[PebblesHD]

A premium-lite offering is what’s missing for me to subscribe. The Australia cost of premium is at least $21.99 and there’s no opt out for the music offering which I will never use, making it bad value compared to an ad blocker.

About $12 is all I’m willing to spend per month given the much lower content consumption compared to even prime video for me, and that includes Amazon prime for about $12 anyway.

I bring this up because the article mentions Youtube seems to have killed that off, which I suspect will drive more ad blocker usage rather than more people switching to full premium.

[pja]

I wonder if there's a good reason why Google doesn't offer a subscription option for YouTube alone? They tried it once (YouTube Red) some time ago & dropped it fairly quickly.

Totally uninformed speculation: maybe they found that it was their most profitable viewers that were paying for YT Red? Which in turn would mean that any subscription program would be a net loss over relying on ads for income.

You could just say "charge more" of course, but maybe that higher charge is more than those customers are actually willing to pay for YouTube?

Which in turn would mean that ads will always be more profitable than subscriptions for Google.

In this model YouTube Premium, which includes Music, might be sufficiently expensive that it ends up profitable overall thanks to the bundling of YT & Music together.

[ThatPlayer]

It could be an agreement with the music labels because plenty of people will use YouTube for music even without using the separate youtube music webpage or app.

[pja]

Yes, good point: that could also be a good (legal) reason for the bundling of YT Music with no-ads YouTube.

[TheSeeker11]

Australian pricing is $14.99 per month for an individual subscription or $22.99 per month for a family subscription (I subscribe to the latter). Well worth it.

[ulfw]

I think what is well worth it is for the individual to decide.

[TheSeeker11]

I agree.

[PebblesHD]

Ahh so they’ve decided to charge $20 for premium as an iCloud subscription just because somehow the near-trillion-dollar company can’t absorb a cost of doing business in terms of payment processing.

Even at $15 it’s still by far the most expensive service I’d be paying for, and I only watch an hour or two a month, so it represents pretty awful value for me. It may be different for you.