Google is raising prices on YouTube Premium (which includes YouTube Music), and it’s now going to cost you $13.99 per month, or $139.99 per year in the US. That’s a $2 per month increase, or $20/year increase depending on your plan.
In addition to that, YouTube Music is also getting a price bump from $9.99 to $10.99 per month. This is only for those that subscribe to only YouTube Music.
It was only a matter of time before the individual YouTube Premium plan went up, after the family plan got a pretty substantial increase late last year.
While Google has not yet mentioned when existing users will see this price increase, new users are already seeing this when signing up. It’s likely that the price increase will be made apparent on your next billing cycle. If you are a Google Fi subscriber and get YouTube Premium included, it will remain included. Remember that is only for a year, so for most people, that will end in November.
Despite the price increase, you’re still going to keep YouTube Premium
And you want to know why? Because Google is cracking down on ad-blockers, and ads on YouTube are just ridiculous now. There’s a reason that Google offers a 1-month free trial for new users (and a lot of Android OEMs offer 3-month or 6-month free trials with purchase). That gets you sucked into not seeing ads, so when the trial is over, you opt to pay for it so you don’t need to see those ads.
Even at $14 per month, it’s still a pretty good deal. Since you’re getting YouTube Music, which is a $10 (now $11) value already. So you’re basically paying $3 more for ad-free YouTube, downloads, background playback and a few other features. Honestly, even with this price increase, it’s still a much better deal than Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music. So it’s unlikely that Google will lose any YouTube Premium subscribers here.
