YouTube Premium has just gotten significantly pricier in the U.S.
Instead of $11.99, the subscription price is now $13.99 per month, a 17 percent increase. The price change, noticed by 9to5Google, wasn't yet publicly announced by YouTube, but it's already live on the YouTube Premium web page.
YouTube Premium removes ads from YouTube and YouTube Music, and gives subscribers some additional perks, such as the ability to download videos and play them in the background.
YouTube has been steering users towards subscribing quite aggressively in recent years by steadily increasing the number of ads one sees on the platform — both the skippable and the unskippable variety. The Alphabet-owned company also recently started cracking down on ad blockers by disabling the video player completely for those who use them.
The price of YouTube Premium, which offers a mix of user-generated and original content (including a ton of music), is higher than most music streaming services, but lower than your typical video streaming service. Spotify, for example, starts at $9.99 per month, while Netflix's ad-free tier starts at $15.49 per month.
While YouTube Premium provides access to YouTube's entire catalog, you can still only subscribe to YouTube Music Premium. The price for that service, however, has also increased, and is now $10.99 per month (instead of $9.99).
via Zero Tech Blog