Not a fan of YouTube ads? You’re not alone, and if you don’t want to pay $17 per month to deal with it, you’ll be able to fix it with a cheaper plan.
“Ad”, Ms 7 shouts at the screen every second or third video when we’re trying to watch a clip on YouTube. Trailer, Minecraft tip video, tornado tracking, or animal vid, she sighs a deep sigh, and knows where the mute button is on the remote, turning away and doing just about anything else.
This desperation of knowing exactly what to do when YouTube ads arrive is much like the problem of ads when many of us watched TV, only these days they come more frequently and in random spots. Kids can spot them, and know how to mute them easily enough, and parents do, too.
But if the scourge of the YouTube ad is bothering you enough to do something about it, but still not pay $16.99 per month since Google raised the prices, there does appear to be a plan in the works to deal with this frustration.
While the $17 monthly cost of YouTube Premium both cuts the ads and gets YouTube Music thrown in, that cost is still heftier than than either Spotify or Apple Music, and throws in a server you might not use if you already have Spotify, Apple Music, or some other music service.
So what is Google doing to fix this? Releasing a version of YouTube Premium sans-YouTube Music is the answer, which is logical, though one questions why Google didn’t just do this in the first place.
The answer is YouTube Premium Lite, a service that will basically be YouTube without ads, and that’s it. YouTube is even removing the background player and YouTube downloads on offer with the regular premium service, but cutting the service cost in half.
By comparison, the $8.99 monthly cost for YouTube Premium Lite will be manageable in comparison but still feels a little costly, given it’s just YouTube without ads in Australia. It’s not a streaming service in the way Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime is, but just ad-less streaming for YouTube.
Streaming service pricing is sure rising, but whether YouTube-sans-ads is worth nine bucks monthly comes down to just how much you can tolerate the ads.
The good news is that Australians will get to decide whether that’s them in the coming weeks, with Australia being part of the first few countries getting Premium Lite, just after the US, which gets the service option now.
