YouTube Tests Cheaper 'Premium Lite' Subscription for Ad-Free Viewing

[MacBH928]

As a Google hater I must say, the Premium price is more than fair. Come on guys, you get infinite stream lighting fast loading videos supported by apps available on all forms of devices and operating systems. Either watch the ads or pay for it. Trust me an ad-free video experience is liberating. Its especially worth it when you get the family package for you and your whole family to benefit from. Hopefully if this succeeds, it will point more companies towards the money-for-product business model over the privacy-for-product business model.

I know Google will still invade your privacy even if you pay them, so to keep things fair, I subscribe to Premium but watch the service on other means where my privacy is insured. This new lite version will make them even less money because I do not download videos and I do not understand background playback for a video service so I will be saving money too!

 

[Razorpit]

As long as they are censoring, I’m not buying.

 

[MacBH928]

Is there a way to block ads in Safari? Or is Brave/Firefox the only way to avoid YT ads?

To block ads and telemetry on Safari there are 2 services I may recommand.

1) 1Blockr: They have subscription and license model. $15/year and $40-lifetime. You can try for free, they have iOS and MacOS apps and I am not sure if 1 subscription covers both or you need 1 for each.

2):Adguard for Safari". You can download it off the app store and is free and open source AFAIK.

You might wonder why pay for something when a free alternative exists?! Out of philosophy. Supporting a company that does professional work to ensure your privacy is much more responsible than waiting for someone to do it for free. Also their apps and services look much nice and have more options than just to block ads. I believe they have an option to block ads on all your iOS apps not just Safari by activating a firewall. Then there is the elephant in the room which is that 1Blockr is not open source which immediately gives advantage to Adguard.

The choice is yours.

 

[Ahmamies]

As a Google hater I must say, the Premium price is more than fair. Come on guys, you get infinite stream lighting fast loading videos supported by apps available on all forms of devices and operating systems. Either watch the ads or pay for it. Trust me an ad-free video experience is liberating. Its especially worth it when you get the family package for you and your whole family to benefit from. Hopefully if this succeeds, it will point more companies towards the money-for-product business model over the privacy-for-product business model.

I know Google will still invade your privacy even if you pay them, so to keep things fair, I subscribe to Premium but watch the service on other means where my privacy is insured. This new lite version will make them even less money because I do not download videos and I do not understand background playback for a video service so I will be saving money too!

I noticed yesterday that the Google account I use for YT had a two months free Premium offer. Perfect timing as now I can test the ad free experience before the Premium Lite appears as an option.

You are so right about the ad free experience! It feels so liberating. I know it has only been one night but I don’t know if I can ever go back to normal. (I watch YT almost exclusively from the AppleTV).

 

[MacBH928]

Or you just „fly“ to Turkey and pay less than a cheese burger for the premium subscription ?.
Premium Lite. What a stupid name.

by the way, how does Google still get away with a more expensive subscription price via Apple IAP? I thought this wasn’t allowed and that’s why Netflix stopped signing up from iOS all together

I think you can have 2 or more different prices for subscription but you can't advertise that it is cheaper on the site or elsewhere. Netflix wants to save the 30% probably and do not want to send the idea that Netflix costs more than $10/m so they stopped in app subscription altogether.

I think the YouTube price is fair at least for me given how heavily I use it, once you view videos without ads and then go back you will realise how much its worth it. There are other means to watch YouTube ad-less but not sure if that is legal or not.

As long as they are censoring, I’m not buying.

Every one is censoring what they don't like, even those who claim to support democracy, freedom of speech, and representing everyone. Twitter censored the president of the USA! Even Mastodon censors specific servers they don't like I even saw one Mastodon client that will not allow you to view specific servers they do not like/agree with. Mastodon is a FOSS software/service alternative to Twitter. No ads!

If you are looking for YouTube alternative, a real one does not exists but there are few options:
Odysee.com , Theta.tv , joinpeertube.org, DailyMotion, BitChute.com , Vimeo...

 

[Pastuh]

To block ads and telemetry on Safari there are 2 services I may recommand.

1) 1Blockr: They have subscription and license model. $15/year and $40-lifetime. You can try for free, they have iOS and MacOS apps and I am not sure if 1 subscription covers both or you need 1 for each.

2):Adguard for Safari". You can download it off the app store and is free and open source AFAIK.

You might wonder why pay for something when a free alternative exists?! Out of philosophy. Supporting a company that does professional work to ensure your privacy is much more responsible than waiting for someone to do it for free. Also their apps and services look much nice and have more options than just to block ads. I believe they have an option to block ads on all your iOS apps not just Safari by activating a firewall. Then there is the elephant in the room which is that 1Blockr is not open source which immediately gives advantage to Adguard.

The choice is yours.

Of the two, which do you personally use or found most effective against the YT ads? I thought I tried Adguard for Safari a few weeks back but it seemed to either crash YT with error message or ads still came through. Will give it another try. Curious to try 1Blockr too.

I personally wish Apple would allow Safari to have uBlock Origin.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I don’t mind all of the YouTube features (ad free, background playback, downloads). I just wish they would release a cheaper version that doesn’t include YouTube music. I have no use for another streaming subscription as I already subscribe to Apple Music. On top of that YouTube music is rubbish. Google play music was much better.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Unfortunately, you can’t put Brave browser on a smart TV, not even an Apple TV.

What about an android based TV. You can side load pretty much whatever you want.

 

[mrr]

Would like only to get rid of ads but the current subscription cost is really excessive.

 

[ds2000]

Just use brave, its ad-free then
I'd pay 6.99 for premium.

 

[iDento]

What about an android based TV. You can side load pretty much whatever you want.

This works, if only I have an Android TV. The best solution I can think of is if there is a jailbrake for Apple TV 4K that allows me to sideload Brave.

 

[redheeler]

Is it just me that really has an issue with YouTube charging extra for background playback, which is essentially an operating system feature, not an app feature?

You're not the only one. I basically refuse to pay for YouTube until they make this a standard feature. In my mind a good free product is what makes it worthwhile to pay.

 

[poked]

Is there a way to block ads in Safari? Or is Brave/Firefox the only way to avoid YT ads?

Brave/Chrome/Firefox are the best ones. I personally suggest chrome, but that’s because I think it has the best add on support of the three.
Only premium thing that would be nice on iOS is the playback while out of the app, but most people don’t use youtube on a tiny device. It’s either you get an adblocker or you pay. I don’t think youtube having a “poor QOL creating a problem selling a solution” type of revenue is anything but scummy, though.