When Google announced Play Music in 2011, I got in early and my subscription price was locked in at $8 USD a month. They gave me Youtube Premium (and Youtube Music) when that launched as part of that subscription. When Play Music was killed, my Premium membership continued at $8 a month.

At the moment, I'm fine paying this very specific early adopter price since I watch a lot of Youtube content. If they ever raise the price on me, it's getting dropped.

I miss Google play music. Shit was fire.

Still a good value compared to Netflix tbh

I never understand the practice of increasing prices to stuff like this when you have less income, because all it does is drive away current and potential customers.

It's like with cinemas, if you reduce the ticket price enough you'll easily fill up screens. If they want more money from YouTube premium they should reduce the price to increase membership to cover the cost and then some for what you reduced it by.

It's not rocket science.

Imagine paying that, damn.

Good job YouTube, I was considering picking up your subscription but now nooope, expensive enough in NZD as it is

They want people to start using YT Premium while slowly blocking ad-blockers, but they increase the subscription price... what?

Wait… people PAY for YouTube?

Youtube premium is pretty pointless when ublock origin exists.

Edit: sorry should have clarified. I meant in terms of blocking ads. I realize that you still can't play youtube videos and switch apps.

Well, I guess I bought the yearly sub in Turkish liras just in time (about $20/year)

So I have a question for YouTube Premium haters:

How is this any different than what most people pay for both another music service and another video service? It's about half the cost of other music + video services (when combined), even with the increased pricing over the years. I've been paying for YouTube Premium since the awkward Google Play Music transition and it's a bargain, especially when I had my student discount at like $4.99 a month.

I would never pay google for anything. They’re making enough money taking all your data and selling it. I will always use an ad blocker with sponsor block and donate to any content creator that provides good content for me.

YouTube Revanced ftw. Firefox with uBlock Origin ftw too.

So sad there are no free alternatives such as NewPipe that do exactly the same thing.

Holy greed!

Sucks for me. I use iOS (I'm sorry) and that's the original reason I got YouTube Red (back then): they make iOS users pay for background playback. Most of my YT consumption is documentary / essay / spoken word stuff so I need that feature to treat it like a podcast player, basically. Most of the rest of my YT consumption is in my living room, where ad blocking isn't an option (and I hear even if it was, they're catching up fighting ad blockers).

I hate the Web 2.0 "enshitification" of platforms, and I hate advertisements, and I'm willing to pay for a good, useful service. But this is a mixed bag. It's still 'enshitified' because most of what it serves me is algorithmic and nothing to do with the hundreds of channels I've subscribed to over the 13 years I've had this particular account. It's still chock full of ads because videos do sponsor blocks these days.

And the worst of it is they've got you by the balls and there's really nothing stopping them from being Netflix and just continuing to raise and raise the price. I was an OG Netflix Instant Streaming for Xbox 360 user...years later when they finally booted me off my own family plan, we were paying like...$23 a month? For what had at that point become the worst video service? What stops YouTube from bumping up to $19.99/mo a couple years from now? It's the only game in town.

OH and they're also selling all your metrics. That's the other thing. If I'm paying (through the nose) for a service, it shouldn't be double-fucking me by selling predictive measures of who I am and what I care about to filthy fucking "advertisers" (for-profit behavior manipulators).

YouTube (like every last piece of Web 2.0) was fun while it lasted. But it is now barely better than worthless.

First they try to block ad blockers, now they milk their users even more. Who didn’t see it coming? I guess people will just pay up.

Enshittification continues…

The monthly savings from boycotting youtube continue to rise.

Uhm, so what extra value to subscribers did they add recently? Is it just a case of Google's costs going up or simply their need to make more profit to delight shareholders?

They emailed me thanking me for being a part of their journey for so long and as a gift they are delaying my rate going up by 3 months. Cool…..