YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14.
Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.
It is morally correct to adblock youtube.
Or just not watch.
Not watching has a much better moral argument.
Yup. But people would rather just carp on about Revanced and Insidious or whatever, as if everyone has the time to and the inclination to set that up.
Meanwhile, everyone else will piss and moan for a month, then pay up and keep watching.
Wouldnt that just cause them to increase prices more? Since now someone else has to pay for the bandwith you use?
Thus what you are doing is using your technological know how to offload your costs onto less technical users who can’t adblock.
The morally correct thing to do is to stop watching youtube and/pr go to a paid platform that’s an alternative, like floatplane or nebula and support the creators there, isn’t it? But let’s be honest, we all know you just want adfree youtube videos for free.
You think YouTube is some kind of Mom pop shop down the block? They have more than enough money to burn. Least they can do is to serve adfree videos, better, I might add.
Thus what you are doing is using your technological know how to offload your costs onto less technical users who can’t adblock.
Which is the reason why we should help people get adblocks more, which is also recommended by the FBI.
I’m ok with all of that. It furthers my goal of hitting the platform back in response to their predatory marketing practices and de facto monopoly. Also, I do support creators outside of youtube. In short, I don’t feel bad about any of this.
Prepare for the downvotes!
The Peertube protocol developers should develop a central hub webpage space for newcomers, allow accounts there to follow all channels in every instance (and to only follow and block specific instances too), and then develop apps for smart tvs. It’s the only realistic FOSS alternative to Youtube i can think of, and i dont know why the first point is still non existent (having already subscribed to several channels in 3 instances using separate accounts).
Been paying for years now, got a 50% price hike. Canceled on the spot. I like the creators,I follow, but recommendations have sacked for me for several months now anyway.
Any advice for streaming ad free on Chromecast or Samsung tv?
smarttube on tv
Revanced
Does that work for YouTube on smart TV?
Unfortunately not
And this is what happens cause the vast mayority of people don’t give a rats ass as long as they can consume
Welcome to the monopoly
Yup. People will whinge, moan, and pay up. Same with Netflix.
feel sorry for MFs who dont know Revanced
Unless the backlash is a huge percentage of users immediately stop using the service, they won’t care. They already calculated how many users they’d lose and how much more profit they get to bring in off of those who decide to stay.
Funny, I still pay them my same flat fee of nada
I hadn’t realized how high it was until seeing this and canceled mine.
just cancel all subscriptions. None of them are worth it
So, steal everything or something else? Content isn’t free. The ad model exists, but only works if people see the ads.
If everyone blocks all ads, and doesn’t pay a subscription, how’s that work for those providing the service?
I’m not defending YouTube here, just curious what your solution is to have a service and not pay for it.
I do pay for YT family Premium in the US. I watch mostly YT, and it is my music streaming service. I definitely liked it more when it was costing me $15/mo for that and was mad when that went to $23. I even tried switching to Spotify and using ad blocking on YT. I didn’t jive with Spotify, and while ad blockers work for YT, it’s a bit of a pain installing them on TV boxes and managing subscriptions across devices, asking with which videos you’ve seen etc.
Youtube revenue in 2023 (before these price hikes) was 31.5 billion USD.
The revenue for the entirety of alphabet in 2023 was 307 billion USD.
Youtube alone generated 10% of the entire revenue of alphabet’s portfolio in 2023.
Yes, revenue is not profit, but I could not find profit figures for youtube.
Alphabet’s operating income for 2023 was 84.3 billion USD. Assuming a similar proportion of revenue to operating income (I know, hella extrapolating, but again no direct sources for youtube) that would put youtube’s operating income in the ballpark of 8 billion USD.
It’s not that they aren’t making money because people are “stealing” as you say from poor little indie company youtube. It’s just that they want more more more MORE MORE MONEY.
Because of course they do. It’s never enough.
Edit: because I forgot to link my source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204424000014/googexhibit991q42023.htm
I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).
I’d say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.
Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like YouTube, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.
Sorry if you get this a lot, but have you tried Bitwarden? It’s been a while since I compared but last I checked I found it miles better than LastPass.
Bitwarden is worth it. (Yes, I know, I should self host it. I do, but I still see it as a good deal.) Also Hetzner is a good subscription. So yes, some are worth it
Agreed:
-Bitwarden
-Storage Share
-ControlD
-Real debrid
Backblaze as well. Can’t believe they let me store 20TB of backups for $10/mo.
So, only cheap services are worth it?
Are there some expensive services that are worth it? not just that they increase their price just because.
Don’t get me wrong, I want more examples (and I am a happy subscriber of Real-Debrid for years already).
Kagi’s ultimate plan is $27.5 tax included. Easily the best subscribtion I continue to pay.
By there site its more like $120 a month?
Just do the cheap unlimited personal plan and hook up a shit load of external HDDs to your PC. I have a system where my NAS syncs to my PC which syncs to Backblaze so I can sorta hack my way into unlimited NAS backup for $10/mo.
3-2-1 backup where the primary source of data is the NAS, on site backup is desktop PC external HDDs, off site backup is Backblaze.
That’s an insanely good deal! I should move pict-rs to backblaze on my Lemmy server
Better look at B2(also from Backblaze) as well. Way cheaper than S3.
i meam the payment for a domain name is kinda worth it. as well as a functional vpn
- Firefox + uBO
- NewPipe/LibrePipe/GrayJay
- FreeTube
They all are free, no subscription required
And sorry Apple users, I don’t know what option you have cuz I don’t use Apple.
As an iPhone user I like to use YtLitePlus, it’s pretty much the same user experience as using revanced on android, maybe even a bit better. I’d like to have an alternative client such as NewPipe but hey, we can’t have everything.
Also Revanced
Freetube doesn’t seem to work anymore (for me at least) as Google went hard on blocking all invidious instances and proxies…
Change your API backend to LocalAPI in the settings. It still works that way on Freetube and Libretube
Thanks. Seems to work for now, we’ll see. Couldn’t watch anything yesterday :-/
How do you do that?
Working fine on librewolf so far.
Works fine for me
Which instance?
iOS user here, uYou++ is quite good, but only a mod for the regular YT app, not a complete alternative.
iOS/iPadOS: Safari + AdGuard (+ Vinegar (optional))
macOS: Safari + AdGuard or Firefox + uBO or FreeTube
I switched from FF to librewolf. Less convenient, more privacy, no pesky G**gle partnerships, afaict.
I use to use tubular, but it stopped working and I’m not computer savy enough to fix it. Can anyone offer some assistance please? It gets the infinite loading icon and then gives me an error
There’s the enshitification we know and love! Freetube for desktop and Tubular for mobile is how I’ve been watching YT for over a year now, and it’s great!
lol and they’ll raise prices again next year. and people will complain for a minute, then renew their sub
when is this going to stop being news?
Hello based department?
This is simply Business 101. Once you have a customer base you want to trade low-payers for high.
Did this with my computer business years ago. Woke up one day and said, “Why am I sweating these cheapskates that constantly bitch?” Fired them and kept the higher-paying, and less bitchy, clients. I was making more money for less effort and less overhead.
I don’t know what amazes me more, that people keep paying when they know the price will keep going up, or that people bitch and moan. Last I checked, YouTube access isn’t a human right. I’ll keep using it until these is no way around their ads, but I’m not paying them a dime.
YouTube has a monopoly and it’s no surprise people are frustrated, especially those who aren’t tech aware enough to continue blocking ads.
Was actually considering buying premium now that I use YouTube for music more than Spotify, but then the ad stuff happened and now this. Going to avoid it out of principle now.
Yeah I’m affected but will probably keep my subscription. Spotify has a shitty track record as well and the price difference is still worth it to enjoy ad free YouTube on the TV. I feel like it’s still a good value to be honest. But it also does suck to get squeezed.
I’ve been paying for YouTube premium and have been watching a ton of YouTube for years. But I’ve been finding myself watching less and less YouTube lately and this might be the push to finally cancel and back away some from the platform.
You gotta make up for a lack of innovation but just price gouging customers on absolutely everything. I only have Spotify because of the radio function but otherwise all of these services are absolute dog shit. They don’t offer anything new. They’ve just created a new set of moats for features, songs, videos, television and games. Eventually this system has to collapse because treating customers like employees that have no choice but to stay will lead people to innovate on piracy.
