5 reasons why I refuse to pay for YouTube Premium

This doesn’t mean that I haven’t considered the option before. But every time I entertain the idea, YouTube makes another move that adds to my list of reasons I avoid the subscription.

The latest price hike is just one of many reasons I remain committed to my refusal. And based on a recent survey of readers, I’m not the only one who thinks it’s simply not worth it.

YouTube Premium users will soon pay more in the US, with the price of the Individual subscription increasing to $15.99. Meanwhile, the Family plan is increasing to $26.99, with Premium Lite increasing to $8.99 per month.

While it will take some time for these prices to trickle down to other markets, it’s not a positive sign for consumers who are already facing strained budgets and increasing costs. YouTube’s price increases aren’t happening in a vacuum; other services are also raising their prices.

YouTube Premium was already too expensive for me. With the service only getting more costly, it isn’t any more appealing. After months of cutting down subscriptions, I’m not really interested in taking on another one simply to avoid ads.

YouTube Premium would be a more attractive option for me if I didn’t already subscribe to Spotify. YouTube doesn’t offer the Premium Lite option in South Africa, so to get the full value of my subscription I would have to change my music streaming to YouTube Music.

The irony is that I used to be a Google Play Music subscriber. But Google shut down the service, and YouTube Music was an extremely underdeveloped option at the time, which is why I moved to Spotify.

In South Africa, YouTube Premium has a similar price to some streaming services. In fact, it costs more than Prime Video and only slightly less than Netflix’s Basic plan. The difference is that when I subscribe to a streaming service, I use it for multiple hours per day.

On the other hand, I don’t use YouTube for more than an hour per day — and that’s specifically on days when I’m trying to kill some time while drinking coffee and playing Pokémon Go. There are many days that I don’t use YouTube at all.

If it costs less, I could justify the price with my limited use. Right now, I don’t even subscribe to more than one streaming service at a time. So subscribing to YouTube Premium for the occasional video wouldn’t really make sense.

Part of my refusal to pay for YouTube Premium is spite. This is because YouTube has become one of the pinnacles of enshittification in its attempt to push free users to a paid plan.

Rather than making YouTube Premium better, Google increasingly inundates the free version with ads to force viewers to upgrade. But there was a time when YouTube’s subscription actually offered original content to attract users.

There are a few perks to YouTube Premium, like the ability to download videos for offline viewing. However, the biggest thing that pushes people to the paid version of YouTube is avoiding ads. Subscribing to YouTube Premium would feel like I’m rewarding Google for making its product worse.

If I could share my YouTube subscription with others, I could afford it by splitting the cost. However, the family plan can only be shared with people in the same household. This means that since I live by myself, I don’t really have the option to use a shared plan.

In some regions, YouTube even offers a subscription for two people. However, once again, these people need to live in the same household.

Personally, I feel that if you pay for a group account, it shouldn’t matter where these people live — you’re paying for the slots on that account either way. But that’s not something many companies offer after password-sharing bans became the norm.

Every now and then, as I’m faced with yet another unskippable ad on my TV, I consider whether it’s time to subscribe to YouTube Premium. After all, I want to support the creators of the content I love.

But inevitably, before I’m tempted to hit that subscribe option, all these reasons come to the fore. As a result, I remain convinced that YouTube Premium is simply not worth it for me.