YouTube Premium Price Hike

YouTube announced that it is increasing the price for its YouTube Premium service. This service is both a streaming music service and a mafia-like service where, as a subscriber, they promise to not show you ads in exchange for “protection” money. I’m personally a subscriber and pay the “protection” fee so I don’t see ads. I don’t personally care much at all about the music service.

The price hike appears to be global and substantial in some countries. I am in the United States and my service fee will rise about 44%, while other people around the world are reporting an increase of several hundred percent.

If music is the reason you subscribe, perhaps a service like Spotify or Amazon Music makes more sense. Alternatively, just buy MP3s from Amazon.

If “no ads” is the reason you subscribe, both Brave and Vivaldi will block YouTube ads. The uBlock Origin extension will also block ads presently, but there have been some concerns raised that Google plans to make changes soon that will make it impossible for that extension to perform this function. (This is related to “Manifest v3.”)

On Android, an alternative for viewing YouTube videos without seeing ads is NewPipe.