Looking out to What YouTube premium offers? YouTube Premium is a monthly service that promises to make watching videos on the largest video platform on the internet better. Here’s what you get for your money, so you can decide if it’s worth it.
What Is YouTube Premium?
YouTube Premium is a paid service that you can sign up for on the site. It lets you watch all videos without ads, play them offline, and get access to exclusive, paywalled content, most of which is made by famous YouTubers.
At the moment, it costs $11.99 a month for people in the U.S., which includes a YouTube Music Premium subscription.
The YouTube Ecosystem
Google’s naming has always been a bit confusing, and YouTube is the same way. You may have heard of the service YouTube Red. Before 2018, that was the highest level of membership for the site. But after YouTube Music became a separate app with a new name, this changed to YouTube Premium.
Since YouTube now includes so many brands and services, here’s a guide to help you tell them apart:
YouTube Premium: The site’s primary paid subscription service.
YouTube Music: A separate streaming music service with its own app that lets you listen to free music. It is Google’s answer to Apple Music and Spotify.
YouTube Music Premium: The version of YouTube Music that costs $9.99 per month. Unlike the free version, it lets you play music in the background, download music when you’re not connected to the internet, and listen to music at a higher bitrate. You can also get this if you sign up for YouTube Premium. It lets you use Google Play Music right now, but it will soon replace that completely.
YouTube TV: A live TV service that works like Hulu and lets you watch live TV and record it in the cloud.
YouTube Kids: An app that is mostly for kids and only has content that is right for their age. This has all of the same features as YouTube Premium.
The Benefits of YouTube Premium
If you are thinking about signing up for YouTube Premium, there are a lot of things to think about. Here are some of the current benefits of the service:
You can look at everything on the site without seeing any ads. You can also watch without ads on the web, your phone, Roku, or any other streaming device where you sign in with your Google account.
YouTube Originals: You can watch TV shows, documentaries, and movies, as well as original content, mostly from well-known creators.
Background play: If you’re watching a video on your phone, the sound will keep playing even if you leave the app or close your phone’s screen. On Android, you can also watch videos while using other apps at the same time.
You can download videos or playlists to watch on your phone or tablet when you’re not online.
You can use this service and all of its features if you pay for YouTube Music Premium.
In the future, Google might add more features to Premium, so keep an eye out.
Contributing to Creators
Revenue sharing is one of the things about YouTube Premium that doesn’t get talked about much.
If you already use an ad blocker to block YouTube ads, the Premium service might not seem like it would be worth it. But if you block ads, creators on the platform can’t get paid for the videos you watch. For many, the money from ads is one of their main ways to make money.
Premium gives viewers a way to watch videos without seeing ads and still give money to their favorite content creators.
YouTube adds up a portion of all the money it makes from the service to figure this out. It then gives that amount to creators based on how much time Premium users spent watching their videos. So, the channels you watch the most get more money.
Many videos lose their ability to make money on YouTube because the rules are so strict. But even if a video can’t have ads, the person who made it can still make money from Premium subscribers.
Is YouTube Premium Worth It?
How often you use the service will determine the cost. Background play and offline downloading are great features to have if you use the mobile app a lot. Since so many YouTube channels now have long-form content, it’s helpful to be able to listen to long videos when you’re not in the app. It’s great to listen to in the car or while making dinner.
If you watch YouTube on your desktop most of the time, the ad-blocking feature will be very useful. Video ad revenue has been going down recently, so creators are adding even more ads to their videos. Premium is the only way to watch videos without interruption and still give money to the people who make them.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Originals library isn’t very big. If you don’t want to watch Premium content from creators, you might not be too impressed with the choices.
