this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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So this is some bollocks. Guess I'll be cancelling our plan since it's only used by two of us.

Current price $17.99/month, new price $32.99/month.

If they boiled the frog better I would probably have accepted a $5/month price rise, and then another later... But close to doubling in one go is a no from me dawg.

Thank you for being a loyal member throughout our journey. We created YouTube Premium so that you could enjoy all the videos and music you love without interruptions.‌

To continue delivering great service and features, we are increasing the YouTube Premium family plan price to A$32.99/month. We don't make these decisions lightly, and this update will allow us to continue to improve YouTube Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube. This is the first ever price increase for your subscription.

Links to cancellation etc: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12400348?sjid=6028684095030617608-AP

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[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago (4 children)

$400 a year for YouTube premium.

I'd gladly pay that much for a robust ad blocker!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

At this point, everyone should invest a fraction of that into automating youtube downloads. No ads, no buffering, and $200 will get you eniugh hard drive space for years.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Got the same bullshit email, total dick move by Google and I'll be cancelling. It's just pure greed.

I'm be exploring the ad blocking and/or VPN options.

Google need to separate YouTube and Music.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Jesus, how do they justify that price?

They charge more than Netflix yet they don't even make any of their own content?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's because you also get youtube music streaming included with it. If netflix had its own music streaming service bundled in their prices would be even higher than they are now.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm always amaze by the fact that all these streaming platform do is give you access to others content ( they dont create shit), but they get to keep 98.7% of the revenue, because.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In this industry the “means of production” = “hosting and distribution platform and servers”. If you’ve got no way of hosting your content and putting it in front of people, your content may as well not exist. In much the same way an actor needs a theatre.

So as per any capitalist industry, those that own the means of production (I.e. google with YouTube) exploit its workers (content creators) to generate profit in the same way a steel mill owner gets to keep the profits from his steel mill despite the fact that the owner never creates any steel ingots themselves.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah people don't notice that the Internet used to be like going over to a friend's house who had the cool stuff which over time became niche shops.
Rules, regulations and restrictions, slowly put up more and more stops for simple small people to enter the space and left only large companies in it's place. Some of this by consumers own demand for more.

So here we are, the Internet just the next space for capitalism and having every last scrap of revenue squeezed from it while those with capital complain they need the next big invention to exploit as they run out of space and room to grow and things to consume. Each day pushing more towards their pockets and less towards the rest of us.

I just want small curators back. Small groups filling niches instead of massive "creators" who simply consume as much as possible to regurgitate it back at their audience.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I will not justify the price increase of this post, but the high margins kinda do make sense to me.

The average profit that youtube makes on a gigabyte worth of video data, is much much lower than that 98.7%. There is such a vast amount of random crap being uploaded, that the content creators that actually generate views, hence revenue, must bear a huge sinkhole of costs for youtube. The same holds for Twitch: streams with only a handfull of watchers cost Twitch money. But it is a double edged sword. Because the reason these content creators are as big as they are, is because they could start from nothing, and upload for free. The big guys support vast amounts of amateurs trying to become big. It is probably one of the most socialistic models we have in our current capitalistic market.

That being said: Youtube is getting shittier in an attempt to sqeeze this model for extra profit.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These platforms are basically just one step removed from pure landlordism. Same goes for Uber and similar shit. The platforms themselves are usually cheap to maintain, the exception here might be Youtube since it does gobble up a whole lot of bandwidth and storage but come on nobody streams $10 worth of bandwidth a month.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's times like these when I'm glad I refused to even log into Google to view YouTube, let alone buy subscriptions. I also refuse to view downloading content (without logging in) that's freely available to be viewed as piracy.

These subscriptions are undoubtedly a rip-off. For those saying creators get a "cut", there's a reason why sites like Patreon exist. It's substantially better for creators if you subscribe to them directly that way and get your videos from Patreon. Same with Nebula etc. If I really had to pay then I'd do that (and do already for some stuff that was never on YouTube anyway).

You can get enough subs for the price of a YT premium to get plenty of content to watch, even if you don't want to subvert Google. So there's zero reason to throw money at them for this. None at all.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am not saying I like YouTube, but they are actually one of the best when it comes to paying their creators.

Pretty much every popular creator from other platforms (like tiktok) goes to YouTube once they are big and want to earn money.

And yes of course they earn more on Patreon, but if I recall correctly most YouTubers get most of their money from YouTube, because they have their biggest audience.

De-monitisation is a pretty huge problem for many though.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I'm curious what's driving this revenue rush at Alphabet. It almost feels like something internal, like they're trying to make it actually self sufficient based on cloud pricing.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s not just Alphabet it’s cloud based companies across the board and basically VC money is drying up because it can be secured on 0% interest loans anymore

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's happening across a lot of industries, especially tech. During covid line went up very fast. Post-covid line stopped going up fast, but companies are desperate to keep it going up fast. Otherwise it would count as a slowdown in year-on-year growth and we can never ever have that (/s).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Companies then: Let's make money!

Companies now: Let's make more money faster! Our graph of profit must concave up!

Companies 100 years from now: Let's increase the rate at which the rate at which our growth in profit increases increases!

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I can't blame them. The fight to block adblockers is an expensive one, and they went all in on the fight. /s

Asshats.

E: adding the sarcasm mark, in case it wasn't obvious.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Revanced project, smart YouTubeTV and/or Smart YouTubeNext, ublock origin, and xManager for Spotify.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All prices seem to be going up around the board. I just got an email saying my Turkish Family Plan (via VPN) is increasing from TRY ₺59.99 to TRY ₺115.99. That's $3.29 to $6.36.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I haven’t received the email but I guess I should expect that price hike. Thanks for the info

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

imagine paying $204/yr instead of taking 20 seconds to download ublock

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

For reference this is about $20 USD

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

nearly double the price for the same thing! this after disney raised prices, max downgraded service and kept prices the same, and disney is about to finish buying out hulu in order to, I'm sure, raise prices. Yarr!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

People saying I'll cancel will not cancel. I've seen so many corp simps in the last few years that I lost faith in humanity

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Enshittification of youtube is definitely progressing very rapidly.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Personally, I'm a fan of


For those who must have the official paid version, keep an eye on Ozbargain Youtube.

Free trials and/or VPN + subscribe overseas for a fraction of the price, eg Individual has been $2.34 a month via India, A$2.30 via Turkey

(this is before any potential price increases in those countries)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does this mean that for people who don't pay they're going to make the ads twice as annoying?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

uncritical support for the mad lad accelerationists working undercover at youtube premium

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Well... I guess it helps creators at least.

Unless youtube changes their cut

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is the benefit of "Youtube Premium", anyway? Is that just Youtube without ads?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yea it's a pretty crazy increase. time to VPN up and move the family plan to india or turkey.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (11 children)
  1. selfhost jellyfin
  2. automatically download youtube videos based on a txt file with channel urls
  3. redirect youtube links to invidious for all other use case.
  4. never directly visit the youtube site ever again, depending on other service you use, no longer need a google account.
  5. no profit cause i never paid a dime but no regrets either.
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Lmao, that's not gonna fly with my wife.

The only reason I got premium is because she uses YouTube quite a bit and I'd rather pay than her having to deal with ads all day

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We will own nothing, don't pay, sail the seas mate.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I didn’t buy it in the first place because it was too expensive, this only further cements my never buying it.

Happily had Spotify for over a decade now and no issues paying a reasonable price there.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Change your VPN to turkey, login via incognito, buy premium for $4 a month. Price was just under $3 before raise.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall goes brrr

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Marx wasn’t lying, that rate of profit can tend to fall

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It costs so much more to get the packets across the ocean, right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (6 children)

November last year the plan in CAD went from $17.99 to $22.99 a month, I took that because.i get a lot of use out of it. I haven't got an email yet but $46 a month will get it cancelled.

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