YouTube is expanding its YouTube Premium Lite subscription service, which gives you ad-fre YouTube but without the added YouTube Music service and other features. It started in Thailand, Germany, and Australia, and now it’s available in the United States and will come to other countries soon.
This new YouTube Premium Lite lets you watch most videos without ads for a monthly fee of $7.99. The Premium Lite subscription noticeably cheaper than the full YouTube Premium subscription, which costs $13.99 a month. The main difference is in the features. Premium Lite removes ads from most videos, but music videos and music-related content will still have ads. Also, Premium Lite users won’t be able to use features with the full Premium plan, like downloading videos for offline viewing, playing videos in the background, or watching music videos without ads.
YouTube likely wants to get more users and boost earnings by offering a more affordable option. This new tier is meant to draw in people who might have avoided signing up for a premium service because it was too expensive. This is a much easier sell to people using content blockers: now you can block (most) ads while still supporting your favorite creators and channels, without YouTube also forcing you to pay for a music streaming service you might not want.
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I would definitely consider using YouTube Premium Lite if it removed all ads and did nothing else. I only pay for YouTube Premium because I don’t want to see ads or have them play when I’m using it on my phone or TV. I could not care less about the other benefits that are offered on Premium. Unfortunately, Lite still gives you ads while listening to music, which feels like a huge letdown.
The testing phase for Premium Lite was where the company tried to find the right mix of features and prices for viewers wanting to watch videos without ads. The testing went over categories like gaming, comedy, cooking, and education. According to YouTube, the YouTube Premium plan is still the best option for those who want an ad-free experience for all YouTube videos, including music, plus extra perks like downloading videos to watch offline and playing them in the background.
The best feature of the above is playing videos in the background. That’s another great part of Premium that isn’t talked about a lot. This used to be done through your phone settings but is now an extra feature that you can only use if you pay a subscription fee. Background play and ad removal are the two biggest selling points of YouTube Premium, which explains why Premium Lite has the features it does.
If YouTube gave everyone the best features for a lower price, everyone would switch over. I could even sacrifice background play for the lack of ads, but this way, YouTube can get people who may not use YouTube enough to pay a lot while keeping everyone that does use YouTube a lot in their tiers. It’s a smart way to get more subscribers instead of losing them.
YouTube stated in its announcement that more people are now watching videos on TVs than on mobile devices or computers. This ad-free option might appeal to viewers who just want to use the service to watch their regular videos on their TV. Anyone who listens to their phone on Bluetooth while driving would have to deal with the ads.
You can sign up for YouTube Premium Lite and other subscriptions from the YouTube website.
Source: YouTube, TechCrunch
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