YouTube Premium just went up to $15.99 / mo (US) | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Premium just went up to $15.99 / mo (US)

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29 pointstehwebguy15 comments

It looks like the yearly plan went up $20 as well. Of course, the yearly plan doesn’t auto-renew for whatever reason, so at least people can’t forget and unknowingly get a higher charge.

I’ll have to debate between now and October when my Premium service runs out if I want to renew. I tried to go without it last time and made it all of 18 hours before giving in and signing back up.

I’m still rather frustrated that YouTube Music is bundled. I pay for Apple Music and hate YouTube Music a lot. The Lite membership feels like a non-starter, because it not only cuts access to YouTube Music (which is fine), it doesn’t serve up music related content on YouTube ad free. It seems like a flip of a coin whether or not a music related video is categorized as “music” or not. I often watch these videos sitting in the living room, as I would any other video, and it’s not a replacement for a music service or used in the same way at all.

With the influx of AI content across the internet as a whole, I’ve found myself reading more. Maybe this trend will continue and I can simply discontinue use of YouTube.

Seems like current monthly plan subscribers (like myself) haven't changed price. YouTube historically seemed to grandfather the monthly plans to stay at the old price for a while.

That's interesting. By not allowing yearly plans to renew automatically, they will force all yearly plans onto the new price. The former monthly price would be worse than the new yearly price, so it's still better... but not as good as being grandfathered in.

Looks like Google is forcing all old plans to the new price this time too. I just got an email.

Pro-tip use the brave browser and you won’t see ads. Straight out of the box on any platform I’ve ever used it on (Mac, iOS). $0.

It's getting complicated if you want to watch on Apple tv or similar streaming device, though.

Chromecast mirror, or HDMI

YouTube is rapidly approaching the point at which I'll go back to other means to watch YouTube to avoid paying this ridiculous price. I refuse to watch ads and I'm willing to pay but $16/mo for ~4-8hrs of content that I watch at most is absurd.

I need to look more into their Lite plan since I don't care about music on YouTube at all but I worry they will start slide (more/some?) ads into that over time.

Yes, I know about ad blockers and the like, it's just really sucky for things like Apple TV or iOS. Maybe AdGuard/PiHole/etc can block these ads, I've avoided that in the past just because I've run into odd/annoying routing/dns issues due to those things but maybe it's time for another look.

Yeah I’m super annoyed at the price generally. I canceled like two weeks ago after years of paying and at first was pissed that now I’m not grandfathered in but coming around to the idea that I’m glad to have ripped the bandaid off.

The truth is that a monthly subscription fee will never be enough compared to potentially unlimited ad revenue, the beast will always hunger for more!

Not trying to gloat but damn am I glad I'm grandfathered in at the old "Google Play Music" $8/mo price.

Even so, if and when Google decides to not honor that contract anymore, I'd still happily pay for YT Premium.

Cancelled my YT Premium and just installed SmartTube on my TV instead.

My previous blocker was that there was no (easy) way to bypass ads when I was using an AppleTV, so I just started using the Android side of my TV.

It’s a form of ransom at this point. Pay it or watch 90 seconds unskippable ads.

or don’t use it, a very solid option. I have not been on youtube in years other than accidental click followed by close

While wasting too much time on Youtube is unwise, not using it ever is also unwise. From time to time you can find very valuable information on Youtube, which cannot be found elsewhere.

Not using regularly Youtube may be a good decision, but actively avoiding any interaction with it regardless of the circumstances is not a good decision.

Even if Youtube is not an Internet resource as important as Wikipedia or Archive.org, it still contains a lot of useful movies recorded and uploaded by random people, not by "influencers".

I do not disagree - however, for this kind of usage, if there is valuable information that is only on Youtube and nowhere else, waiting 60-90-120 seconds for some ad(s) to watch this valuable information is not a tall ask.

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