful. The more inconvenient they make it to use these technologies the more people will pay for yt prem. The only option is to start making the very painful switch to alternative platforms.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Even twitch has work around so they are welcomed to keep trying until they are successful.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Is there really anything you would benefit from with premium? Its sooo easy to find other content for free elsewhere and use YT ad free is basically one-click on a normal computer.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It helps support creators more than ads, at least on an individual level; a portion of your subscription goes to the creators that you actually watch, or at least that's what I've heard. Other than that, just YouTube Music and higher bitrate playback.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I wish some of that money found its way to small youtubers who don't qualify for monetization and are just uploading for the fun of it. Those youtubers are my favorite since it feels more like the old YouTube or stuff like lemmy or whatever where people share without expectation of anything back other than just being excited.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You probably can, but I'm lazy ;) I like it. Got the family one so everybody in my house can use it. We listen to a LOT of music on youtube music in my house, and a few of the others like watching cooking shows and silly junk on youtube. There's some pretty decent content. You can get by with ad blockers and stuff, but since I use the music app in my car and at work I prefer not to deal with all that.

For most people, there's probably not much reason to pay for it.

Edit: Not happy with the constant price hikes though. It seems like the bump the price by a little every year or two.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah. Similar over here. If it was just me, I would be fine to find alternatives and/or blockers, but me, spouse, and kids… on different devices the ad time adds up.

This price increase sucks though.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Watching YouTube on the TV without ads and at higher resolution

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've yet to be made aware of any benefits at all. None of what you get from premium is either interesting or relevant.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ll continue to pay for it… it’s the only streaming service that I consider essential to pay for. I’ll dump everything else before I dump this.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I am very selective with what I watch but even so the amount of good content on youtube exceeds my available time while other services have a couple of shows a year to binge and then they can be dropped. With writers and actors striking conventional content is only going to get thinner for the other streaming services. There is a limit to what I will pay for a painless ad free experience for the whole family on all their devices and Youtube is rapidly approaching it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The funny thing is that I used to have YouTube premium bundled with Google play music, but I had to cancel after they killed it. YouTube music was just a terrible experience coming after GPM (lost a lot of songs in transfer, unable to play only liked songs by certain artists, uploaded music locked in jail and unable to be mixed into playlists, etc...). I felt like I had to voice my complaint by canceling YouTube music, which I could only do by getting rid of YouTube premium as well. How else do you protest a product that got bundled onto something else you already used? Anyway, I would buy a cheaper premium tier if it didn't include useless YouTube music.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh no they remembered that us grandfathered in google music subscribers exist, so we're getting a $4/mo price increase

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

damn, i've been coasting on that for ages

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I use YouTube all the time and was legitimately thinking of subscribing to premium. Guess I'm sticking to ReVanced lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Worst thing to do if they're also trying to block adblockers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's weird that it costs so much when some streaming services are cheaper and they can afford to create content and youtube just pays its content creators a tiny bit of ad revenue.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Um, I've been paying $15.99. When was it $11?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

You've been paying the Apple Tax!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Did you buy it through the iOS app? Because they are 30% more.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Damn, even $11.99 sounds like a lot - I only pay 12.99€ for a family plan in Europe.

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