YouTube Premium just went up to $15.99 / mo (US)

al_borland

It looks like the yearly plan went up $20 as well. Of course, the yearly plan doesn’t auto-renew for whatever reason, so at least people can’t forget and unknowingly get a higher charge. I’ll have to debate between now and October when my Premium service runs out if I want to renew. I tried to go without it last time and made it all of 18 hours before giving in and signing back up. I’m still rather frustrated that YouTube Music is bundled. I pay for Apple Music and hate YouTube Music a lot. The Lite membership feels like a non-starter, because it not only cuts access to YouTube Music (which is fine), it doesn’t serve up music related content on YouTube ad free. It seems like a flip of a coin whether or not a music related video is categorized as “music” or not. I often watch these videos sitting in the living room, as I would any other video, and it’s not a replacement for a music service or used in the same way at all. With the influx of AI content across the internet as a whole, I’ve found myself reading more. Maybe this trend will continue and I can simply discontinue use of YouTube.

itopaloglu83

It’s a form of ransom at this point. Pay it or watch 90 seconds unskippable ads.

russelg

Cancelled my YT Premium and just installed SmartTube on my TV instead. My previous blocker was that there was no (easy) way to bypass ads when I was using an AppleTV, so I just started using the Android side of my TV.

steve-atx-7600

Pro-tip use the brave browser and you won’t see ads. Straight out of the box on any platform I’ve ever used it on (Mac, iOS). $0.

wpm

Not trying to gloat but damn am I glad I'm grandfathered in at the old "Google Play Music" $8/mo price. Even so, if and when Google decides to not honor that contract anymore, I'd still happily pay for YT Premium.