Is it an essential subscription, or worthless no matter the cost?
YouTube surprised most of its Premium subscribers this week by springing a massive price hike on anyone with a family plan without much warning. Customers in the US, Canada, and parts of the rest of the world will now have to pay as much as $5 more per month to access YouTube ad-free, without any specific changes or new features announced alongside it. This move has seemingly garnered two types of takes online: people who are willing to pay for YouTube Premium no matter the costs, and people unsure of why anyone would pay for the video site in the first place.
Google’s unexpected price hikes really shocked plenty of its users, partly because the move is happening so suddenly — it goes into effect with the next billing cycle — and partly because it’s so steep. Our closest comparison point is Netflix, which received a huge amount of backlash for its higher rates earlier this year. The streaming giant announced price increases months ahead of when the changes actually went into effect. In this case, only certain Premium subscribers on a grandfathered $14.99 family plan got an advance warning — their rates won’t bump up to $23 until April.
Although individual members are most left out of this wave, save for a select group of regions like Argentina, it’s a sign of things to come. Google clearly wants to get more money from YouTube — recent tests for expanded ad counts and putting 4K videos behind a paywall prove this — but it’s not enough to just come after unpaid users. It’s also unclear if YouTube Music has anything to do with this change. After all, it’s impossible to subscribe to Premium on its own, and music licensing fees aren’t cheap.
YouTube Premium’s current US pricing.
So, for this week’s poll, I’m interested in what people see as their limit on subscribing to YouTube Premium. In a previous poll from earlier this year, we’ve already seen that cheaper plans is the predominant way that Google could get more subscribers, alongside adding exclusive features — like, say, 4K playback. Now it’s time to choose exactly how much you’d pay for offline playback, background listening, and — of course — no ads.
This question is inherently complicated thanks to the existence of individual and family plans, so for the sake of this poll, here are the guidelines. When answering, consider how much you are personally willing to pay. That might mean you’re subscribed to an individual plan paying $12 per month, or it might mean you’re subscribed to a $23 family plan, but because you split it with three other people, you’re only paying $6 per month. Answer with whatever your hypothetical cap is on what you’d pay per month for the benefits YouTube Premium delivers, not what you’re currently paying.
And, of course, some of these values are below what’s available to subscribers, but I’m curious what everyone — including non-subscribers — would pay, not just what’s currently available. For some people, that might be just $1 per month.
Personally, I really value my YouTube Premium subscription, though I’m still grandfathered on an $8 per month individual plan. If and when that finally goes away — and with this week’s news, I’m more sure than ever that it will — I’ll have to consider long and hard about my actual cap on this monthly payment. I’m very curious to know where AP’s readership lands as well.
