What you need to know
- YouTube Premium is moving grandfathered accounts over to the new pricing plans.
- Older accounts that previously paid $9.99 or less per month will now need to pay $13.99 per month.
- YouTube hiked up the price for its ad-free, premium plans by $2 from $11.99 per month in July.
It looks like the immunity period is over for older YouTube Premium subscribers who were relieved from the price hike for YouTube’s ad-free premium service.
According to the folks at 9to5Google, YouTube Premium is emailing users with grandfathered accounts who are still paying the old rates to notify them that the new prices will apply to them starting January 2024.
The company recently jacked up the prices of Premium accounts for U.S. users back in July. However, at the time of the price hike, YouTube gave older subscribers — who were grandfathered in by Google Play Music or YouTube Red — some relief, giving them until December before the new rates would apply to them.
This was due to YouTube wanting to show appreciation towards its legacy users. But now that time is up, and any grandfathered account owners will have to pay the new YouTube Premium prices once January comes around.
Since the price increase, individual YouTube premium accounts now cost $13.99 a month, which is a few shekels more than the pre-July rate of $11.99 a month. This means that grandfathered users who were paying $7.99 or $8.99 per month will soon have to cough more dough.
It’s worth noting that an annual YouTube Premium plan costs $139.99, which means that you would end up saving $27 if you choose to subscribe on a yearly basis instead of monthly. Alternatively, if you want to migrate away from YouTube Premium altogether, you can always cancel your subscription and subscribe to another music streaming service, such as Spotify Premium, which costs $10.99 per month for an individual plan and includes a free three-month trial. Of course, you’ll now have to deal with ads in the regular YouTube app.
Either way, the immunity that grandfathered YouTube Premium users enjoyed from the price hike may be over, but impacted users have several options to reduce the impact on their bank accounts.
