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.
Remember: Everything premium offers used to be included for free
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 sure hope their recent heavy prosecution of the Invidious project isn’t related
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?
Absurd to pay so much just to remove ads only for smart TVs. There are easy ways to block ads on phones and computers.
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.
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!
I just checked and ublock origin is still free. What a relief
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.
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.
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.
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 😔.
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.
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).
I’ve been paying $5pm for family premium for years.
It couldn’t last forever, I guess.
Prob a reason to leave youtube
I can’t wait for google to crash and burn. Bring back GeoCities and Netscape navigator.
🤩
bring back web 1.0 because web 1.0 was superior.
I have been saying this for years
Like Reddit dying after the API incident?
Just like Reddit, Google are going nowhere; sadly.
Google is having problems, they can’t make profits anymore. Its different because reddit was never profitable, but googles been profitable for years.
They may be having problems, but they have billions and are not going anywhere.
Unless you want to provide some sources for reputable financial analysis of Google failing I’ll assume you’re working on conjecture or hopium.
There’s a neocities project… As for Netscape… I think SeaMonkey is still active?
It is morally correct to adblock youtube.
E: I can’t hear any of these counterpoints over the sweet ad-free youtube I’m getting for free.
Or just not watch.
Easier said than done when you talk about the global video sharing platform that is used everywhere by everyone…
It’s like telling someone to just ditch their smartphone… not practically doable. Blocking ads is morally correct when you are forced to use it.
i dont like being addicted to their platforms and limit my time using it.
however, the idea of being a luddite and isolating myself from the useful things in them just because their current owners are greedy capitalists sounds even worse.
Not watching has a much better moral argument.
Yup. But people would rather just carp on about Revanced and Insidious or whatever, as if everyone has the time to and the inclination to set that up.
Meanwhile, everyone else will piss and moan for a month, then pay up and keep watching.
What the hell are you talking about? I download an apk, I install it, I’m done. How many ads will you sit through before you’ve wasted the whole minute it would’ve taken to do?
You say that as if it’s obvious to everyone what an APK is.
It’s an installer for an app on android. Android has been around for half of my lifetime at this point. Not know that is like not knowing what an exe is on a PC.
First of all, you said time or inclination, the latter is caused by the ads, the former wasn’t really an issue as I’ve already said. Now you don’t know what APKs are? YouTube won’t stop with the ads. You either find an alternative, whether it’s Newpipe or just abandoning YouTube entirely, or you put up with them and stop bitching.
You can’t sit in the middle throwing your own shit at one side because “people will whine and then use it anyway” and then also at the other side because “it’s too hard to install a different app and don’t know what APKs are!”
an adblocker is much quicker and easier to set up
Doesn’t work on a Chromecast though.
If you have the time to watch YouTube enough that you’re considering premium you have enough time to set up these systems. The time it saves you makes back the setup time very quickly for someone watching even a moderate amount of YouTube.
If you have time to relax and watch your favourite creators, you have time to set up arcane systems to avoid seeing ads!
No. YouTube is relaxing time, not doing work time.
It takes less than 30 seconds to install uBlock Origin. It’s the first thing I do on a new install after replacing Edge with Firefox
I’m aware, I’ve done the same myself.
I can concede Insidious especially with the recent news but Revanced is so easy and quick to set up, calling it arcane is laughable. It’s done in under 5 minutes.
Wouldnt that just cause them to increase prices more? Since now someone else has to pay for the bandwith you use?
Thus what you are doing is using your technological know how to offload your costs onto less technical users who can’t adblock.
The morally correct thing to do is to stop watching youtube and/pr go to a paid platform that’s an alternative, like floatplane or nebula and support the creators there, isn’t it? But let’s be honest, we all know you just want adfree youtube videos for free.
You think YouTube is some kind of Mom pop shop down the block? They have more than enough money to burn. Least they can do is to serve adfree videos, better, I might add.
Thus what you are doing is using your technological know how to offload your costs onto less technical users who can’t adblock.
Which is the reason why we should help people get adblocks more, which is also recommended by the FBI.
I’m ok with all of that. It furthers my goal of hitting the platform back in response to their predatory marketing practices and de facto monopoly. Also, I do support creators outside of youtube. In short, I don’t feel bad about any of this.
Prepare for the downvotes!
Use NewPipe if you’re on Android.
You’re welcome.
Firefox + uBlock Origin already does it too. No ads, and I can listen even when my phone is locked.
Any alternatives for iOS?
Using youtube with Brave Browser and AdGuard blocks youtube ads on iOS.
Started using YTLitePlus around a month ago, can recommend
FreeTube for desktop.
There is an Android version as well
Tubular if you want a newpipe fork that also includes Sponsor skips!
Or NewPipe SponsorBlock(Obsolete, see below) Or FreeTube for AndroidThat’s been discontinued, Tubular is the active fork.
Thanks for pointing that out! 🙂👍
Just did cause of ur comment actually, thank you so much!
