YouTube is raising the price of its Premium subscription offerings, with a $2 monthly increase on individual accounts and a $4 increase on family plans.
As reported by 9 to 5 Google, YouTube sent a notification out to Premium subscribers alerting them to the change, which will be implemented in the June billing period.
As per YouTube’s note to some users: “To continue delivering great service and features, we’re increasing your price to $15.99/month. We don’t make these decisions lightly, but this update will allow us to continue to improve Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube.”
The new Premium prices for U.S. users will be as follows:
- Individual: $15.99 per month (an increase of $2 per month)
- Family: $26.99 per month (an increase of $4 per month)
- Lite: $8.99 per month (an increase of $1 per month)
- Music Premium: $11.99 per month (an increase of $1 per month)
Basically, it’s going to be more expensive to watch YouTube without ads, though 9 to 5 Google also said that YouTube hasn’t raised the price of Premium in several years, with the last increase coming in 2022.
So is it worth it?
Well, aside from no ads, or fewer ads (depending on which Premium package users sign up for), YouTube Premium also includes background play and offline downloads for videos and music.
So, depending on use case, it can be a valuable offering, though it’s also interesting to note that more people are consuming podcasts through the YouTube app, which would directly benefit from background play functionality.
Maybe that’s another avenue for YouTube to drive subscriber take-up, along with its various subscription TV plans and offers that users can add on to their YouTube subscription.
Though it will cost a little more for such starting in June.
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