YouTube Hikes Prices For Premium, Music Streaming Offerings

Author: Editors Desk Source: THR (The Hollywood Reporter)

July 20, 2023 at 14:38

YouTube Music app seen displayed on a smartphone screen. THIAGO PRUDÊNCIO/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET/GETTY IMAGES

YouTube Premium will rise to $13.99 per month, while YouTube Music Premium will increase to $10.99 per month.

YouTube is the latest streaming company to hike the subscription prices for its offerings.

On Thursday, the company raised the prices for its YouTube Premium service (which lets users watch videos ad-free and download them for offline viewing) and its YouTube Premium Music app, the company’s music streaming offering.

“We’re updating the price for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium subscribers in the US to continue delivering great service and features,” YouTube spokesperson Jessica Gibby told The Hollywood Reporter. “We believe this new price reflects the value of YouTube Premium which allows subscribers to enjoy ad-free YouTube with background and offline play and uninterrupted access to over 100M songs with the YouTube Music app.”

The price of YouTube Premium will increase by $2 per month to $13.99 for most users, while YouTube Music will increase by $1 per month to $10.99. Exact pricing may depend on the plan and billing option users have. This is the first price increase for YouTube Premium since it was introduced in 2018, and YouTube says that users who subscribers five years ago will get an additional three months at the current price.

The changes follow a wave of price increases across the streaming video and music landscape.

In music, Apple and Amazon have each raised the price of their music services to $10.99 per month (Spotify remains at $9.99, though it is expected to raise prices in the near future). And in video, most companies have tweaked their pricing in the last year or so, with NBCUniversal’s Peacock hiking its price earlier this week. Paramount also tweaked the pricing of its Paramount+ with Showtime product, and earlier this year Warner Bros. Discovery raised the price for HBO Max ahead of its rebranding as Max.