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Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
And includes YouTube Music.
For now.
The only reason I use YouTube Music is because it's part of YouTube Premium. They just discontinued YouTube Premium Lite which allowed you to get ad free YouTube without YouTube Music. The only way they can make YouTube Music succeed and take away revenue from Spotify is if they bundle it in with ad free YouTube.
For now, sure. But corporations only bundle services to build their userbase. Once their service hits a critical mass (read: they think they can get away with it) they will break the bundle up and charge for each service individually. It's an inherent feature of capitalism- corporations can't leave any perceived money on the table. Why charge one price for two services, when you can charge two prices for two services? And they'll couch it as "giving users more choice!" by noting you can only pay for one service without the other if you want- while conveniently ignoring the users who utilized both features would be paying more. Mark my words: YouTube Premium will not stay bundled with YouTube Music. At some point in the future, Google will charge for each service separately.
Well, assuming Google doesn't randomly kill one of them off outright, that is.
The only reason I have YouTube Music and YouTube Premium is because I had Google Play Music ages ago, then they added YouTube Premium to it, and eventually closed down GPM in favour of YouTube Music. I'm still only paying $9 a month for it, so that's something I guess. We'll see how long that lasts.
Damn, I also had Google Play Music family account, which got transitioned to Youtube Music, but am paying the standard $23/month 💸
YT Premium is imo one of the most scammy subscriptions, as you can easily and legally get what it offers with free tools.