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YouTube's More Affordable Premium Lite Plan Gets New Perks

MacRumors said:
YouTube says that background play and downloads are rolling out to Premium Lite subscribers starting today, but it may take a few weeks for everyone to get access to the new features.
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What does this mean? If you’re a paying subscriber it’s a mystery when you’ll get the new features? It’s not just a flipped switch for all?
 
Okay, after reading all of the praise here, I signed up for 3 months of Premium for free followed by $13.99 a month. Going to give it a shot and see how awesome it is!

I did read the fine print on the new Lite plan and “mostly ad free” says that you can still get ads on searches and while browsing suggestions. (In addition to Shorts and Music.) So I went with Premium. If I am paying for no ads, I want no ads.
 
Rayansb said:
Probably the only subscription where I feel I'm getting the most value for my money is YouTube Premium. Nothing comes even close. I just hope we're not in the honeymoon phase and then they go for the kill like most subscription services do.
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They will. They always do.
 
Bryan Bowler said:
Okay, there are a lot of smart people on here and you’re sparking my interest. I don’t subscribe to YT. Help me to understand why it’s worth it.

Here’s my use-case: I watch YT fairly often, following about 7-8 channels regularly and surfing random videos another 1-3 hours a week. I do not use Music at all on YT and doubt I ever will. I’ve dialed in Apple Music for my music needs. I do have 1-4 hours a week in which I am completely removed from the internet and could easily watch my subscribed YT videos off-line if it were available to me.

What will YT LIte or YT Premium do for me?
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There is usually a free 1 month trial period for a yearly subscription to see if it’s worth it to you. Just make sure you don’t do it through the iOS app. You’ll pay too much. Buy it via the google/youtube website. The Premium works out to $11.58/mo on a yearly subscription.
 
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jole said:
I would pay extra to disable shorts. Their existence makes YouTube insufferable.
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I just want a way to filter out the following:
  • Shorts
  • Anything narrated by AI
  • Anything that features a human narrator talking over stock footage
  • Videos below a certain resolution
  • Videos tagged as Members Only when I am not a member of a specific channel
 
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Perfect for me, background play rolled out for my iPad yesterday. Premium Lite is £7.99 for me, I use YT as my on,y video content source so removing the ads saves me so much time, now that I can browse, answer messages etc without stopping the video I’ll save even more time.
 
punkwood said:
It is striking to me that people are paying money to be in front of their computers more often.

That is antithetical to how I want to use my time, but perhaps that’s an aging thing. In any event, when I do watch YouTube I find that the free experience allows me to watch whatever I need.
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Well no, I’m paying for Lite so I’m spending less time watching the same amount of videos on my iPad. With zero ads combined with background playing back I’ve saving a good chunk of time, last week I watched 14 hours. If you only watched say an hour a week paying the £7.99 for Lite might not be worthwhile.
 
one more said:
This is not a “cheaper plan”, as it is missing too many regular Premium features. Google are just messing with our brains.
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Messing with out brains?, it’s not difficult to look at what the service offers and what it doesn’t is it now.

Lite is ideal for someone like me with just wants to get rid of the ads and doesn’t listen to streamed music.
 
I used to watch the ads because I thought it was worth the penny for the channel I was watching, but Youtube became unbearable.
Use a browser that blocks everything and just support with patreon and use links that support the channel.
 
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Will check it up once the Premium Lite comes to Northern Europe (not arrived yet) probably to much snow to get through ❄️😉
But might be good for me. I never download and don’t use YouTube Music either.
 
I just use YouTube and Reddit on mobile Safari these days and a few extensions.

No ads anywhere and apart from download I have all the ‘premium’ stuff for free.
 
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Cloysterpeteuk said:
Messing with out brains?, it’s not difficult to look at what the service offers and what it doesn’t is it now.

Lite is ideal for someone like me with just wants to get rid of the ads and doesn’t listen to streamed music.
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In US if YT offered an annual Lite plan then it would be a good deal. Difference of $44/year for far less isn’t a deal to me. The uncontrolled AI slop is why I let my annual plan expire.
 
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jole said:
I would pay extra to disable shorts. Their existence makes YouTube insufferable.
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I've not see a YT short in years - there's a Safari extension that completely hides Shorts and it's amazing. Actually, I use several YT extensions to make YT better for me:

Shorts Blocker
SponsorBlock
DeArrow

That last one is just amazing in that it makes the YT page not look so cringy [it gets rid of creator thumbnails, but has tons of options].
 
ooh456 said:
This. Shorts are essentially lowest common denominator trash— basically just spam and ads under another name. Why the hell can't I turn them off? I hope the EU makes them illegal.
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Not annoying enough to move to Europe for, but certainly a valid addition to the list of reasons.
 
turbineseaplane said:
The very first sentence of this article

YouTube today updated its Premium Lite subscription plan with new features, including background play and downloads.
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Maybe it is the US only, in France it is still crippled as below:

IMG_4716.jpeg
 
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Bryan Bowler said:
Okay, there are a lot of smart people on here and you’re sparking my interest. I don’t subscribe to YT. Help me to understand why it’s worth it.

Here’s my use-case: I watch YT fairly often, following about 7-8 channels regularly and surfing random videos another 1-3 hours a week. I do not use Music at all on YT and doubt I ever will. I’ve dialed in Apple Music for my music needs. I do have 1-4 hours a week in which I am completely removed from the internet and could easily watch my subscribed YT videos off-line if it were available to me.

What will YT LIte or YT Premium do for me?
Click to expand...

I wanted to follow-up on my post above. I went ahead and subscribed to YT Premium and after using it a for a few days, I now understand why there is so much love for it here amongst us. I gotta admit: it is very, very nice getting right to the content you want to see with no ads or interruptions. I also used to to intelligently fast-forward past some in-video creator ads and it worked perfectly. And then I downloaded 6 videos to watch at a time in which I knew I would be without internet connectivity.

Two thumbs up. I’m sold! Thank you everyone for posting your thoughts here…
 
I see everyone referencing a $7.99 (US) per month price for the Premium Lite subscription but I’m only seeing it for $8.99 on the YouTube website. Has there been a price increase already?
IMG_0576.jpeg
 
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