Just received an email from Google saying that our Family plan is increasing from $17.99 to $32.99 a month. This represents an 83% increase. Not sure how this is justified, seems completely ridiculous.
YouTube Premium Family Plan Increase to $32.99 a Month
klonky on 02/11/2023 - 11:27
Last edited 02/11/2023 - 11:30
Last edited 02/11/2023 - 11:30
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Absolutely taking the piss. This is like a Netflix Turkey-like increase without any of the associated hyperinflation.
YouTube should start making big budget TV shows, like millions of dollars per episode like HBO and Amazon are doing. Then maybe these prices would be justified.
Even if Google actually started making some big budget content, I don't think this price is justifiable compared to competitors pricing, particularly if you are only subscribing for the YouTube features rather than their music streaming offering.
Disney+ $140/year
Amazon Prime $79/year
Spotify premium family $252/year
YouTube Premium family $396/yearIf we assume that Spotify and YouTube music are relatively equal value (which they might be on a purely content based valuation, but the YouTube music app still lacks some basic functionality that Spotify has, and even Google Play music used to have, like Sonos casting integration from within the app. Because of those shortcomings, I've never personally placed much value on YouTube music), then Google is asking $144/year or $12/month for ad free YouTube, downloading videos and background play. I can take or leave background play and downloading videos so it's really only ad free YouTube. On it's own, I'd pay $12/month to remove ads on YouTube, and might even pay them more to remove ads everywhere if that was an option. But for $33/month bundled with a music service I don't get much value from, it's asking too much.
Yes that's true. Apple charge $50 for Apple Premier One family, but that comes with six slots, paywall-free curated news, premium fitness with actual instructors, an App Store version of Gamepass, 2TB of iCloud for everyone to share, and premium music, and a slowly growing collection of movies and TV shows. Between six people who are in Apple ecosystem it's great value, even just for Apple Music alone it's good value.
@AustriaBargain: the new Apple one is as much value as the new YouTube. Apple Music family is $20 a month. Apple News and Arcade are cr*p (ads, low quality). But then again, why spend $20 when you can spend $50?
@RPGPlayer: I think their comment was about the ads - haven't used Apple News in a while though found the large image ads to be obnoxious with scammy ads.
@Exorcist: I'm finding great value. I have my kids playing games (ad free? Not sure what you talking about there) no loot boxes, signups, majority play offline. Music as well and the icloud.
Or better yet, don't do that and don't increase the price.
On Turkey, I got an email stating the family plan is jumping to ₺115.99/month. Roughly $6 Australian. Was about $3.
Ukraine has gone up to around the same amount as well.
Absolute joke been with them since Google music my plan nearly doubling in cost
I'm on the grandfathered individual plan for A$10.99, will be increasing to A$16.99. No fkin way.
I'm paying $4 a month through India, $33 is ridiculous
$0 a month for adblocker. Though I'm guessing YouTube is going to go thermonucular on ad blockers soon…
They already are, there's an obnoxious popup and a 3 video limit and all sorts of other guff they are trying to implement (rolling it out in batches to accounts), but my adblocker seems to have worked around it for now. They are currently waging a massive war against it though, so it's extremely bad timing to be upping the price of what was already an overpriced subscription!
I've noticed recently my adblocker has been blocking ads, but sometimes YouTube still "plays" the ads, only I can't see or hear it, just a black screen with the 15 second play bar at the bottom. Previously the black ad screen would flash up for like half a second before playing the video.
I too have had issues only the last week with Youtube. There is sometimes an overlay say AdBlocker detected that tries to prevent me from playing any content. These execrebably capitalists are going all out to squeeze as much money from people as possible. I ending up installing my Filters and more Anti-AtniAdblocker measures. Yesterday everything was working fine. I haven't checked today.
Don't give in. Don't give the capitalists a cent of your money. Just say no to price gouging. Streaming services, doctors, tradies, food processors, dentists, lawyers, electricity providers, and supermarkets have discovered that they can charge as much as they like for their products and services, and there is nothing people can do about it. The government needs to step in and stop price gouging. Fix the maximum price a person or company can charge for a good or service, or if it cannot do this, wack price gouging companies and their CEOS and board members with a 90% company tax and personal incomes tax, ditto for greedy tradies, doctors, and lawyers. It's time for Albo to step up and say no to greedflation.
@Thaal Sinestro: Wish the government would do single payer dental. Quality dental and quality healthcare is worth high taxes imo. Look at the US, you pay far more for healthcare if you are buying it yourself. But with the government being the single payer of healthcare billions in health insurance waste is removed which would save people money. Obviously we aren't spending enough if most doctors aren't bulk billing and hospitals are ramping, but even if we paid more to fix our healthcare system we'd still be paying less in taxes than Americans pay in healthcare.
@Thaal Sinestro: As much as I despise it as a system, the innovation in our lives today is here in huge part because of capitalism… I'm unaware of a single modern society that's operated on the basis you're promoting where welfare and quality of life wasn't significantly lower than what we enjoy here.
Creating a huge database that lists every product available in the country and what price its allowed to be sold at is beyond absurd, and every country that tries to micromanage things like that ends in disaster.
It absolutely needs to be controlled (especially healthcare/dentistry - that should be a purely government service in my opinion), but your suggestion to regulate the price of everything in the country is ridiculous. What happens if the price of flour jumps 50% one year and the government committee that decides pricing is too busy to adjust anything - we can't buy bread or cakes anymore? Can I buy a bar of Whittaker's chocolate or does the government-imposed price cap mean the only chocolate available now is Woolworths Essentials brand?
Streaming services, doctors, tradies, food processors, dentists, lawyers, electricity providers, and supermarkets have discovered that they can charge as much as they like for their products and services, and there is nothing people can do about it.
They can stop watching YouTube. It's not like a doctor, healthcare, or food.
@Thaal Sinestro: Google/Alphabet aren't capitalist, they have been crony corporate for a long time.
They get lots of government concessions (spying) and kick backs.
I watch youtube on tv more than my phone or laptop though… Sadly, no workaround yet but I only pay them $3 a month.
yeah I'm trying to think of a way to get ad free YouTube on TV. Can probably cast the browser version of YouTube to an Apple TV. Or plug a computer into TV. Not very convenient tho.
@AustriaBargain: Best $39 I've spent recently is buying a Fire TV Stick 4K Max and loading SmartTube onto it. No more ads and inbuilt SponsorBlock.
If your TV already has Android TV, you may be able to install it.For my phone (Android), I use NewPipe.
@Warchest: It suffered a shake yesterday and is back to normal after update. There is news saying ad-blockers or similars have been cracked down yesterday.
Does a Pi-hole solve this? Been meaning to set that up for years… but I pay for YouTube premium
PiHole won't block ads on YouTube TV but if you have an Android based TV (or Shield / Chromecast) you can install SmartTube. Works great, no shorts, SponsorBlock built-in, can change the speed of videos, etc. If we had to go back to default YouTube on the TV, we'd stop watching entirely
how do you do the $3 a month? i'd do that in a heartbeat
@hadronox: The irony of it. I'm in the same boat, i would pay that kind of price, or even up to $10/month for a family plan but beyond that is ridiculous.
@hadronox: Youtube India.. it increase a bit lately.. last charge was $3.58
Not sure it will work now but I did it a long time ago and it still works fine.
Search deals for ‘youtube premium’.
Need to check if grayjay is available on chrome tv
Smarttube on Nvidia Shield
yes but i need no ads on mobile too
yes but doesnt work on the app !!
a lil more than 4 :)
I also just got an email about my subscription going up from $11.99 to $16.99. Bloody ridiculous everything constantly going up by so much. Sadly my family regularly uses YouTube and YouTube Music, so I'll just have to pay through the nose
We don't bother with YT Premium Family plan. Most of the time, we are all at home when using YT. We've set up different profiles under the one premium account. YT lets you do multiple streams as long as you are all on the same IP address/internet connection.
hmmm might have to do this. the increase to $33 is a bit shit
Wow I didn't know this, so can instead YouTube music through my home VPN while my family streams something at home? Seems to easy.
Youtube Music is locked down to one stream at a time, so if two of my kids are listening one will stop playing. Youtube videos you can watch several concurrently from one account, so no issue there.
If I'm driving home listening to TYM and it stops playing all of a sudden, it displays an error telling me that someone is playing in another location. I know this is someone else in the family jumping on to YT at home. I'm the only one who listens to YTM in my family. In my experience, it is 1x YTM stream and at least 2-3 YT video streams all coming from the one IP address that seems to work fine.
@frankfurts - I have thought about setting up a VPN for this purpose. In theory it should work.
@QuicheLorraine: Yeah I already have a VPN I use for my smart home stuff so might test it out if it saves me $100 a year.
People pay for YouTube?
No ads and comes with YouTube music. It makes it much more enjoyable.
It can be a bit weird when someone else pulls out their phone to show you something on YouTube and you have to awkwardly wait for an ad.
I'll be thinking 'right, I forgot this was a thing'.The price hike is obviously not great but I watch a lot of YouTube and the reality is, I'm not going back to dealing with ads.
Also, I use YouTube Music a lot.Why would anyone not be using an ad-blocker in this day & age?
@polarq: is that any different to spotify? i have yt rv and spotify premium mod so i get ad-free & all premium features of yt + spotify on my phone
Browser extensions have given you the same for 10 years already and they cost nothing.
Browser extensions don't work in the app though.
@hawkers89: On top of that some people have work laptops or computers with IT disabling installing of extensions. That combined with phone apps, it is just easier to pay a small fee rather than try to find workarounds and having to set it up across multiple devices.
@hawkers89: Disable the app. When you click a youtube link it will open in your phone's internet browser. Install adblock on phone browser (I use Firefox).
The app only has useful features if you pay for premium, otherwise it's actually a liability.
Also easily pre-download a whole bunch of videos for a long commute/ a flight etc.
Absolutely love YouTube premium, but not sure i see the value proposition at $32/month for family
Fair enough. I grew up watching FTA TV so just learned to blank out/ignore/skip the ads.
It’s just pricey IMO, now even pricier.
I do have Netflix and Amazon Prime. If I could get both of them for free in 4K and ads, for sure I wouldn’t pay for them either haha
Sure do, I watch way/listen to more YouTube than any other streamer, and I hate ads with a passion.
The $3+ it was costing me via Turkey was a no brainer decision.@JimB: You beat me on this.
Quite a controversial opinion based on the voting haha
its the iphone users that dont have alternative. I really miss the revanced on android.
NewPipe for android.
revanced still works? Im using it now?
People waste time watching ads on YouTube?
We use Google home devices which we use heavily and removing the ads was big because we have scheduled music and limited screen time (shout out to Teacher Rachel) that prompts our toddlers daily routine. I got rid of Spotify Premium for Youtube Music as it was a good deal, plus Youtube Premium. The convenience was the biggest part. Anybody got ideas for Google assistant integrated alternatives?
Also you can turn your phone screen off and videos will still play + you can download videos for flights. Its not worth $16.99 though especially compared to other streaming services where you actually pay for content not just premium features.
It's the only content subscription really worth paying for, especially if you use it on TV.
Even better when you can pay less than 7 AUD/month subscribing from Turkey
Just got this too. Also said this:
To show our appreciation for your loyalty, we're giving you at least 3 extra months at your current price before the price increase will impact your plan. Your price will not increase before your April billing date. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure that we notify you again at least 30 days before the new price is effective.
So I guess I'll cancel in April.
Mine said the same, so it gives a fair while longer to decide I guess
Gives people time to forget the increase in the hope they will just pay more
I believe they said in my email that they’d also warn us 30 days before. I signed up for YouTube red day one, so I guess they’re rewarding that loyalty
@Guzd: More likely that they are wanting to stagger the cancelled subscriptions away from the price increase "date" to look better in earnings reports or whatever
Easy decision for me, I'm switching to Apple One. It gives me a few months to figure out the best way of moving playlists and such though.
I don't watch many youtube videos though, I used it for music. But I can jump ship and get storage and apple tv (and whatever apple arcade is) thrown in at a lower price, easy decision.
I didn't get this. My price is increasing from my December billing date. That's frustrating!
Yeah I'm not sure why I got until April, I pay monthly.
I've been with youtube music, previously google play music since it launched in Australia. Still December for me haha
Mine will start from December :(
I just did, tired of these increases and Youtube won't be the last one I do this year.
smart tube next, new pipe, firefox with ublock origin? vanced, revanced?
Why haven't people been using this already? Can't believe people pay for YouTube.
My family is all android but perhaps the apple
losersusers can't install APK files. Don't know. Don't care.No ads on Apple if you use via brave browser
@TheMoose: While you're at it, stop using any javascript too, because you disagree with the creators views. And don't even think about medical care for hypothermia!
@TheMoose: Its funny because first its about being a bigot then suddenly its about being a corporation. Like a gish galloping horse
@centrelink: Well yeah, it's a combo.
The homophobic bigot was aimed at the founder of Brave.
The corporate part was aimed at Google, M$oft, and other big corps that use Chromium for their browsers.A rant can encompass a lot rather quickly, eh?! ;-)
Another iOS option is Friendly. It also does background playing
YouWish premium family plan