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Comment by jantissler | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think that YouTube Premium is a great offer. I won’t pay $19 every month. That is $228 a year! No, thank you. If there was a smaller tier around $5 with a limited number of ad-free videos, I might consider it. But there’s already way more content out there I could ever read, listen to or watch. $19 is steep.

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Does your region have inflated pricing on streaming services or even just YT Premium?

This wouldn't change the value proposition for you personally, but in the US, YT Premium is $139 a year, $11.58 a month (14/mo if paying monthly), and includes YouTube Music. Spotify for comparison is $10.99/mo. Though I know some people prefer other music streaming services, or as in my case just don't use that piece as much.

I don't understand why they have to bundle ad-free viewing with YouTube music. Nobody is going to switch from Spotify or Apple Music to YouTube.

I also wonder how much cheaper Premium would be without music. I guess it's kind of hard to separate, since popular songs are on both and Premium allows background watching.

The YT music app feels like a poorly reskinned YT app. Impossible to get basic album info, song titles are often wrong (live versions not marked, covers appearing to be original, etc.). So many "fan" releases which are often just lower fidelity copies. And search is, ironically, abysmal.

Not Switch but extend. I use youtube music for a variety of songs that would never be on Apple Music (covers, instrumentals, mash ups, tiktok remixes, etc.)

I did. Why pay twice for the same thing? YT music is perfectly adequate for my needs and also allows me to upload my own music.

I came the other way with it - originally used Google Music and had to switch to Youtube when they sunset GM. I already paid for GM so it was easy to pay for YT music since they had (nearly) every song I'd ever uploaded already available and migrated it for me, then getting ad-free Youtube videos was a nice pleasant surprise.

Maybe they should charge based on how much you watch. For me, $19 spread over so many channels seems very cheap...

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