Apps

YouTube Premium individual plan now costs $2 more for all subscribers in the US

Comment

YouTube play button
Image Credits: Alexander Shatov (opens in a new window) / Unsplash

Just like many other streaming services, YouTube has increased the prices of its Premium plan for individuals in the U.S., from $11.99 per month to $13.99 per month.

The price hike follows last year’s price bump in family plans in many countries. In the U.S. the family plan tariff went from $17.99 per month to $22.99 per month. The individual plan change, first spotted by 9to5Google, is live on the YouTube Premium page.

YouTube confirmed the move to TechCrunch and said the price hike will affect all — current and new — subscribers.

“We’re updating the price for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium subscribers in the U.S. to continue delivering great service and features. 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 100 million songs with the YouTube Music app,” a company spokesperson said.

The price for Premium is even higher if you pay through Apple’s in-app purchase system. There’s it’s $18.99/month.

The company said that users will have to pay the updated prices from their next billing cycle. It added that folks who subscribed to YouTube Premium five years ago, when the plan was launched, will get three additional months at their current price.

With YouTube Premium, Google offers ad-free viewing, the ability to download videos, 1080p streaming of higher quality, the ability to resume videos from where you left off and access to YouTube Music. The company also releases experimental features for Premium subscribers, such as the ability to change playback speed and a lock screen feature to avoid accidental touches.

Google is also hiking the price of the YouTube Music plan from $9.99 per month to $10.99 per month. This follows subscription price raises from Apple Music and Amazon Music, which also offer their streaming at the same price. Spotify’s individual plan still costs $9.99 per month.

Over the last few months, rival video services such as Apple TV+, Paramount+ and Peacock have announced price hikes. While Netflix raised its prices last year, the company commenced a crackdown on password sharing, making users pay more or add an extra member to their plans.

YouTube is also trying to push more people toward its premium plans by taking actions like restricting ad-blockers. It also ran an experiment that briefly put 4K streaming behind a paywall.

Last November, YouTube said that it had more than 80 million subscribers across Music and Premium offerings. With Google’s earnings next week, the company is taking steps to increase paid users.

More TechCrunch

While funding for Italian startups has been growing, the country still ranks eighth in Europe by VC investment, according to Dealroom. Newly created Italian Founders Fund (IFF) hopes to help…

With €50 million to invest, Italian Founders Fund looks for entrepreneurs with global ambitions

William A. Anders, the astronaut behind perhaps the single most iconic photo of our planet, has died at the age of 90. On Friday morning, Anders was piloting a small…

William Anders, astronaut who took the famous ‘Earthrise’ photo, dies at 90

You’re running out of time to join the Startup Battlefield 200, our curated showcase of top startups from around the world and across multiple industries. This elite cohort — 200…

Startup Battlefield 200 applications close tomorrow

New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing so-called “addictive feeds” to children under 18, unless they obtain parental consent. The Stop…

New York moves to limit kids’ access to ‘addictive feeds’

Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association. But while cats are not far off, with 46.5…

Cat-sitting startup Meowtel clawed its way to profitability despite trouble raising from dog-focused VCs

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by…

Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. There’s more bad news for…

How India’s most valuable startup ended up being worth nothing

If death and taxes are inevitable, why are companies so prepared for taxes, but not for death? “I lost both of my parents in college, and it didn’t initially spark…

Bereave wants employers to suck a little less at navigating death

Google and Microsoft have made their developer conferences a showcase of their generative AI chops, and now all eyes are on next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which is expected to…

Apple needs to focus on making AI useful, not flashy

AI systems and large language models need to be trained on massive amounts of data to be accurate but they shouldn’t train on data that they don’t have the rights…

Deal Dive: Human Native AI is building the marketplace for AI training licensing deals

Before Wazer came along, “water jet cutting” and “affordable” didn’t belong in the same sentence. That changed in 2016, when the company launched the world’s first desktop water jet cutter,…

Wazer Pro is making desktop water jetting more affordable

Former Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch issued a statement Thursday following his acquittal of criminal charges, ending a 13-year legal battle with Hewlett-Packard that became one of Silicon Valley’s biggest…

Autonomy’s Mike Lynch acquitted after US fraud trial brought by HP

Featured Article

What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches

As another Snowflake customer confirms a data breach, the cloud data company says its position “remains unchanged.”

2 days ago
What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches

Investor demand has been so strong for Rippling’s shares that it is letting former employees particpate in its tender offer. With one exception.

Rippling bans former employees who work at competitors like Deel and Workday from its tender offer stock sale

It turns out the space industry has a lot of ideas on how to improve NASA’s $11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars. Seven of these…

NASA puts $10M down on Mars sample return proposals from Blue Origin, SpaceX and others

Featured Article

In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be…

3 days ago
In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch

The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.

Watch Apple kick off WWDC 2024 right here

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Anna will be covering for him this week. Sign up here to…

Startups Weekly: Ups, downs, and silver linings

HSBC and BlackRock estimate that the Indian edtech giant Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is now worth nothing.

BlackRock has slashed the value of stake in Byju’s, once worth $22 billion, to zero

Apple is set to board the runaway locomotive that is generative AI at next week’s World Wide Developer Conference. Reports thus far have pointed to a partnership with OpenAI that…

Apple’s generative AI offering might not work with the standard iPhone 15

LinkedIn has confirmed it will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on data gleaned from their participation in LinkedIn Groups. The move comes more than three months after…

LinkedIn to limit targeted ads in EU after complaint over sensitive data use

Founders: Need plans this weekend? What better way to spend your time than applying to this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt. With Monday’s deadline looming, this is a…

Startup Battlefield 200 applications due Monday

The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries.

Novel battery manufacturer EnerVenue is raising $515M, per filing

Meta is quietly rolling out a new “Communities” feature on Messenger, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature is designed to help organizations, schools and other private groups communicate in…

Meta quietly rolls out Communities on Messenger

Featured Article

Siri and Google Assistant look to generative AI for a new lease on life

Voice assistants in general are having an existential moment, and generative AI is poised to be the logical successor.

3 days ago
Siri and Google Assistant look to generative AI for a new lease on life

Education software provider PowerSchool is being taken private by investment firm Bain Capital in a $5.6 billion deal.

Bain to take K-12 education software provider PowerSchool private in $5.6B deal

Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Sequoia-backed Slack alternative, Threads said on its website. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that the Threads.com team will join…

Shopify acquires Threads (no, not that one)

Featured Article

Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram

Two senior police officials in Bangladesh are accused of collecting and selling citizens’ personal information to criminals on Telegram.

3 days ago
Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram

Carta, a once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup that loudly backed away from one of its businesses earlier this year, is working on a secondary sale that would value the company at…

Carta’s valuation to be cut by $6.5 billion in upcoming secondary sale

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station, a key milestone in the aerospace giant’s quest to certify the capsule for regular crewed missions.  Starliner…

Boeing’s Starliner overcomes leaks and engine trouble to dock with ‘the big city in the sky’