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.
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 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.
There’s a neocities project… As for Netscape… I think SeaMonkey is still active?
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?
Started using YTLitePlus around a month ago, can recommend
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! 🙂👍
FreeTube for desktop.
There is an Android version as well
Just did cause of ur comment actually, thank you so much!
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.
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.
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!
Must be 50-60 people right? Who pays for premium??
It’s unusable without ads, so if you watch a lot of YouTube it’s worth to pay.
I know, it is the reason why I don’t watch YouTube. I am just surprised that their tactic of gradually increasing the amount and duration of ads, worked!
YouTube is the only streaming platform I pay for. I don’t want to bother with 3rd party apps, and I use it every day. Plus I get YouTube music out of it, so I don’t need to pay for Spotify. Overall 7/10 it’s fine.
No judgements toward people who don’t want to pay though, I get it.
I bailed because the YTM algorithm is terrible compared to when it was Google music. It had got progressively worse and I really realised how bad it was when I subbed to Deezer for a trial. If they hadn’t trashed Google music by integrating it into YouTube I’d still be paying for premium if it came with both. Can’t imagine I’ll ever pay for it again now.
Can’t wait to see this bubble burst.
I thought YouTube Premium was like WinRAR. Nobody actually pays for it.
The Peertube protocol developers should develop a central hub webpage space for newcomers, allow accounts there to follow all channels in every instance (and to only follow and block specific instances too), and then develop apps for smart tvs. It’s the only realistic FOSS alternative to Youtube i can think of, and i dont know why the first point is still non existent (having already subscribed to several channels in 3 instances using separate accounts).
Been paying for years now, got a 50% price hike. Canceled on the spot. I like the creators I follow, but recommendations have sucked for me for several months now anyway.
Any advice for streaming ad free on Chromecast or Samsung tv?
I’m in the same boat as you and never found anything for Samsung tizen os. Smarttube is android based only and anything streamed to a Chromecast still has ads.
Edit: okay I thought let’s search one’s more. And there is tizentube did not try it yet but seems promising
smarttube on tv
Revanced
Does that work for YouTube on smart TV?
The person I was replying to was mentioning a Chromecast so just get something to cast your cellphone to your TV and you’re all set
Oh I have revanced but it never works when I cast to my smart tv
Smart Tube Next is developed for TV only. Works like a charm.
https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
Don’t use the .com website with the same name!
deleted by creator
Unfortunately not
And this is what happens cause the vast mayority of people don’t give a rats ass as long as they can consume
Welcome to the monopoly
Yup. People will whinge, moan, and pay up. Same with Netflix.
just cancel all subscriptions. None of them are worth it
Bitwarden is worth it. (Yes, I know, I should self host it. I do, but I still see it as a good deal.) Also Hetzner is a good subscription. So yes, some are worth it
What do you need that isn’t in the free version?
Plex
Agreed:
-Bitwarden
-Storage Share
-ControlD
-Real debrid
Backblaze as well. Can’t believe they let me store 20TB of backups for $10/mo.
Out of curiosity, what do you do with all that storage? Can’t imagine I’d ever need that much personally
By there site its more like $120 a month?
Just do the cheap unlimited personal plan and hook up a shit load of external HDDs to your PC. I have a system where my NAS syncs to my PC which syncs to Backblaze so I can sorta hack my way into unlimited NAS backup for $10/mo.
3-2-1 backup where the primary source of data is the NAS, on site backup is desktop PC external HDDs, off site backup is Backblaze.
So, only cheap services are worth it?
Are there some expensive services that are worth it? not just that they increase their price just because.
Don’t get me wrong, I want more examples (and I am a happy subscriber of Real-Debrid for years already).
Well, I use what I need. I’m not going to pay an expensive service just because. For instance, I wouldn’t pay for Proton. It’d be quite useless (and expensive) for my use case. I do have a paid Zoho email account, tho.
Kagi’s ultimate plan is $27.5 tax included. Easily the best subscribtion I continue to pay.
Nice example, thank you!
That’s an insanely good deal! I should move pict-rs to backblaze on my Lemmy server
Better look at B2(also from Backblaze) as well. Way cheaper than S3.
i meam the payment for a domain name is kinda worth it. as well as a functional vpn
I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).
I’d say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.
Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like YouTube, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.
Proton has a password manager and VPN. May be worth bundling over paying for all 3 separately
Sorry if you get this a lot, but have you tried Bitwarden? It’s been a while since I compared but last I checked I found it miles better than LastPass.
So, steal everything or something else? Content isn’t free. The ad model exists, but only works if people see the ads.
If everyone blocks all ads, and doesn’t pay a subscription, how’s that work for those providing the service?
I’m not defending YouTube here, just curious what your solution is to have a service and not pay for it.
I do pay for YT family Premium in the US. I watch mostly YT, and it is my music streaming service. I definitely liked it more when it was costing me $15/mo for that and was mad when that went to $23. I even tried switching to Spotify and using ad blocking on YT. I didn’t jive with Spotify, and while ad blockers work for YT, it’s a bit of a pain installing them on TV boxes and managing subscriptions across devices, asking with which videos you’ve seen etc.
Not op, but I think a solution would be having AI watch the videos and tracking what the people are saying, wearing, using etc and posting links to purchase those things in the description. They get a cut of sales and can also sell links for competing products if companies want more exposure. This could be effective and noninvasive. Give a cut to content creators and it may be even more effective.
Youtube revenue in 2023 (before these price hikes) was 31.5 billion USD.
The revenue for the entirety of alphabet in 2023 was 307 billion USD.
Youtube alone generated 10% of the entire revenue of alphabet’s portfolio in 2023.
Yes, revenue is not profit, but I could not find profit figures for youtube.
Alphabet’s operating income for 2023 was 84.3 billion USD. Assuming a similar proportion of revenue to operating income (I know, hella extrapolating, but again no direct sources for youtube) that would put youtube’s operating income in the ballpark of 8 billion USD.
It’s not that they aren’t making money because people are “stealing” as you say from poor little indie company youtube. It’s just that they want more more more MORE MORE MONEY.
Because of course they do. It’s never enough.
Edit: because I forgot to link my source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204424000014/googexhibit991q42023.htm
Unless the backlash is a huge percentage of users immediately stop using the service, they won’t care. They already calculated how many users they’d lose and how much more profit they get to bring in off of those who decide to stay.
