YouTube Is Majorly Raising Prices Right Before Thanksgiving
On November 21st, YouTube Premium will raise its family subscription plan rates from $17.99 to $22.99.
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YouTube is raising monthly fees on its family subscription plan, Deadline reports. The increase starts on November 21, 2022, and will raise the price from $17.99 per month to $22.99. The increase will be applied just before Thanksgiving as many wonder whether they will be able to celebrate the holiday, or the ones that will follow.
YouTube made the announcement yesterday by emailing subscribers, who took to social media to express their opinions about the news. The family subscription allows access to exclusive content for up to six users. Individual plans, which are currently $11.99, are not affected by the increase, but subscriptions that are made through the Apple Store will increase to $29.99.
The YouTube increase is the latest in a spate of streaming services that have announced a rise in the price of their monthly subscriptions. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ also recently announced increases in their fees, with Netflix now charging a fee to share passwords and Prime applying their rate increase in March 2022. As streaming becomes more competitive, various services are responding by raising prices, clamping down on security, and securing exclusive rights to various properties that no one else has.
YouTube Premium gives users access to ad-free videos, YouTube Originals content, and YouTube Music. The Google-owned company also allows subscribers to watch videos offline or picture-in-picture. YouTube Music allows Premium users to download songs, listen to content without playing the video, and play music while using other apps.
YouTube is famous for allowing users to create and post their own content, as well as monetize that content to earn from it. Users of the free service often have to contend with numerous commercials before they can watch videos, as well as interruption of longer videos by ads in the middle of scenes. YouTube announced that its Premium and Music services have over 50 million subscribers who bypass the ads as part of their monthly payments.
The Google site has come under fire in the past for some of its other features. YouTube disabled its Dislikes visibility so that only the user posting the content could see how many people downvoted a video. The site has also been accused of exposing kids to inappropriate content and radicalizing people for various political causes.
However, the site has also made the fortunes of many new players in the industry. YouTube singer and musician Jonathan Young has performed alongside the original performers of some of his song covers, and science-fiction darling Felicia Day started out with the popular web series The Guild, which built its following by releasing its episodes on YouTube.
How the YouTube premium price increase affects viewership remains to be seen. The elimination of ads from the viewing experience and the ability to use the service offline may not be enough to keep the subscription element sustained in the face of so many other services. As more streamers raise their prices, there is also a question of which services viewers prioritize, and whether YouTube Premium is significant enough for cord-cutters to continue to keep.
