YouTube Is Raising Prices for Premium Subscribers
When it launched in 2007, it would have seemed ridiculous to suggest paying a monthly subscription for YouTube. But nearly two decades later, YouTube Premium is actually a good deal. With it, you get a virtually ad-free experience, with exclusive features and benefits like YouTube Music. Of course, these benefits are only worth it at the right price.
On Friday, YouTube began informing its subscribers that it would increase Premium prices for all account types. In the future, individual YouTube Premium plans will increase from $13.99 to $15.99 per month; annual plans will increase from $139.99 to $159.99 per year; family plans will increase from $22.99 to $26.99 per month; and student plans will increase from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. This only takes into account YouTube’s own pricing. If you subscribe to Premium through the YouTube app on iOS, YouTube charges extra to make up for Apple’s 30% cut. That’s why this Redditor’s individual plan will cost $20.99 per month. For its part, YouTube informs the user that they can register directly via YouTube at the new price of $15.99 per month.
Interestingly, YouTube has not made an official announcement regarding the press increase. Instead, this change spread entirely by word of mouth, with users sharing their company emails in frustration. Users are already on edge this week, accusing the company of rolling out non-skippable 90-second ad breaks. YouTube is adamant that there are no non-skippable ad breaks for that long and says the examples in the wild are actually bugs. But whether that’s the case or not, the situation doesn’t really sell the company’s price increase announcement.
At this point, users are not happy with this news. Scrolling through Reddit threads, I see only frustration and dissatisfaction, with many threatening to cancel or confirming that they’ve ended their subscription right then and there. One user called YouTube “greedy [bastards]”, while others extol the virtues of ad blockers, which defeats one of the main benefits of subscription. So, in recent years, Google has launched a war against ad blockers, making it much more difficult to use them with YouTube.
What do you think of it so far?
$15.99 isn’t the most expensive streaming subscription on the market, and YouTube Premium still offers the same benefits as before. But I’m not convinced YouTube can continue to extort more and more money from its subscribers before it starts seeing an exodus of subscribers.
