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I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very hap

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

michaelcampbell 4y ago
> grandfathered price doesn't change ... and you get cost of living salary increases at the same time, right? Sadly a market oriented economy just doesn't work this way.
bredren 4y ago
I am part of a “YouTube family” that shares the premium family plan. We collect payment every six months. Makes the price low enough to beat the hassle of various ad blocking methods across many platforms and devices.
mkaic 4y ago
Agreed. I am a massive fan of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. While I am a bit nervous because major change like this could lead to those products getting worse, I'm also hopeful that it could lead to them getting better! So in general I'm just eager to see what happens next, come what may.
- jossclimb 4y ago
  can you sell it to a current spotify user?
  - buggy6257 4y ago
    When I first compared Spotify/YT Premium (Google Music at the time): - Relatively similar offerings of music, at least when it came to my tastes. I have a wide variety and some weird stuff in there, but both worked for me to find whatever I thought of. - Relatively similar price ($10 Spotify vs $12 YT), so I knew I needed at least some extra value from YT to justify - YT Premium not only gives me YT Music, but also HASSLE FREE ad-free YT. What I mean is -- I don't have to manage extensions for web youtube and apps for Android or iOS or using NextDNS or a pihole or something just to get "ad free" from YT. It just works. Not having ads, and not having to CARE is a big value add for me. This alone is well worth $2 a month just in the time it saves me dealing with it. - YT Premium USED to be Google Music, which I loved the UI of way more than Spotify. I am still VERY upset at YT Music since it's objectively worse than Google Music in every way, but it's still the same goddamn company - AT THE TIME, I was having serious issues getting Spotify to play music from cache. Even if I cached, it would still default to streaming it as long as I had data. This resulted in huge data usage each month. I am SURE this is fixed by now. But this went into the calculus for me at the time. Would I move over to Spotify? I think the things that would push me back would be an increase in YT price, a further degradation in YT Music UX, some new killer feature Spotify has/gets (podcasts aren't my thing) This was a VERY long answer which can TLDR to "Having ad-free YouTube + Music all at once for $2 more was well worth not having to give a crap about all the infrastructure needed to block ads across all my devices forever."
  - gourabmi 4y ago
    Spotify's catalog for Indian languages is smaller than Youtube. Not only is YT Music's collection larger, the recommendation system works better for Indian languages too. I have been that the autoplay follows the mood/ type of the song better than Spotify.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    I pay for youtube premium for ad-free youtube and to support creators automatically. Youtube music is not great, but its "free" to me.
    - josteink 4y ago
      That’s literally it. It’s probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music, but if you’re going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and are able to endure the weird UI… Then it might save you a small monthly fee you’d otherwise pay to competing services. It’d never survive in the market as it’s own service, and it’s clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google Music. I have no idea who decided this thing was a good idea.
      - myko 4y ago
        Google Music was the best of the bunch and I am sad that it is gone. Google internal power struggles strike again.
        adra 4y ago
        If you can self host, I finally found that koel did a relatively decent job covering my old gmusic patterns.
      - taberiand 4y ago
        I must have extremely unsophisticated music needs, I've never had any complaints using the interface or finding any music that I want. I remember Google Music being pretty good, but YouTube Music seems good enough
        what_ever 4y ago
        Same. I am always a little surprised to read these comments. Moved from Spotify to Google Play Music to YouTube Music and never really had many issues...
      - Keyframe 4y ago
  - machiaweliczny 4y ago
    I like recommendation engine better. Also up to 5 people in family plan.
    - pitaj 4y ago
      5 additional people, so 6 total
  - ZeroCool2u 4y ago
    One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is the recommendation engine is much better in YT Music than Spotify IMHO. I've found a surprisingly large number of new artists that I enjoy and it's solely due to YTM's recommendation engine. Really obscure stuff that I just wouldn't have found otherwise.
  - szopa 4y ago
    YouTube's music library feels richer than Spotify. A few years ago I was contemplating a switch from YT Music to Spotify (I like Spotify's UX), but a lot of stuff I enjoy listening to was missing. But I might just have a weird taste in music.
    - Workaccount2 4y ago
      I use both, spotify for my main listening and yt music for mixes, live shows, and lots of content that plainly isn't on spotify. Yt music also supports tapping the side of the screen to jump forwards or backwards in 10 second increments. Seems like a trivial feature, but holy shit I have needed it my entire life. The ability to both rapidly and finely adjust the time is huge when listing to things like live shows that are a 2 hour video. Crazy but I don't think I have ever had a program or hardware player that could do both. Always either fast forward/rewind or trying to finely slide a slider.
  - throwuxiytayq 4y ago
    Works like shit. No support for basic features such as crossfade. Recommendations are repetitive, uninsightful and low-quality. No desktop app, and the web app is as bug-complete as any other alphabet property. Enjoy losing access to your playlist and album collection when your google account gets randomly banned. Not a spotify fan either, but there's practically no upside to switching.
  - notatoad 4y ago
    the sales pitch is that for $15 instead of $10, you get ad-free youtube as well as everything spotify gives you. but the reality is that you're losing spotify radio and recommendations, and replacing it with youtube music's radio stations and recommendations. and for me, i found that spotify introduces me to a lot of new and interesting music that i wouldn't otherwise find, and youtube picks a dozen songs every month it wants to play, and regardless of what station i choose it plays those same songs. for me, i'm currently paying for both because i like youtube premium, but the music offering doesn't replace spotify.
  - _ugfj 4y ago
    I guess most people forgot fast that Spotify platformed a major antivaxxer? I cancelled them immediately and can't even imagine subscribing to them any time. It was just a year ago...
    - Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
      lmao
      - chx 4y ago
        Yeah a few million dead is very funny
- Steltek 4y ago
  YT Premium, definitely yes. However, YT Music is hot garbage. The UI is utter crap and the mixing of video and music is awful, especially playlists. Why the hell would I want my regular YT and music playlists mixed up together anyway? It gets worse with kids, as some video-songs (randomly!) trigger the inability to play in the background.
  - pitaj 4y ago
    If you haven't already: Disable Settings > Recommendations > Show your liked music from Youtube Enable Settings > Data saving > Don't play music videos
    - Steltek 4y ago
      That first one only appears in YT music. My regular YouTube still has my music playlists. Thanks though. Maybe some day they'll put in some effort.
  - lwkl 4y ago
    I liked Google Play Music when it first came out. But development was basically stopped and they replaced it with the crappy YT Music App. Unless they majorly change YouTube music I'll stay with Spotify.
    - adra 4y ago
      Dev wasn't just stopped. The whole product was sunset and if you wanted to keep a semblance of what you had, you were forced to migrate to YouTube music. I saw the end of that crap rainbow and finally moved over to koel which has done just as much as I ever cared to use in Google music, but now I don't fear Google getting bored and killing the product in some future.
  - spopejoy 4y ago
    One big upside of having access to video in your music collection is all the independently-uploaded songs and song versions that have not officially found their way to streaming. If your tastes are more eclectic this can be a really big thing actually -- the music streaming services are largely similar in what they do and don't have, which leaves out a LOT of stuff, and finally things vanish off of streaming all the time. Individually-uploaded youtube music-in-a-video on the other hand is astonishingly durable. Totally agree about the UI though, and they also suck on royalty payouts -- only Spotify is worse.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I agree, my wife and I use the YouTube Premium family plan - I don't want them to mess with it. I think it is the best deal of any monthly subscription with the possible exception of Apple+ family plan (I use Fitness+, Arcade, iCloud storage - so it is also a pretty good deal).
- moffkalast 4y ago
  This is Google we're talking about, they'll randomly decide to retire Youtube completely out of the blue one day.
  - forevergreenyon 4y ago
    this wouldn't be as funny if it weren't somewhat plausible... :/
paulpauper 4y ago
The tendency is for prices to go up and for services to get worse or more restricted. Usually, a service initially runs at a loss or some sub-optimum during a trial or rollout phase, and then after critical mass, it is degraded or costs are raised to some new optimum that maximizes profit at the cost of losing some users.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Same, huge youtube premium fanboy. YouTube has pretty much replaced Netflix and all the other streaming platforms for me, the content it has is more varied and interesting than yet another generic new IP play. Although it doesn't have classic time-tested movies, so that still requires a subscription somewhere.
- joegahona 4y ago
  Agreed re: movies, though some have been cropping up there recently, and in really good resolution too. I watched "Glengary Glen Ross" for the first time in my life last weekend on Youtube.
- gardenhedge 4y ago
  It also doesn't have TV shows like Game of Thrones, House, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc etc
  - ThaDood 4y ago
    It did, but it wasn't a huge success. Cobra Kai was actually a YT OG, it was a gem among a lot of duds.
    - voltaireodactyl 4y ago
      Ryan Hanson Solves Crimes on Television* was also an unappreciated stone-cold masterpiece. (The * was because it was on YouTube, not TV)
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Premium moved me from being a consumer of a content made by big companies (including movies, and most of the shows) towards more independent content creators. I couldn't be more happy about it.
  - medion 4y ago
    How do YouTube creators get paid from premium subscribers, is it fractions of a cent per minute watched or something?
orangejuice101 4y ago
If you are on the family plan, they announced in October the price will increase for the US to $22.99 starting in April
toomim 4y ago
What is your grandfathered price?
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Mine is $10.73
- sphars 4y ago
  If they're like me, I signed up for Google Play Music in the beta back in 2013 and am locked in at $7.99 USD, with full YT/YTM Premium. It's the major reason why I'm still subscribed.
chris222 4y ago
Same! Please do not change it!
makestuff 4y ago
I subscribed to YT premium when it was bundled with YT music. I hate that there is not a plan in the US that allows me to just get ad free YT videos. I do not use YT music and don't care to. I hope whoever takes it over creates an ad free plan that doesn't bundle music into it. I hate that all of these tech companies are taking the cable route they all rallied agains and bundling everything.
- pie_flavor 4y ago
  I don't have Premium, but I do have Music; it's an excellent service for obscure stuff, because everything ends up on YT.
wintermutestwin 4y ago
I'd happily pay for an ad-free Youtube if they weren't double dipping by stealing my data. When do consumers get a choice for stalker free content?
schoolornot 4y ago
Why shouldn't your grandfathered price change? I know it's nice and all but do you not think Google has rising costs?
addaon 4y ago
The ads haven’t stayed gone, though. I would pay a substantial premium for an option to filter promotions out of videos. I would even pay to just never get promoted videos in my steam. The option to pay for no ads doesn’t exist, today, although it would be easy to ad. Instead, you get to pay to remove one advertiser, and not all the others.
- VikingCoder 4y ago
  What? I don't see any ads unless they're embedded in the video by the creator...?
  - munk-a 4y ago
    Those are still ads and there are solutions to filter them out that Youtube could be more proactive about surfacing to premium users.
    - VikingCoder 4y ago
      I think you're being ridiculous. Like, would you want YouTube to skip over this entire scene in the Wayne's World movie? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs Should it not let me see a product review if it was sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control? Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else would tell you that you drew it wrong.
      - addaon 4y ago
        I think you're being unnecessarily adversarial here. Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start and end. They even show them on the timeline, although they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most replayed"… presumedly because of everyone skipping the ad, losing their place, and then having to step back to try to find where the content begins again. Here's how this could work. I would pay an additional $10/month for YouTube Scarlet. Content creators would have three options -- declare that their videos have no sources of revenue outside of YouTube revenue; provide start and end time stamps for any external-revenue-generating segments; or do nothing. For my $10/month, videos in the second category would skip their promotion. In exchange, some portion of my $10/month would go to the video creator, just like ad/Premium revenue does today, and the metrics on number of videos where this segment was skipped would be made available in analytics for sharing with sponsors. Finally, I'd have access to a user preference to suppress videos in the third category for appearing in recommendations, ever. Does this deal with every case? No. Would it make YouTube more pleasant for me and potentially others who share my values, without impacting current regular and Premium users, and with a neutral or positive impact on content creators? I assert yes.
dayvid 4y ago
Enjoy the recent added queue feature as well. There's a few products add they could make to keep it a killer product.
binkHN 4y ago
I too am a fan of YouTube Premium, but the sponsored ads in videos are starting to devalue it. Some creators, especially those with longer videos, have sponsored ads that pop up every 10 minute; they are rather annoying, especially when you're specifically paying not see ads.
- gameshot911 4y ago
  I started using the Sponserblock[1] chrome plugin, and it's been great. It automatically skips over all promotion segments, while giving you an easy option to still watch them ad-hoc if you prefer. [1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...
Devasta 4y ago
Youtube Vanced does a good job at blocking most ads, and the latest version has a feature that attempts to skip sponsored sections on videos. Well worth trying out.
- taberiand 4y ago
  I think it's important where possible for people to pay for the premium version, while it provides ad free value for money, though I don't begrudge people blocking ads in other ways if they truly can't afford it. But I think it's short sighted and selfish to not pay for something like YouTube that you use and get value out of every day, when you can afford it. Either pay for it and support it or don't use it at all.
  - eipi10_hn 4y ago
    First, YouTube doesn't even offer Premium in my country. Second, the features of YouTube revanced apps also just simply surpasses official app for me anyway: - My phone has 1440p HDR display and YouTube official app just doesn't show me above 720p60 for 60fps videos while in the past it could. And it put me in an awkward situation: for under 60fps and for HDR 60fps videos, it can show up to 2160p and 2160p HDR 60 fps like normal. The only videos that cannot go over 720p60 fps are the normal 60fps ones. I don't know what the actual bug they are introducing there. YouTube revanced extended works flawflessly. - I can hide the sections I don't like (news, shorts, suggestions for me, mix playlists, the ending overlay at the end of videos... and many other things). - I can swipe on the screen for brightness and volume. - I can add the copy buttons that copy the video link AND the timestamp quickly, really convenient for me. - And many more that I'm lazy to type on phone. Those small features (except the first one) look like something I would laugh at but one by one they surprisingly enhance my experience with YouTube app a lot.
    - aceazzameen 4y ago
      You bring up a good point, that out of all the video players that exist on mobile devices, YouTube's is pretty weak. Maybe it's part of Google's philosophy to keep their UX simple and dumb for the widest possible audience. And everyone else has to deal with it.
GNOMES 4y ago
We are also on a grandfathered in family plan. Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$ family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when YTM rolled out. While unlikely, I have been hoping for some sort of "we changed our mind" PR statement from Google on this before we switch to a family Spotify come April. The price hike doesn't hurt on our monthly finances, but considering the 12 month cost vs features compared to Spotify... it does hurt. Why pay more for less. Like others are saying, the no ads Youtube is fantastic. We do use adblockers on all of our devices, but it's hard to do on Google Homes, casting to Chromecasts, and Youtube Kids. I am prepared to go Firefox + Ublock/Brave on my Android phone if I do go Spotify though....
- Urgo 4y ago
  > Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$ family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when YTM rolled out. I'm currently still on the original $7.99 plan. Any tips on how to do the upgrade to the family plan for $14? I've wanted to do that for a while but not give up my grandfathered price. The price they show me for the family plan is $22.99.
ericsoderstrom 4y ago
Looks like youtube premium just gives you no ads and allows for video downloads. Which you already can get using ublock and youtube-dl if you're watching from a computer. People who are big fans of youtube premium is it because you're using youtube mostly on mobile device, or is there some other advantage here I'm missing?
- orange_joe 4y ago
  Having the YouTube on the TV without ads is my personal favorite feature.
- delecti 4y ago
  It gives me no ads on mobile (both OSs), PC browser (without worrying about pre-roll or banner ads sneaking through a filter that breaks), Chromecast (without dealing with a pi-hole), and the knowledge that my spouse isn't having to deal with ads either (she wouldn't mind enough otherwise to deal with extensions), plus downloads on all those platforms, and background play without using an unofficial app. And it does that all while giving a bigger cut of money to people who make the videos than they would get even if I watched the ads.
- joegahona 4y ago
  Downloads and no ads on my mobile device (so I can listen while running) and on Roku on my TV. It also allows you to play videos with the phone screen off, which I don't think the free plan does.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    A collage of corporate platforms that together limit what you can do to extract more value from you. Beautiful. (I.e., you can't use uBlock Origin or youtube-dl on mobile devices and TVs easily, and that's the way they want it.)
wdroz 4y ago
They should ditch Youtube Original to cut cost and avoiding raises for a while.
93po 4y ago
Worth noting you can VPN to other countries and get super cheap rates ($2 month). You don't have to stay on the VPN to retain the rate.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Do you need payment from there or can use any card?
  - 93po 4y ago
    I used privacy.com which allows any zip/billing address. Not sure if it was needed
baby 4y ago
The price just increased, and it was already insane compared to any streaming services (e.g. Netflix)
usr1106 4y ago
I never click any ads, including the ad for Premium. So I still don't know how much it costs. Well, I can often go weeks without even opening Youtube so I guess the price would be unreasonably high for my usage. Or if I paid the viewing experience would be so much better, that I'd waste too much precious time on Youtube.

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

michaelcampbell 4y ago

> grandfathered price doesn't change ... and you get cost of living salary increases at the same time, right? Sadly a market oriented economy just doesn't work this way.

bredren 4y ago

I am part of a “YouTube family” that shares the premium family plan. We collect payment every six months. Makes the price low enough to beat the hassle of various ad blocking methods across many platforms and devices.

mkaic 4y ago

Agreed. I am a massive fan of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. While I am a bit nervous because major change like this could lead to those products getting worse, I'm also hopeful that it could lead to them getting better! So in general I'm just eager to see what happens next, come what may.

jossclimb 4y ago
can you sell it to a current spotify user?
- buggy6257 4y ago
  When I first compared Spotify/YT Premium (Google Music at the time): - Relatively similar offerings of music, at least when it came to my tastes. I have a wide variety and some weird stuff in there, but both worked for me to find whatever I thought of. - Relatively similar price ($10 Spotify vs $12 YT), so I knew I needed at least some extra value from YT to justify - YT Premium not only gives me YT Music, but also HASSLE FREE ad-free YT. What I mean is -- I don't have to manage extensions for web youtube and apps for Android or iOS or using NextDNS or a pihole or something just to get "ad free" from YT. It just works. Not having ads, and not having to CARE is a big value add for me. This alone is well worth $2 a month just in the time it saves me dealing with it. - YT Premium USED to be Google Music, which I loved the UI of way more than Spotify. I am still VERY upset at YT Music since it's objectively worse than Google Music in every way, but it's still the same goddamn company - AT THE TIME, I was having serious issues getting Spotify to play music from cache. Even if I cached, it would still default to streaming it as long as I had data. This resulted in huge data usage each month. I am SURE this is fixed by now. But this went into the calculus for me at the time. Would I move over to Spotify? I think the things that would push me back would be an increase in YT price, a further degradation in YT Music UX, some new killer feature Spotify has/gets (podcasts aren't my thing) This was a VERY long answer which can TLDR to "Having ad-free YouTube + Music all at once for $2 more was well worth not having to give a crap about all the infrastructure needed to block ads across all my devices forever."
- gourabmi 4y ago
  Spotify's catalog for Indian languages is smaller than Youtube. Not only is YT Music's collection larger, the recommendation system works better for Indian languages too. I have been that the autoplay follows the mood/ type of the song better than Spotify.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  I pay for youtube premium for ad-free youtube and to support creators automatically. Youtube music is not great, but its "free" to me.
  - josteink 4y ago
    That’s literally it. It’s probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music, but if you’re going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and are able to endure the weird UI… Then it might save you a small monthly fee you’d otherwise pay to competing services. It’d never survive in the market as it’s own service, and it’s clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google Music. I have no idea who decided this thing was a good idea.
    - myko 4y ago
      Google Music was the best of the bunch and I am sad that it is gone. Google internal power struggles strike again.
      - adra 4y ago
        If you can self host, I finally found that koel did a relatively decent job covering my old gmusic patterns.
    - taberiand 4y ago
      I must have extremely unsophisticated music needs, I've never had any complaints using the interface or finding any music that I want. I remember Google Music being pretty good, but YouTube Music seems good enough
      - what_ever 4y ago
        Same. I am always a little surprised to read these comments. Moved from Spotify to Google Play Music to YouTube Music and never really had many issues...
    - Keyframe 4y ago
- machiaweliczny 4y ago
  I like recommendation engine better. Also up to 5 people in family plan.
  - pitaj 4y ago
    5 additional people, so 6 total
- ZeroCool2u 4y ago
  One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is the recommendation engine is much better in YT Music than Spotify IMHO. I've found a surprisingly large number of new artists that I enjoy and it's solely due to YTM's recommendation engine. Really obscure stuff that I just wouldn't have found otherwise.
- szopa 4y ago
  YouTube's music library feels richer than Spotify. A few years ago I was contemplating a switch from YT Music to Spotify (I like Spotify's UX), but a lot of stuff I enjoy listening to was missing. But I might just have a weird taste in music.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    I use both, spotify for my main listening and yt music for mixes, live shows, and lots of content that plainly isn't on spotify. Yt music also supports tapping the side of the screen to jump forwards or backwards in 10 second increments. Seems like a trivial feature, but holy shit I have needed it my entire life. The ability to both rapidly and finely adjust the time is huge when listing to things like live shows that are a 2 hour video. Crazy but I don't think I have ever had a program or hardware player that could do both. Always either fast forward/rewind or trying to finely slide a slider.
- throwuxiytayq 4y ago
  Works like shit. No support for basic features such as crossfade. Recommendations are repetitive, uninsightful and low-quality. No desktop app, and the web app is as bug-complete as any other alphabet property. Enjoy losing access to your playlist and album collection when your google account gets randomly banned. Not a spotify fan either, but there's practically no upside to switching.
- notatoad 4y ago
  the sales pitch is that for $15 instead of $10, you get ad-free youtube as well as everything spotify gives you. but the reality is that you're losing spotify radio and recommendations, and replacing it with youtube music's radio stations and recommendations. and for me, i found that spotify introduces me to a lot of new and interesting music that i wouldn't otherwise find, and youtube picks a dozen songs every month it wants to play, and regardless of what station i choose it plays those same songs. for me, i'm currently paying for both because i like youtube premium, but the music offering doesn't replace spotify.
- _ugfj 4y ago
  I guess most people forgot fast that Spotify platformed a major antivaxxer? I cancelled them immediately and can't even imagine subscribing to them any time. It was just a year ago...
  - Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
    lmao
    - chx 4y ago
      Yeah a few million dead is very funny
Steltek 4y ago
YT Premium, definitely yes. However, YT Music is hot garbage. The UI is utter crap and the mixing of video and music is awful, especially playlists. Why the hell would I want my regular YT and music playlists mixed up together anyway? It gets worse with kids, as some video-songs (randomly!) trigger the inability to play in the background.
- pitaj 4y ago
  If you haven't already: Disable Settings > Recommendations > Show your liked music from Youtube Enable Settings > Data saving > Don't play music videos
  - Steltek 4y ago
    That first one only appears in YT music. My regular YouTube still has my music playlists. Thanks though. Maybe some day they'll put in some effort.
- lwkl 4y ago
  I liked Google Play Music when it first came out. But development was basically stopped and they replaced it with the crappy YT Music App. Unless they majorly change YouTube music I'll stay with Spotify.
  - adra 4y ago
    Dev wasn't just stopped. The whole product was sunset and if you wanted to keep a semblance of what you had, you were forced to migrate to YouTube music. I saw the end of that crap rainbow and finally moved over to koel which has done just as much as I ever cared to use in Google music, but now I don't fear Google getting bored and killing the product in some future.
- spopejoy 4y ago
  One big upside of having access to video in your music collection is all the independently-uploaded songs and song versions that have not officially found their way to streaming. If your tastes are more eclectic this can be a really big thing actually -- the music streaming services are largely similar in what they do and don't have, which leaves out a LOT of stuff, and finally things vanish off of streaming all the time. Individually-uploaded youtube music-in-a-video on the other hand is astonishingly durable. Totally agree about the UI though, and they also suck on royalty payouts -- only Spotify is worse.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I agree, my wife and I use the YouTube Premium family plan - I don't want them to mess with it. I think it is the best deal of any monthly subscription with the possible exception of Apple+ family plan (I use Fitness+, Arcade, iCloud storage - so it is also a pretty good deal).

moffkalast 4y ago
This is Google we're talking about, they'll randomly decide to retire Youtube completely out of the blue one day.
- forevergreenyon 4y ago
  this wouldn't be as funny if it weren't somewhat plausible... :/

paulpauper 4y ago

The tendency is for prices to go up and for services to get worse or more restricted. Usually, a service initially runs at a loss or some sub-optimum during a trial or rollout phase, and then after critical mass, it is degraded or costs are raised to some new optimum that maximizes profit at the cost of losing some users.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

Same, huge youtube premium fanboy. YouTube has pretty much replaced Netflix and all the other streaming platforms for me, the content it has is more varied and interesting than yet another generic new IP play. Although it doesn't have classic time-tested movies, so that still requires a subscription somewhere.

joegahona 4y ago
Agreed re: movies, though some have been cropping up there recently, and in really good resolution too. I watched "Glengary Glen Ross" for the first time in my life last weekend on Youtube.
gardenhedge 4y ago
It also doesn't have TV shows like Game of Thrones, House, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc etc
- ThaDood 4y ago
  It did, but it wasn't a huge success. Cobra Kai was actually a YT OG, it was a gem among a lot of duds.
  - voltaireodactyl 4y ago
    Ryan Hanson Solves Crimes on Television* was also an unappreciated stone-cold masterpiece. (The * was because it was on YouTube, not TV)
justapassenger 4y ago
Premium moved me from being a consumer of a content made by big companies (including movies, and most of the shows) towards more independent content creators. I couldn't be more happy about it.
- medion 4y ago
  How do YouTube creators get paid from premium subscribers, is it fractions of a cent per minute watched or something?

orangejuice101 4y ago

If you are on the family plan, they announced in October the price will increase for the US to $22.99 starting in April

toomim 4y ago

What is your grandfathered price?

nickthegreek 4y ago
Mine is $10.73
sphars 4y ago
If they're like me, I signed up for Google Play Music in the beta back in 2013 and am locked in at $7.99 USD, with full YT/YTM Premium. It's the major reason why I'm still subscribed.

chris222 4y ago

Same! Please do not change it!

makestuff 4y ago

I subscribed to YT premium when it was bundled with YT music. I hate that there is not a plan in the US that allows me to just get ad free YT videos. I do not use YT music and don't care to. I hope whoever takes it over creates an ad free plan that doesn't bundle music into it. I hate that all of these tech companies are taking the cable route they all rallied agains and bundling everything.

pie_flavor 4y ago
I don't have Premium, but I do have Music; it's an excellent service for obscure stuff, because everything ends up on YT.

wintermutestwin 4y ago

I'd happily pay for an ad-free Youtube if they weren't double dipping by stealing my data. When do consumers get a choice for stalker free content?

schoolornot 4y ago

Why shouldn't your grandfathered price change? I know it's nice and all but do you not think Google has rising costs?

addaon 4y ago

The ads haven’t stayed gone, though. I would pay a substantial premium for an option to filter promotions out of videos. I would even pay to just never get promoted videos in my steam. The option to pay for no ads doesn’t exist, today, although it would be easy to ad. Instead, you get to pay to remove one advertiser, and not all the others.

VikingCoder 4y ago
What? I don't see any ads unless they're embedded in the video by the creator...?
- munk-a 4y ago
  Those are still ads and there are solutions to filter them out that Youtube could be more proactive about surfacing to premium users.
  - VikingCoder 4y ago
    I think you're being ridiculous. Like, would you want YouTube to skip over this entire scene in the Wayne's World movie? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs Should it not let me see a product review if it was sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control? Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else would tell you that you drew it wrong.
    - addaon 4y ago
      I think you're being unnecessarily adversarial here. Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start and end. They even show them on the timeline, although they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most replayed"… presumedly because of everyone skipping the ad, losing their place, and then having to step back to try to find where the content begins again. Here's how this could work. I would pay an additional $10/month for YouTube Scarlet. Content creators would have three options -- declare that their videos have no sources of revenue outside of YouTube revenue; provide start and end time stamps for any external-revenue-generating segments; or do nothing. For my $10/month, videos in the second category would skip their promotion. In exchange, some portion of my $10/month would go to the video creator, just like ad/Premium revenue does today, and the metrics on number of videos where this segment was skipped would be made available in analytics for sharing with sponsors. Finally, I'd have access to a user preference to suppress videos in the third category for appearing in recommendations, ever. Does this deal with every case? No. Would it make YouTube more pleasant for me and potentially others who share my values, without impacting current regular and Premium users, and with a neutral or positive impact on content creators? I assert yes.

dayvid 4y ago

Enjoy the recent added queue feature as well. There's a few products add they could make to keep it a killer product.

binkHN 4y ago

I too am a fan of YouTube Premium, but the sponsored ads in videos are starting to devalue it. Some creators, especially those with longer videos, have sponsored ads that pop up every 10 minute; they are rather annoying, especially when you're specifically paying not see ads.

gameshot911 4y ago
I started using the Sponserblock[1] chrome plugin, and it's been great. It automatically skips over all promotion segments, while giving you an easy option to still watch them ad-hoc if you prefer. [1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...

Devasta 4y ago

Youtube Vanced does a good job at blocking most ads, and the latest version has a feature that attempts to skip sponsored sections on videos. Well worth trying out.

taberiand 4y ago
I think it's important where possible for people to pay for the premium version, while it provides ad free value for money, though I don't begrudge people blocking ads in other ways if they truly can't afford it. But I think it's short sighted and selfish to not pay for something like YouTube that you use and get value out of every day, when you can afford it. Either pay for it and support it or don't use it at all.
- eipi10_hn 4y ago
  First, YouTube doesn't even offer Premium in my country. Second, the features of YouTube revanced apps also just simply surpasses official app for me anyway: - My phone has 1440p HDR display and YouTube official app just doesn't show me above 720p60 for 60fps videos while in the past it could. And it put me in an awkward situation: for under 60fps and for HDR 60fps videos, it can show up to 2160p and 2160p HDR 60 fps like normal. The only videos that cannot go over 720p60 fps are the normal 60fps ones. I don't know what the actual bug they are introducing there. YouTube revanced extended works flawflessly. - I can hide the sections I don't like (news, shorts, suggestions for me, mix playlists, the ending overlay at the end of videos... and many other things). - I can swipe on the screen for brightness and volume. - I can add the copy buttons that copy the video link AND the timestamp quickly, really convenient for me. - And many more that I'm lazy to type on phone. Those small features (except the first one) look like something I would laugh at but one by one they surprisingly enhance my experience with YouTube app a lot.
  - aceazzameen 4y ago
    You bring up a good point, that out of all the video players that exist on mobile devices, YouTube's is pretty weak. Maybe it's part of Google's philosophy to keep their UX simple and dumb for the widest possible audience. And everyone else has to deal with it.

GNOMES 4y ago

We are also on a grandfathered in family plan. Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$ family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when YTM rolled out. While unlikely, I have been hoping for some sort of "we changed our mind" PR statement from Google on this before we switch to a family Spotify come April. The price hike doesn't hurt on our monthly finances, but considering the 12 month cost vs features compared to Spotify... it does hurt. Why pay more for less. Like others are saying, the no ads Youtube is fantastic. We do use adblockers on all of our devices, but it's hard to do on Google Homes, casting to Chromecasts, and Youtube Kids. I am prepared to go Firefox + Ublock/Brave on my Android phone if I do go Spotify though....

Urgo 4y ago
> Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$ family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when YTM rolled out. I'm currently still on the original $7.99 plan. Any tips on how to do the upgrade to the family plan for $14? I've wanted to do that for a while but not give up my grandfathered price. The price they show me for the family plan is $22.99.

ericsoderstrom 4y ago

Looks like youtube premium just gives you no ads and allows for video downloads. Which you already can get using ublock and youtube-dl if you're watching from a computer. People who are big fans of youtube premium is it because you're using youtube mostly on mobile device, or is there some other advantage here I'm missing?

orange_joe 4y ago
Having the YouTube on the TV without ads is my personal favorite feature.
delecti 4y ago
It gives me no ads on mobile (both OSs), PC browser (without worrying about pre-roll or banner ads sneaking through a filter that breaks), Chromecast (without dealing with a pi-hole), and the knowledge that my spouse isn't having to deal with ads either (she wouldn't mind enough otherwise to deal with extensions), plus downloads on all those platforms, and background play without using an unofficial app. And it does that all while giving a bigger cut of money to people who make the videos than they would get even if I watched the ads.
joegahona 4y ago
Downloads and no ads on my mobile device (so I can listen while running) and on Roku on my TV. It also allows you to play videos with the phone screen off, which I don't think the free plan does.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  A collage of corporate platforms that together limit what you can do to extract more value from you. Beautiful. (I.e., you can't use uBlock Origin or youtube-dl on mobile devices and TVs easily, and that's the way they want it.)

wdroz 4y ago

They should ditch Youtube Original to cut cost and avoiding raises for a while.

93po 4y ago

Worth noting you can VPN to other countries and get super cheap rates ($2 month). You don't have to stay on the VPN to retain the rate.

dzhiurgis 4y ago
Do you need payment from there or can use any card?
- 93po 4y ago
  I used privacy.com which allows any zip/billing address. Not sure if it was needed

baby 4y ago

The price just increased, and it was already insane compared to any streaming services (e.g. Netflix)

usr1106 4y ago

I never click any ads, including the ad for Premium. So I still don't know how much it costs. Well, I can often go weeks without even opening Youtube so I guess the price would be unreasonably high for my usage. Or if I paid the viewing experience would be so much better, that I'd waste too much precious time on Youtube.