Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month

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.
- 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.
  
  The month to month contracts for streaming content will go away soon.
- The early 2000s was before streaming was ever a thing. Netflix was still sending DVDs in the mail en masse.
  
  I just canceled the Netflix account I have had since 2002.
  They were great once...

"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?
- 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.
  
  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 🙂

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.
- What are you guys getting for that money? I honestly don't know. I just use either an ad blocker or the newpipe app.
  
  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.
  
  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
  
  Does your ad blocker block ads for YouTube and YouTube Music apps on iOS?
  
  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.

ReVanced, ReVanced Extended and uBlock Origin will always be free :)
- I'm unfamiliar but just read a bit. Are updates to the apk manual? Does the android app sync to a browser or desktop version?
  
  Yeah the updates are provided manually by people who build them, or if you do it yourself. What do you mean by sync?

Of course they are. Because literally everyone and everything is screwing all of us who aren't super rich.
- “We need to be inflation winners”
  Actual line from the C-level strategy meeting at my company.
  I’m fairly certain we’re not alone.
  Next; let’s talk about how recessions are made….

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  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.
- Watching YouTube on the TV without ads and at higher resolution
- I've yet to be made aware of any benefits at all. None of what you get from premium is either interesting or relevant.
  
  Depends on how much you pay for data. For my german mobile contract it is very nice to have content available offline. And the play in the background thing is very nice depending on the kind of video you wanna watch. I can see how those features aren't the new sliced bread but they have their use cases
- I got put into Youtube Premium when Google Play Music merged, so I think of it as equivalent to Spotify premium, but also: you can also upload your own music library, you get ads removed on Youtube videos, and offline play for both music and videos.
  It's decently worth it if you reference Spotify Premium's cost (and also I've been at 9.99USD/mo this whole time and not been hit with any price increases at all for some reason?)
  
  YouTube has almost every song already, blocking ads is stupidly easy, and creating and sharing playlists is simple too.
  Thats Spotify Premium already. For free.

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.
- 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)
  
  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.
- As with all monopolies/cartels/prohibitions unsatisfied demand always finds alternatives. If the rules get in the way people circumvent them. Youtube premium price increases will create a bigger demand for ad blocking. Just as the balkanisation of streaming services and reduced value will return many people to piracy. The people who run these organisations are idiots who destroy brands and shareholder value to get short term attention and bonuses.
  
  Youtubes changes are successful. Less people use ad blocker and more people are using yt premium.
  There's so many people who dont want to constantly keep looking for work around and having their sites break etc. Once one person in their family buys yt premium then it makes sense for them to get a family plan.
  My issue isn't with youtube running ads or charging for their service. My gripe is that they built their website as a free ad based service and out competed everything else based on that. Then they slowly ramped up ads and monetization once they had a monopoly and they won't stop squeezing.
  In my eyes the only ethical solution is a distributed competitor where users can pay for the service of streaming videos but can't be forced into a single vendor. For example if one peertube instance started charging to much then you could move to another.

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.
- 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.

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.
- Same. I used GPM, then when they added YouTube Premium, I used that too. When they killed GPM in favor of YTM, I dropped the entire service.
  
  Same here.
  
  Between GPM shutdown, Crunchyroll’s terrible forced UIX change, and Netflix doing a complete 180 on all of their pro-consumer stances, I decided to say fuck it to all of them and spin up my own home media server.

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

Oh no they remembered that us grandfathered in google music subscribers exist, so we're getting a $4/mo price increase
- damn, i've been coasting on that for ages

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

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.
- Probably because it helps a bit to offset their high losses for infrastructure (servers, bandwidth, storage, compute for compression, search, indexing and backups, electricity, networking, employee wages)
- To be fair YouTube pays them more for premium subscriber views.
- Yeah, I can't disagree honestly. The Disney+/Hulu/ESPN ad free bundle is like $20/month usd.

Damn, even $11.99 sounds like a lot - I only pay 12.99€ for a family plan in Europe.
- in the uk it used to be £18 now £20 .. that's about €23 or $25
  
  why is it so expensive here specifically?? christ, i'm so mad about inflation

Very thankful I was grandfathered in with my the original promo price for google play music.
- Existing subscribers will start to see the new pricing with their next billing cycle. An upcoming email will explain the changes. Those who were grandfathered in five years ago (with Google Play Music and/or YouTube Red) will get three additional months at their current rate.
  
  Wow that's a huge bummer.
  
  Yep, you are correct and it sucks.

Um, I've been paying $15.99. When was it $11?
- You've been paying the Apple Tax!
- Did you buy it through the iOS app? Because they are 30% more.

I wish they would offer an option without YT Music. I'm happy to pay for YouTube without adverts, but it annoys me that I'm paying for a music service that I don't use and I reckon they only bundle it in to fluff the subscriber numbers for the service.
- I really doubt music is a serious expense, it's basically just a shallow reskin of the main app. It's like complaining YouTube Kids is bundled with premium.
- Yeah they keep changing the structure of the plan. Music used to be a separate package I think? That was years ago.
  I wouldn't call it fluff though :P I (initially) got it specifically for the music, and that's what gets the most use from my family :) I guess that doesn't make it any less fluff for you though. I agree that it should be a separate package.
  
  I have music or whatever it's called now because I music and red together where the same price as just red. I still have it because I use YouTube more than streaming services like Netflix and don't mind supporting creators I'm watching. I use some of the features of premium on the app on my phone and fire stick too which could be worked around but would be a hassle.
  For a vast majority of people who mainly view YouTube as a free service I highly doubt they'd be willing to pay $7 a month let alone $14. A large portion of their viewer base is kids and they aren't going to pay. Maybe if they add stickers or whatever TikTok is going nuts over as part of the monthly sub.

I was paying for it at a legacy price still but that gets wiped out with this I guess. Canceled.

Between rising prices and music disappearing from various services I canceled all my music streaming services and use Plexamp. Rip your own music and stream for free, all you need is a computer that stays on at home

I just checked my subscriptions and my YouTube Premium is still grandfathered in at $9.99/mo from my Google Play Music subscription that included Google Red.
Myself and family listen to music all the time, and YouTube without ads has paid for itself with dev tutorials, DIY videos and other educational stuff; I can't run aBO on my TV. As soon as they find a way to kick me off my current rate, I'll bail, but until then I can't find a cheaper fit for my needs.
- Hate to break it to you, but grandfathered accounts are all getting hit with the price increase emails now as well. I just got mine an hour ago. Thought I was safe since they promised back in the day to honor the 9.99 price... nope, they expect 13.99 soon, but are giving grandfathered accounts a 3 month extension as a "thank you" for their loyalty.
  
  Whelp, here's a toast to the future where the creators we enjoy can be supported through a more federated system.
  I don't think there's any way to beat YouTube's infrastructure right now, and you can't even replicate it without a steady supply of blank checks.
  Any geniuses out there know how to think of a system design that's FOSS, competes with YT's pay structure, and who knows what's the best supply for that pay? I hate advertisements.
  How do we take the money that we already spend for subscription services and funnel that into some kind of pool to be equitably distributed to content creators?
  
  “Thank you for believing in us. We’re now going to betray you.”
- Same, that's pretty much my break point for something like this. I use youtube a lot so I don't mind paying a small amount to remove ads and still have creators get a cut, though I understand why others hate the system.

It's been forever since I've used a paid YouTube subscription. I didn't realize how much it has increased.
YouTube Red – Family membership
Billed Monthly starting Oct 21, 2017 $14.99

Or....you can use a VPN and change your location to Turkey and see the price that you get after.
- youll have to pay with a cc based in, say the UK, so they'll automatically change your location back to the UK. doesn't work anymore.
  
  I actually recently just changed my cc info to another local cc and I'm still just paying like $2/month and I have a coworker that is still paying the same price to when she signed up in Asia.

Every new YouTube headline makes me feel better about hopping on the early bird pricing of Google Play Music.