YouTube Premium Liteonly launched in the US two months ago, but Google is already making changes to its more affordableYouTube Premiumalternative.
YouTube has begun to email Premium Lite customers to inform them that more ads will soon be appearing on YouTube for them (viaNeowin). Right now, YouTube Premium Lite offers an ad-free experience on “most videos,” with the primary exception being music videos. At the end of June, that will reportedly be changed to also now include YouTube Shorts. Here’s the email YouTube sent out:
YouTube Premium Lite
YouTube Premium Lite removes most ads from YouTube for $8 a month.
I tested YouTube Premium Lite to see how many ads it really got rid of
YouTube Premium Lite is here, and it shocked me.
It was too good to last
Will YouTube Premium Lite get worse over time?
…what worries me is that the service isn’t even six months old in the US and YouTube is already making changes to it.
If you’re unfamiliar with YouTube Premium Lite, it’s a more affordable alternative to YouTube Premium, which offers fewer benefits. Notably, Premium Lite doesn’t include background play, offline downloads, or YouTube Music. Essentially, all YouTube Premium Lite does is lower the amount of ads users experience. If you don’t watch music content on YouTube or Shorts, for the most part, you won’t experience any ads with Premium Lite. This makes it a solid alternative for users who don’t care for any of the extra features Premium offers, and are just interested in seeing fewer ads.
Even with the changes being made, Google still says that “most videos will remain ad-free,” which is still the case. But what worries me is that the service isn’t even six months old in the US and YouTube is already making changes to it. It almost feels like its initial offering was too good to be true.
…I fear YouTube won’t be able to resist the urge to add more ads to Premium Lite in the future.
YouTube Premium Lite currently costs $8 a month in the US and YouTube Premium costs $14 a month, so it does offer quite good value if you’re looking to free yourself from the ad-infestation that YouTube has become over the past several years. However, my biggest fear is that this is just the start of the changes YouTube will make to Premium Lite over time, to entice more people to go with its more expensive Premium tier instead.
I hope I’m wrong, and this change to Premium Lite is just a simple course correction being done by YouTube, and that Premium Lite will remain the way it is now for the foreseeable future. But I fear YouTube won’t be able to resist the urge to add more ads to Premium Lite in the future, to make it less of an ad-free tier, and more of a limited ads tier.
YouTube TV keeps gaining value, but it’s just adding to my worries
YouTube TV is expanding rapidly, and that might not be a good thing.
