The official way to watch YouTube videos without advertisement is YouTube Premium. The subscription-based service costs $13.99 per month in the United States if you sign up for a regular plan. If you pay annually, that price drops to about $11.66 per month. Students get it for $7.99 and there is also a Family plan for $22.99.
Google has made an announcement on its official support website recently. The company listed new YouTube Premium features and also hinted at the introduction of new plans.
Here are the new features:
- Jump Ahead feature on mobile to skip ahead. This is done with a double-tap and only available for Android at the time. Apple iOS support is coming “in the future” according to Google.
- Shorts Picture-in-Picture to watch Shorts while using other apps. Android exclusive.
- Smart Downloads to download “recommended Shorts automatically” to the device (experimental).
- Redesigned Watch Patch (experimental).
Most of the features are limited to mobile devices. Furthermore, some of them, especially the redesigned watch patch, are almost universally disliked by the community.
Google hints at new YouTube plans
More interesting than these features is Google’s announcement that it plans to expand “existing offers to more regions” and introduce “new plans” in the future as well.
Could it be that Google finally realized that the price of a YouTube Premium subscription is high if it is just used to watch content without advertisement?
YouTube Premium Lite appears to be a thing still, albeit heavily limited. It dropped the price of a subscription to about $6, but did not remove all ads on YouTube and did not provide access to YouTube Music or downloads.
Closing Words
While there are ways to watch YouTube videos without ads, I have to admit that I would be fine with paying a monthly fee for that. YouTube’s current premium pricing is over my monthly limit though. I do not use the service enough to justify the expense.
If YouTube’s upcoming plan or plans become reality, and if they are below my personal limit, then I’d certainly consider subscribing. In case you are wondering, my limit is $5 per month, preferably less than that if paid yearly.
What about you? Would you pay for YouTube Premium?
I guess for me it is a matter of principal. I’m unwilling to reward my abusers/oppressors, and YouTube’s actions to dominate its users will not be rewarded by me. I’d not pay a cent for it.
I could start considering a 5$/month YouTube subscription (as you, Martin, 5$ seems fair to me) if and only if :
– 100% ad-free
– 100% tracking-free
Even with a paid subscription Daddy Google will always track any device which happens to connect, to wander about its lands. This is also why I avoid a accessing YouTube as I avoid all Google services : tracking. And wandering on Google lands with moreover a sticker on your van stating, ‘Hi, I’m Tom Hawack, I’ve got a subscription here”, if it would stop Google from sending its anti-adblockers patrol, make me a VIP free of customs (ads) checking, it would as well allow the landlord to follow me as a light in the night.
So I guess it’ll be no YouTube subscription given i wouldn’t even subscribe for a free plan. Unless? Unless no alternative; no proxy front-end, no other way than to cross Google lands to access the oasis?
The number of times is amazing, that I thought that workarounds were bound to fail or actually failed to find out later on that human technical creativity had perpetuated the cat and mouse game and pushed the end-of-game one step, one scenario ahead. So I remain confident : I won’t cry before being dead, I mean dead-dead, flat EEG. After, no idea 🙂
I know, I could have stated all that in a far more simple way, lol.
I have to agree with you. $5 is good price, but YouTube Premium can not use tracking on me if I pay for it.
I hardly ever watch youtube. I have a channel on there myself and uploaded all my flight videos to it, but it pissed me off when I discovered ads in my videos. I did not agree to that, but apparently it’s legal and there’s no way of preventing it. I tried to delete one of them, but Google told me it wasn’t possible to remove one video. It was either remove them all and delete my youtube account or leave it in place. I chose the latter, but it left me fuming in no uncertain terms.