YouTube has spontaneously announced that they will be increasing the price of their Premium Family plan. But unlike other streaming video platforms where the increases are by around $1, YouTube plans to charge an extra $5 to users under the shared subscription model.
As of this writing, YouTube’s premium family plan cost $17.99 a month, allowing five family members can watch videos without ads, download their favorite content, and have access to YouTube Music Premium. YouTube emailed users about the pending changes, and revealed that users will be charged $22.99 a month during their next billing cycle. What’s worse is that Apple users will be charged more, paying $12 extra.
These changes did not please current YouTube subscription holders as they compared the prices to something similar to Netflix. Others on social media expressed outrage and called YouTube greedy due to the massive price hike. Meanwhile, others began cancelling their their subscriptions as the new cost is too much for them.
Recently, YouTube has experimented with some of its features to find ways to earn more revenue for the platform. One controversial experiment was when the platform increased the number of ads seen before the video from 2 to 10. Another was their recent announcement about locking 4K settings behind a YouTube Premium paywall but they later reversed that decision.
The new subscription price for YouTube’s premium family plan will begin on Nov. 21, 2022. YouTube didn’t announce any changes to its single-user subscription plan and will remain at $11.99 per month.