YouTube Premium Family Plan Is Getting A Price Hike Out Of The Blue

YouTube recently conducted an experiment to restrict non-premium users from 4K video streaming. However, they ended the experiment after some backlash and said that they won’t restrict 4K video streaming in the future. They realized that it wasn’t enough to convince users to upgrade to YouTube Premium. But a new report by 9to5google reveals that YouTube is increasing the rates of family subscription plans.

This price hike comes at a time when users are already frustrated with ads. However, YouTube hasn’t raised the prices for single accounts. The change is only for the family plan that allows up to six members.

YouTube Premium: Why did the family plan undergo a hike?

YouTube is always planning to ramp up revenue, and the best way apart from advertising is to offer Premium subscriptions. But the single-user plan costs $11.99, which may seem a lot just to remove the ads from the streaming platform. However, the $17.99 family plan seemed a steal considering you could use six different accounts with a single subscription. The family plan brought down the rates to $3 per user. But now the prices will increase by 28%.

YouTube sent out emails to their existing subscribers about the price hike. The emails state that the new rates will come into effect in November. Now, you will have to shell out $22.99 to use the family plan. However, the old YouTube Premium subscribers, back when it was called YouTube Red, will save some money. The price hike will come into effect in April 2023 for these early adopters. Older family plan rates were $14.99/month.

So, the effective rates per member will increase in a family plan. But if you compare it with the rates of the single-user plan, you are still getting to all the YouTube Premium features at 1/3rd of the single-user price. However, if you use YouTube on a desktop only, you could just get an ad-blocker and never see any ads again. YouTube is trying to make the platform enticing by bundling YouTube Music and multiple other features with the plan. You have to decide whether it’s worth spending money on.