this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023

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638

YouTube Premium family plan price update ($17.99/month -> $32.99/month!) (aussie.zone)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

164 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So this is some bollocks. Guess I'll be cancelling our plan since it's only used by two of us.

Current price $17.99/month, new price $32.99/month.

If they boiled the frog better I would probably have accepted a $5/month price rise, and then another later... But close to doubling in one go is a no from me dawg.

Thank you for being a loyal member throughout our journey. We created YouTube Premium so that you could enjoy all the videos and music you love without interruptions.‌

To continue delivering great service and features, we are increasing the YouTube Premium family plan price to A$32.99/month. We don't make these decisions lightly, and this update will allow us to continue to improve YouTube Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube. This is the first ever price increase for your subscription.

Links to cancellation etc: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12400348?sjid=6028684095030617608-AP

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[–] Why9 131 points 8 months ago (4 children)

$400 a year for YouTube premium.

I'd gladly pay that much for a robust ad blocker!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

At this point, everyone should invest a fraction of that into automating youtube downloads. No ads, no buffering, and $200 will get you eniugh hard drive space for years.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 8 months ago (13 children)

Got the same bullshit email, total dick move by Google and I'll be cancelling. It's just pure greed.

I'm be exploring the ad blocking and/or VPN options.

Google need to separate YouTube and Music.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

https://revanced.app

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Well aware of those apps, installed that yesterday on my phone and Smarttube on the media player, could still end up blocked by Google.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Jesus, how do they justify that price?

They charge more than Netflix yet they don't even make any of their own content?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It's because you also get youtube music streaming included with it. If netflix had its own music streaming service bundled in their prices would be even higher than they are now.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm always amaze by the fact that all these streaming platform do is give you access to others content ( they dont create shit), but they get to keep 98.7% of the revenue, because.

[–] Rednax 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

I will not justify the price increase of this post, but the high margins kinda do make sense to me.

The average profit that youtube makes on a gigabyte worth of video data, is much much lower than that 98.7%. There is such a vast amount of random crap being uploaded, that the content creators that actually generate views, hence revenue, must bear a huge sinkhole of costs for youtube. The same holds for Twitch: streams with only a handfull of watchers cost Twitch money. But it is a double edged sword. Because the reason these content creators are as big as they are, is because they could start from nothing, and upload for free. The big guys support vast amounts of amateurs trying to become big. It is probably one of the most socialistic models we have in our current capitalistic market.

That being said: Youtube is getting shittier in an attempt to sqeeze this model for extra profit.

[–] cjsolx 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

There is such a vast amount of random crap being uploaded, that the content creators that actually generate views, hence revenue, must bear a huge sinkhole of costs for youtube.

There are better ways around this than by doubling the price for everyone and continuing to allow unlimited BS uploads for free. They charge $1.99 for 100GB of storage for email and photos. I guess it never occurred to them to include a minor barrier like this that most legitimate aspiring content creators would be willing to pay but would stop randos posting 10 hour long videos in 4K.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

I'm curious what's driving this revenue rush at Alphabet. It almost feels like something internal, like they're trying to make it actually self sufficient based on cloud pricing.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It’s not just Alphabet it’s cloud based companies across the board and basically VC money is drying up because it can be secured on 0% interest loans anymore

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's happening across a lot of industries, especially tech. During covid line went up very fast. Post-covid line stopped going up fast, but companies are desperate to keep it going up fast. Otherwise it would count as a slowdown in year-on-year growth and we can never ever have that (/s).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Companies then: Let's make money!

Companies now: Let's make more money faster! Our graph of profit must concave up!

Companies 100 years from now: Let's increase the rate at which the rate at which our growth in profit increases increases!

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's times like these when I'm glad I refused to even log into Google to view YouTube, let alone buy subscriptions. I also refuse to view downloading content (without logging in) that's freely available to be viewed as piracy.

These subscriptions are undoubtedly a rip-off. For those saying creators get a "cut", there's a reason why sites like Patreon exist. It's substantially better for creators if you subscribe to them directly that way and get your videos from Patreon. Same with Nebula etc. If I really had to pay then I'd do that (and do already for some stuff that was never on YouTube anyway).

You can get enough subs for the price of a YT premium to get plenty of content to watch, even if you don't want to subvert Google. So there's zero reason to throw money at them for this. None at all.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

I am not saying I like YouTube, but they are actually one of the best when it comes to paying their creators.

Pretty much every popular creator from other platforms (like tiktok) goes to YouTube once they are big and want to earn money.

And yes of course they earn more on Patreon, but if I recall correctly most YouTubers get most of their money from YouTube, because they have their biggest audience.

De-monitisation is a pretty huge problem for many though.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I can't blame them. The fight to block adblockers is an expensive one, and they went all in on the fight. /s

Asshats.

E: adding the sarcasm mark, in case it wasn't obvious.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (6 children)

For reference this is about $20 USD

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Revanced project, smart YouTubeTV and/or Smart YouTubeNext, ublock origin, and xManager for Spotify.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (6 children)

People saying I'll cancel will not cancel. I've seen so many corp simps in the last few years that I lost faith in humanity

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

Enshittification of youtube is definitely progressing very rapidly.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

All prices seem to be going up around the board. I just got an email saying my Turkish Family Plan (via VPN) is increasing from TRY ₺59.99 to TRY ₺115.99. That's $3.29 to $6.36.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

nearly double the price for the same thing! this after disney raised prices, max downgraded service and kept prices the same, and disney is about to finish buying out hulu in order to, I'm sure, raise prices. Yarr!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Personally, I'm a fan of

Piped for browser
SmartTube for android app/android TV

For those who must have the official paid version, keep an eye on Ozbargain Youtube.

Free trials and/or VPN + subscribe overseas for a fraction of the price, eg Individual has been $2.34 a month via India, A$2.30 via Turkey

(this is before any potential price increases in those countries)

[–] Treczoks 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What is the benefit of "Youtube Premium", anyway? Is that just Youtube without ads?

[–] Evotech 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And YouTube music

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (14 children)

Well... I guess it helps creators at least.

Unless youtube changes their cut

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Does this mean that for people who don't pay they're going to make the ads twice as annoying?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Yea it's a pretty crazy increase. time to VPN up and move the family plan to india or turkey.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

We will own nothing, don't pay, sail the seas mate.

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[–] OscarRobin 9 points 8 months ago

I got the same email. I will be cancelling when the """grace period""" ends.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

I didn’t buy it in the first place because it was too expensive, this only further cements my never buying it.

Happily had Spotify for over a decade now and no issues paying a reasonable price there.

[–] Thermal_shocked 9 points 8 months ago

Change your VPN to turkey, login via incognito, buy premium for $4 a month. Price was just under $3 before raise.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It costs so much more to get the packets across the ocean, right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (6 children)

November last year the plan in CAD went from $17.99 to $22.99 a month, I took that because.i get a lot of use out of it. I haven't got an email yet but $46 a month will get it cancelled.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (11 children)

selfhost jellyfin
automatically download youtube videos based on a txt file with channel urls
redirect youtube links to invidious for all other use case.
never directly visit the youtube site ever again, depending on other service you use, no longer need a google account.
no profit cause i never paid a dime but no regrets either.

[–] Evotech 10 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Lmao, that's not gonna fly with my wife.

The only reason I got premium is because she uses YouTube quite a bit and I'd rather pay than her having to deal with ads all day

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[+] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (9 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I'm never going to shed any tears for Google losing revenue, and I've got no issues with people using adblockers etc. That said, I think saying that not being able to understand why people pay for it risks being a bit narrow minded.

Paying for things that you use shouldn't be seen as some abherrent action. If you watch an hour of YouTube a day on average that's still less than a buck an hour even with the price hike. I imagine some folks also like the convenience of being able to just use the official aps without fucking around, particularly if they have iPhones.

Pay for premium, or watch ads, or get into the ad-avoidance arms race, or stop using YouTube. It doesn't bother me which one people choose. But this opinion that some folks seem to have that they are for some reason entitled to gratis, ad-free video streaming is so bizarre.

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[–] Sydius 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I watch a large, large amount of content on YouTube. For me, it's easily worth it, but I also have to mention that I used a VPN to subscribe in a country where the prices are cheaper, and most likely would not pay the "real" price.

This also means that I have no real idea about the current ad situation.

Still, I know how expensive hosting gets, and there are no real alternatives to Google. Amazon and Microsoft can do it, but even if they launch a service, they need creators on it, and, more importantly, they need users. YouTube had more than a decade to establish itself. Any new platform needs a few years to get users, and it will lose money every second of that time.

You have your smaller platforms, but they need to survive as well, and not everyone is willing to pay a monthly price to access it. Nebula lives as long as there are users willing to pay for it. Floatplane requires a subscription as well. Both platforms only host a limited number of creators.

In the video hosting business, unfortunately, there are no bad guys. I can understand why no one wants to watch the same 30 second long ads, 3-4 at a time, 2 times a video. I also understand the platforms that want to survive, and make a profit. Unfortunately, adblocks, as much as necessary, are the cause of the problem as well.

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