Grandfathered YouTube Premium users will see price increase in January

That's not what Grandfathered means. Basically, original subscribers are being forced onto a new contract.
- Ya. I was originally a Google Play music subscriber which got turned into YouTube music, for $9.99usd. Now they're increasing the cost by like $4 after December. So I moved to the spotify family plan and now I share with my love ones for only a little bit more than the new YT price.
  YT music was turning to sit though. It would always play music video audio with long ass shitty intros when the studio album music existed in their catalog. Even with the music video option turned to off.
  
  Yeah, I fell into the same situation. I had a YouTube Music family plan that they told me was no longer grandfathered in, so I also switched to Spotify and have been happy with it. In my case, though, I lucked out because I only needed to keep one other person on the plan with me, so I went with the duo plan instead of the family plan and ended up saving money in the end.
  If Google wants me back they can offer ad-free YouTube for $2/mo and that'll be back as it was. That's really the only thing I still miss, because god knows the music player itself wasn't great.
  
  What about ReVanced? Or ViMusic?
  
  If you were in the beta. It's 7.99.
  I've been paying 7.99 since day one of Google Play Music. They added YouTube Red (Premium) shortly after.
  
  Why Spotify? They're the worst streaming platform with the lowest pay for artists.
- Grandfathered on the sense that the price increase was delayed compared to new subscribers. They were temporarily grandfathered in at their old rate.
- Thank you. I was thoroughly confused by this title and the article’s use of “grandfathered”.
- Maybe It should say grandfathered you tube users are to be estranged.
- My understanding of grandfathered is that you pay the rate you signed up for, and when it increases, new users pay the higher rate but you keep your rate as long as you stay subscribed. If that is not what you think grandfathered means, what does it mean to you? And if my definition matches yours, how is this not the correct use of grandfathered?
  
  You both got it right, but OP got it wrong. They're not grandfathered if they're getting the price increase, and they are.

the ublock origin experience is cheaper
- Back in the olden days, there used to be a variety of free software called postcard-ware. It was free to distribute and use, but if you wanted to you could send the author a postcard.
  
  Wtf really? I love ublock so much I was about to donate some money to it this year.
- 0.00! Cheap is cheap

People are paying $23 for this???
Honestly shocked.
And it's Google, so you know they are going to keep raising prices, probably adding some ads also in the near future. And of course selling your behavior to advertisers as well, that's a given.
- Just curious: Where in the article does it say $23? It says $13.99, so I'm wondering if it was a typo.
  
  They may be confusing it with the family plan? Which is $23 for up to 5 people, which imo is a pretty good deal if you know 4 other people to go in on it.
- That's the family plan. The individual price is $13.99. Absolutely worth it to me. 10/10, would shill again. I watch almost exclusively on Apple TV, so unless I had a DNS ad blocker, I would see ads. And even those will eventually be detected and blocked, I'm sure. This is how much I've consumed since signing up in August:
  I love supporting the creators of the excellent science and math content I subscribe to. Plus I watch a ton of stupid Tim & Eric sketches, SNL sketches, kitten videos and such. I couldn't imagine seeing an ad for every 1:00 video!
  Presented with a choice of paying or seeing ads, imma pay. The price is less than one movie ticket a month.
  
  I’ll upvote you back up.
  I’m the same way. I use YT on my AppleTV, and I’m an adult with money so $14 isn’t that bad. That’s basically one double quarter pounder meal these days.
  Do I want to see the price increase? Of course not. But I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
  
  Even DNS blocking wouldn't work. DNS blocking only works if they serve ads via a different name server than they serve their content from (like content from videos.youtube.com and ads from ads.youtube.com). If they give you both ads and youtube content from the same domain, then your DNS blocker can't selective block the ads. So DNS blocking doesn't work on YouTube, and plenty of other streaming ad-containing streaming service.
  
  I'll pay YouTube when they stop ducking over content creators with DMCA laziness and terrible royalties for music streams. A service that's worth it is one thing, but that service essentially exploiting it's employees who have no other viable alternative is bad. I'd rather pay my content creators directly through merch, Patreon, etc...
  
  Get Nebula, you boot licking clown
- Per year or per month? I'm afraid to look.
  
  per month
- Just use a VPN in Turkey and get it for pennies on the dollar.
  
  I'd be worried they'd figure it out and ban your account.
- I had no idea how expensive that was. I wonder when prices will max out. $23 is waaaay too much for YT.
  
  $23 for a family account. Which is cheaper than the single user ($11.50 a person if you were to have two people, $4.60 if you used all 5 accounts).
- Given the quality and quantity of videos on YouTube, it's probably the best streaming service.

YouTube have worked really hard this year to help people balance their media consumption with real life.
Everytime I am confronted with another irritating YouTube advert I close the App and say "Thanks YouTube. You are right, I didn't need to watch a detailed unboxing review for a product I neither want, nor need to know exists. I will do something in the real world and try you again in an hour"
I now find myself thinking twice before even opening the App.
Even better on my PC, because I use AdBlockers, YouTube doesn't even let me waste my time, even when I want to.
Truly, Do No Evil
- You shouldn't get ads on PC. I use it daily for hours a day and never see ads.
- You know things like revanced exist?
  
  I mean, they're still not wrong. Same thing happened with Reddit, curbing my use of it made me think twice about what I was really using it for and it turns out it wasn't that much that was really necessary. It made me reach a better more healthy balance of how I use these sites (Lemmy too).
  
  grayjay is better, it simultaniously blocks ads and chips away at the youtube monopoly on independent content creators

revanced is still $0/month
- grayjay as well
  
  NewPipe is freer. GrayJay is proprietary.

Not grandfathered then is it.

Oh bullshit. I've been on that 7.99 since Google play music all access first launched. They said it was a permanent 7.99 if you signed up that first month it launched. Guess I'm moving services or going back to piracy.
- Your account might be exempted, because that's an old old deal, pretty sure "grandfathered" in this case are people who've signed up like the last couple years lmao
  
  The article mentions 7.99 prices specifically.
  
  I signed up day one, then when they added the family plan I moved to that day one. They started charging me full price earlier this year. Looks like they are resetting everyone's price unfortunately.
  
  Nope. I was one of those and I too received that email.
- For music:
  https://www.f-droid.org/packages/it.vfsfitvnm.vimusic/
  Or
  https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.anandnet.harmonymusic/
  There's also alternatives for YouTube like newpipe & libretube etc
  
  Or just ReVanced.
- I've been slowly de-googling over the past few years.
  If you use Plex+ plexamp, and subscribe to Tidal, you can get very close to the original Google Play Music experience.
  Hope this helps!

I was grandfathered in at the announcement Google Play Music All Access price of $7.99. They better not raise it. They said during the announcement they would never raise the price for those that signed up then.
Edit: Class action anyone?
- I’m in this exact same boat. I also remember them saying they’d never raise the price on us. I imagine their defense will be something about how GPM doesn’t exist anymore and YouTube premium wasn’t part of that offer or something. It’s still bullshit but I can’t imagine we’ll win.
- I miss Google play, I used to actually buy music that way. I just kind of find MP3s now...

This is disappointing. I was thinking of subscribing since I heard content creators got paid more per premium view, and $10 didn't seem like a bad price. ~~But if this is the second price hike in a single year, that definitely gives me pause.~~
This is not the second price increase in a year. This was a misunderstanding on my part. I'm still uncertain on the $14 price point.
- Youtube will never give their content producers a fair payout. Just get Nebula.
  
  I have Nebula but it kinda sucks. Content is too narrow and too US focussed. I really want a YouTube alternative but until they start to let more creators on the platform, not sure this is it.
- This isn't the second price jack. There was one price increase, and then there is now the phasing out of grandfathered users. All users will have to pay the new price (which hasn't gone up again). Not defending YouTube, but just pointing out there isn't another price increase
  
  Thanks for this, it made me go back and read through a second time. Just to explain my confusion, the article states that the price went up from $9.99 to $13.99 earlier this year, however, users that were subscribed through Google Play Music or YouTube Red were able to keep getting the old price for a little while longer. Then the article mentions "$9.99 – or even $7.99 – grandfathered users will now pay $13.99/month for YouTube Premium starting in January."
  Somehow, my brain interpreted this all to mean that there was a $7.99 to $9.99 increase in July. I think maybe I was thinking that because it's odd to have an article about an old price increase. But really, the article is about the end of the grandfather period for Play Music and YouTube Red subscribers. All other users already had the price increase.

Welp time to cancel
- Every cancel is worth 2 price increases! You canceling loses them more money than 2 other people taking the increased price!

It's cheaper for me to just bump up my Adguard DNS subscription on my home router. Though I've only done limited testing to see how efficient it handles YT ads. (so far seems to work).
Honestly, the $3 CAD I spend on Adguard DNS through my router has been incredible. I'm flabbergasted when I connect to someone else's Wi-Fi and see what the Internet looks like outside my door walls.
- Are you speaking about Adguard Home? That's free, if you're talking about their premium DNS, there are free alternatives with ad-blocking.
  You can't block Youtube ads via DNS for quite some years now.
- Pi-hole is a beautiful thing...
  
  I thought Pi-hole didn’t work on YouTube? Or has that changed?
- why are you paying for DNS?
  
  Nextdns was $22/year and worked very well for me for 3 years. I maintain my own now, but for many people it's perfectly fine to pay for a working service, not everyone wants or needs to fine tune their DNS like some. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's better and vice versa.
  
  Never found a free one that works as well at blocking ads and trackers.

Revanced is a bit of a hassle to install but really worth it.
- I prefer NewPipe
  
  I do like having recommendations though. Newpipe gives me the super normie feed and I'm just not that interested in the latest KSI vs Logan Paul.
- GrayJay works fine for me tho
- I got tired of trying to install revanced. Just uninstalled YouTube completely and open everything in my opera browser. Blocks ads does the same job.
- Why is it a hassle? You can just use a pre-built one, and it's like installing any other APK.
  
  There isn't an official pre build app. The one you get might be fine, but you can't be sure...

It went from 10 to 20 on me. Considering all I lost (YT red premium content, google play music, etc) I just canceled then enabled a single user free account I get via Google fi. With money saved, bought family a spotify family plan
- That's with the $110/mo (for 2) Google FI plan right? And it's only for a year.

Welcome to the club, I was on the $14.99 Family Premium from YT Red/GPM. I left in a fit to Spotify, but crawled back since I just do not get along with Spotify. It was quite an increase to $22.99, but I literally watch YT as my main source of entertainment, and listen to YT music via Android Auto in my car, as well as through the house all the time. So I am getting a lot of use out of it. but I am not sure I could stomach another increase anytime soon.
- Jesus $23?? No thank you! Spotify and FreeTube is good enough for me 😅
  
  It’s the most expensive major service. I couldn’t stomach it at even $20.
  
  Up to 6 users as it is a family plan but ya it's pricey
- Desktop:
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
  https://freetubeapp.io/
  Mobile:
  https://github.com/revanced
  https://newpipe.net/
  ¯(ツ)/¯
  
  I actually have grayjay on my phone (and paid for it). I don't mind paying for stuff I use.
  I've also used revances, and smarttube tv. But as I said right now the value is still "ok" but reaching it's limit for sure.
  
  Mobile:
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-origin/
  
  Not even close to the experience.
  
  ~~Mobile~~ Android

grandfathered-ish
- Its complicated
- Decentfathered

Dont pay. -In browser: https://docs.invidious.io/instances/ ,OR adblock origin. -Androidon newpipe: https://newpipe.net/ -Android tv smarttube https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ ;)
- I think you meant uBlock Origin? Also, if you use Firefox on Android, it does support extensions so you can use uBlock Origin too.
- If you do this make sure to support your favorite content creators in other ways, if possible for you. Ads are not just how YouTube makes money, it's how the people you're watching make money too.
  
  True for monetized account of course but, speaking personally, I mostly watch/listen to non monetized channels. New pipe is a great experience.
- Thanks!

Noooo.
Welp, time to go to Vanced now.
- ~~Vanced~~ Revanced (Extended)

How much is it now and how much is the increase?
- Grandfathered is $10 a month, new price is $14.
  
  I pay 7.99, so it's going to $14?
- It's like $23 for family in Canada.
  Wild.
  
  A year? A decade? Surely not a fucking month...
  
  thats like 2 whole real dollars

F I R E F O X
- uMatrix

but I still won't pay. skip skip skip click

Future headline: Youtube Saw Youtube Premium subscriptions dip in January.

I hope I didn't miss the wave here: Does anyone else have a solution for their kids? I don't want them on un-restricted youtube, youtube kids is generally gate-kept enough that I feel comfortable they won't come across anything immediately damaging. I pay for YouTube family for now to avoid adverts.

Pretty sure I can soak it. I mean that's what, five bucks a month? If that's a hardship, kill the subscription and get a goddamn library card.
- 14 bucks per month is 5 bucks per month. Premium math of corporate shills checks out.
  
  Or maybe they are sharing the family plan with 2 other people and rounding up. Or they have a different plan. Or they live in a country with different prices and converting to usd. Or a handful of other reasons that doesn't involve conspiracy theories.
  
  Five dollars' increase. FFS
- Individually maybe. But every streaming company has been doing price hikes. And you're not getting anything more, just some useless "AI" stuff I doubt anyone asked for. If they had said the increase was 100% so they could offer more to creators I wouldn't blink. Or using it to hire the support staff creators need, also would be cool with that. But this looks like nothing more than the corporate bottom line
  
  Yeah, could very well be. But corporations gonna corporate. If you don't like the product, don't buy it.