YouTube Ugh. YouTube is Raising the Price of All Premium Plans in the US???

[Fudge Brownie]

I was just reading about this. ANOTHER price hike.

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For the first time in three years, YouTube is hiking the subscription prices for its YouTube Premium plans, the streaming giant said Friday.

The core YouTube Premium plan will rise by $2 per month to $15.99, with the Music and Premium Lite plans rising by $1 per month to $11.99 and $8.99 respectively. The family plan is rising by $4 per month to $26.99, but allows for up to six people in the same household to have access.

YouTube Premium gives its subscribers a number of features, but the core elements are ad-free videos, background play (so users can listen to a video podcast or music video, for example), and offline downloads. It also gives access to other features.

 

[shattered world]

$2 here, $2 there…
Man and people wonder where their money goes.

 

[RiskyStuff]

Well, this looks lowkey sad!

I use f-droid apps like Kreate and YouTube Music for desktop - GUI from GitHub.

But still, the library fell apart after a week of listening to music.

I need real collection of 1000 CDs.

To watch clips I use this

Invidious

Invidious is an open source alternative front-end to YouTube.

invidious.io

Figured it out last week.

$2 here, $2 there…
Man and people wonder where their money goes.

And of course $2 x 1000 for rent of unused physical space.

 

[Champagne]

For someone who uses YouTube daily, it may still be a good price. However, that still doesn't justify the price increase. Personally, if you use an ad blocker, you most likely wouldn't even need YouTube Premium. With their ridiculous price hikes, they will only drive more people to ad blockers instead of gaining revenue.

 

[roydan]

Their model is pretty unique. It's not like most platforms where they have a premium plan or a free ad-supported plan from day one.

YT started and remained ad supported for a long time, that offered a premium plan to improve UX.

Inflation hits everywhere, and advertisers spend more on Google Ads, and by design, push more of their display advertising toward Google-owned channels, like Discover and YT.

As a result, the average user is worth more to Google watching ads rather than paying for premium. They had to raise the prices because otherwise they can't justify having the 'premium' group worth less than free users.

 

[FrankImawn]

It came at the time more ads did on YT too.

Not a coincidence.