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.
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.
Use Revanced and forever be free
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.
deleted by creator
Level set: ads suck
Least they can do is to serve adfree videos
Now, corporations are greedy right?
Genuine question: What does Greedy Google do if we all install adblock on all our neighbors’ computers tonight?
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.
That might be their response, yes. But they also have some other options:
- improve the service to be worth the cost
- reduce the cost to increase Premium subs - I have a price in mind, and they’re way above it
- add an a la carte alternative to Premium (i.e. pay per video or something)
- cut expenses, such as by reducing the amount of useless videos that are uploaded (i.e. small charge to upload videos, recur every year; allow some amount for free)
But no, raising prices is the easier “solution.” I’m willing to pay (I pay for Nebula, after all), I’m just not willing to pay what they’re asking for the service as-is.
Okay, so if you are not willing to pay that’s entirely reasonable, you can then not use the service or use it with ads.
Dont get me wrong, I do have pirated movies and shows, it has reasons like scrubs they changed the music, community they took down an episode for no reason, but that shit doesn’t cost anyone anything I dont use extra bandwith or anything
There’s a third option: use the service with an ad blocker. The way I see it, that’s not piracy, it’s a TOS violation, and they’re free to block me from their site. But as long as I’m not bypassing copyright protections or something, it’s not piracy. I think using something like Invidious or other FEs could constitute piracy, but just using their website w/ an ad-blocker isn’t.
I’m willing to pay (again, I pay for Nebula), but I’m not willing to pay the price they’re asking for.
- Firefox + uBO
- NewPipe/LibrePipe/GrayJay
- FreeTube
They all are free, no subscription required
And sorry Apple users, I don’t know what option you have cuz I don’t use Apple.
reminder that firefox + ubo works on android too.
I use to use tubular, but it stopped working and I’m not computer savy enough to fix it. Can anyone offer some assistance please? It gets the infinite loading icon and then gives me an error
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 don’t lose anything for the moment, but it might come back to bite you later regardless. Because Youtube needs to grow until the end of times but can’t, it will end ugly one way or another. It’s more of a symptom of a bigger problem than an isolated, ‘smart’ business decision.
Funny, I still pay them my same flat fee of nada
Use NewPipe if you’re on Android.
You’re welcome.
Any alternatives for iOS?
Started using YTLitePlus around a month ago, can recommend
Using youtube with Brave Browser and AdGuard blocks youtube ads on iOS.
I really like Grayjay, also on Android. The nice thing is it also supports other sources, so you can watch Odysee, Rumble, Nebula, Peertube and others on it. If the same video is on multiple platforms, it recognizes that and only shows one.
Just did cause of ur comment actually, thank you so much!
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.
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?
smarttube on tv
Revanced
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
This is just what I was hoping for. Thank you!
Youtube doing what I told every Premium adversary they would logically do after dumping more and more ad space onto the site. And to make Premium look worth the price, they’ll continue to shove more ads in your face just before, you guessed it, doing another price hike. Rinse and repeat. Premium users are strong drivers of this enshittification so I will continue to call them out on it whenever they tell you to join the scam as well. I’ll stick to my ad blockers.
I’ve been paying for YouTube premium and have been watching a ton of YouTube for years. But I’ve been finding myself watching less and less YouTube lately and this might be the push to finally cancel and back away some from the platform.
Can’t wait to see this bubble burst.
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
I’m slowly using YouTube less and less. The experience is worse because of the ads and Premium costs.
Absurd to pay so much just to remove ads only for smart TVs. There are easy ways to block ads on phones and computers.
This is just the pregame for unblockable ads.
You gotta make up for a lack of innovation but just price gouging customers on absolutely everything. I only have Spotify because of the radio function but otherwise all of these services are absolute dog shit. They don’t offer anything new. They’ve just created a new set of moats for features, songs, videos, television and games. Eventually this system has to collapse because treating customers like employees that have no choice but to stay will lead people to innovate on piracy.
Revanced.
