Joe Maring / Android Authority
I’ve been a YouTube Premium subscriber for nearly four years now, ever since the service rolled out to Lebanon when I was living back there. My family membership started out as a “let’s try and see if we use this enough to justify it,” and eventually became the most logical and indispensable subscription our household has. Having no ads on all our phones, tablets, computers, and the TV when we plop down to catch a video at the end of the day is a huge perk, and I’m reminded of that each time I have to suffer through non-Premium YouTube at a friend’s place or an Airbnb.
But that’s just the thing. I care about ad removal and giving back to the community of creators whose work I follow and enjoy; I don’t care about any of the other YouTube perks. So when YouTube announced its Premium Lite subscription, it seemed tailor-made for me, except that it isn’t because of an obstacle on the way.
Would you pay for YouTube Premium Lite if it had a family-friendly pricing tier?
6 votes
I just don’t use the other YouTube Premium benefits
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
The screenshot above, taken from YouTube on my phone, should give you a glimpse into my most-used Premium benefits. I never play videos in the background. If I’m watching YouTube, then I’m watching it, at least through a floating window on my screen, if not full screen. There’s no background play because I don’t use YouTube for music listening, and I was never a music video kind of person. Yes, I’ll enjoy one every now and then, but music has always been an aural experience for me, save for concerts.
Which brings me to YouTube Music. I understand it’s an economic waste to pay for a Spotify Duo subscription when my husband and I already pay for a YouTube Premium plan, but what can I say? I have a love-hate relationship with Spotify, which is veering more toward a Stockholm Syndrome at this point. Spotify Connect has me tied up — YouTube Music can’t even come close to this level of synchronicity between my iMac, Android phones, Pixel Watch, and Nest Hubs. And the community-made playlists keep me happily rooted there.
I don’t watch videos in the background or offline, and I don’t use YouTube Music. All I care about is ad removal and Premium Lite is that.
And finally, I really rarely watch offline videos. If I’m traveling, I usually go the podcast or music route, preferring to shut my eyes and semi-doze until I reach my destination. It’s only during very long trips, which happen once every two years or so, that I make sure I have a few videos queued up for offline viewing. 41 videos over the course of four years is hardly a perk or a requirement, though, and I could live without this if it meant saving me a few bucks.
Which means that I really, really only need the ad-free experience of YouTube Premium. And now, Google has given that a name and a price: $8 a month for Premium Lite. Nearly half the $14 regular Premium subscription price. My colleague Joe Maring tried out Premium Lite recently and found it excellent for his needs. Sounds perfect for me, too, right?
Taking out the family means Premium Lite is not a good deal
Joe Maring / Android Authority
The biggest dealbreaker for me with Premium Lite is that it’s an individual subscription. No family plan means my husband and I would need to buy separate memberships, plus a third one for the joint Google account where we keep our common subscriptions, favorite channels, and shared hobbies in order.
Three Premium Lite subscriptions would cost more than a full YouTube Premium family plan ($24 versus $23), and take away all the other perks. Sure, I don’t use those enough, but why pay more when I can have more features for a dollar less, and keep those perks for the odd long trip or a rainy day? It makes no sense.
Paying $1 more to get a lesser YouTube subscription for three accounts doesn’t make sense.
Premium also gives me early access to experimental YouTube features (found at youtube.com/new), which wouldn’t mean much for regular users, but does help me stay on top of Google’s progress as a tech writer. I’d let those go if I could save a few bucks a month, but once again, I wouldn’t choose to pay more and lose them.
What I’d really like is for Google to offer a pared-down YouTube Premium Lite Family subscription. Make it $15 or so, and let families enjoy the beauty of an ad-free YouTube experience at an affordable price. At least that’s a better way to entice freeloaders to join the paid fray than irritating them with interminable and more frequent ads, or by making their ad-blocker experience a hellish adventure. And it has the benefit of paying up good creators, too.
On paper, getting less money shouldn’t be a sound business strategy for Google, but I’ve seen enough comments on Reddit and here, on Android Authority, to realize that people are cheap stakes, even if they use a service several hours every day. (What annoys me isn’t the refusal to pay Google, it’s the arrogance of thinking channels and creators don’t deserve to see a bit of money for their effort.) A cheaper ad-free family plan may not win over the hardcore “Vanced or die” or “ad-blockers for lyf” crowd, but if some of the more undecided stragglers do the math and see that $2.5 per person for a six-member plan (or $5 for three people) is an acceptable price to stop fighting the neverending ad mayhem, then it’d be a winning bet for Google. That’s my hope, at least.
