YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14.
Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.
Yeah they are continuously slowing down Firefox and I see a future where I will simply stop using YouTube.i thank them in advance for when that day comes
More and more I try to find my entertainment elsewhere. I am slowly, but surely, migrating away from youtube (and google in general).
Remember: Everything premium offers used to be included for free
Woah. I just cancelled my subscription last week because it’s too expensive, and now they raise the prices further. Guess they really don’t want me back.
Revanced.
Youtube doing what I told every Premium adversary they would logically do after dumping more and more ad space onto the site. And to make Premium look worth the price, they’ll continue to shove more ads in your face just before, you guessed it, doing another price hike. Rinse and repeat. Premium users are strong drivers of this enshittification so I will continue to call them out on it whenever they tell you to join the scam as well. I’ll stick to my ad blockers.
I’m slowly using YouTube less and less. The experience is worse because of the ads and Premium costs.
People pay YouTube instead of using an adblocker?
I use the PS5 to watch YouTube on the TV, no way around the ads there. But no way in hell I’m paying them!
Please tell me a simple, idiot-proof way to block YT ads on all devices incl. Mobiles, Shield etc. that doesn’t require something complex like piHole, works outside the home (family’s phones etc. ), and doesn’t risk blocking stuff it shouldn’t. That’s my trouble. Premium solves all of that, while bringing other small benefits. Maybe there’s a better way.
Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy.
Firefox-ublock (even better on Linux but not required)
Revanced for mobile.
Pihole doesn’t stop youtube ads anyhow.
And Smart Tube Next for Android TV devices.
I’m in the same boat, but I think this hike still will make me cancel my family plan. Less time on YouTube is probably good anyway.
Creators get way more money with Premium viewers than ad-based ones, or at least it used to be that way.
I just checked and ublock origin is still free. What a relief
Absurd to pay so much just to remove ads only for smart TVs. There are easy ways to block ads on phones and computers.
You don’t need to pay for smart TVs, if you have an Android TV you can just install SmartTube Next. It’s even better than the official app!
This is just the pregame for unblockable ads.
YT ads will never be unblockable. They legally have to be indicated somehow and people will always write software to detect them. Worst case scenario, you have to download videos you want to watch ahead of time.
The nice thing about hiking your prices by 50% is that unless a whole third of your users quit, you haven’t lost anything.
You don’t lose anything for the moment, but it might come back to bite you later regardless. Because Youtube needs to grow until the end of times but can’t, it will end ugly one way or another. It’s more of a symptom of a bigger problem than an isolated, ‘smart’ business decision.
you haven’t lost anything
Apart from all future customers that will now choose another service
That’s the good thing about a monopoly. You don’t have to worry about customers choosing another service.
I’ve been paying $25 CAD to support five family accounts and prevent my daughter from seeing ads during her monitored viewing. If that price goes up 30-50%, I’m fucking done. This was an expense I was willing to incur, as YouTube is literally the only media platform my family even uses anymore. Better price than cable and multiple streaming platforms, and (again) I’m paying that for five active accounts.
If anyone knows of a way for me to adblock through my Roku TV so that we can continue watching YouTube on it without a Premium account, I’m all ears. The TV is the only reason I’m not just using uBlock to begin with. I’m really not into the idea of hooking a laptop up via HDMI if I can avoid it. Just feels like a sloppy user experience for anyone else in the household wanting to watch YouTube on TV.
Pi-hole, although really you can accomplish network ad blocking with just about any spare computer.JK refer to the comment below mine
Pihole doesn’t block YouTube ads as it’s only a dns blocker, Google serves the ads from the same servers as the videos from what I understand. Adguard home works the same.
Correct. I use the AdGuard DNS servers on my router and get less ads on things occasionally but it YouTube. It’s been most noticable on Duolingo because now it always plays the Duolingo premium version ad. I’m guessing that it plays that when it fails to fetch a normal ad.
You got a scrap Roku and move into a platform that supports one of the ad-free clients but I wouldn’t do that just yet. YouTube’s about to shove in-stream ads down which is going to break every bit of that blocking for quite a bit It might turn out something else is the way to go by the time the dust settles.
Invidious used to work, it’s a self hosted YouTube instance that blockw out ads and has things like sponsorblock. I have Playlet installed on my roku pointing at my instance but about a week or so ago it’s been giving only errors 😔.
It’s so odd that a platform that relies so much on user content charges as much as or more than network streaming services. The market hold is leaking into it (and out).
relies so much on user content
Does it? I mean, it hosts user content but it doesn’t really monetize that. YouTube relies on creators, and it pays them.
I suspect the user content is the root of the problem. 500 hours of video is being uploaded every minute. YouTube has to transcode and store everything, and be ready to stream it at a moment’s notice, even though the vast majority of videos probably get only a handful of views (if any). That’s a lot of unused resources that have to be paid for by subscribers and advertisers.
If they were to charge just a little for uploads then content creators would be more inclined to consider whether their upload is of interest to anyone else, and that might take away a lot of the waste.
I sure hope their recent heavy prosecution of the Invidious project isn’t related
Prob a reason to leave youtube
