Google increases subscription prices for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium in some markets, including Germany and Australia
Introduced on November 14, 2014 as Music Key, and relaunched as YouTube Red less than one year later, today's subscription service known as YouTube Premium arrived on May 17, 2018 alongside YouTube Music. Since then, Google made a few attempts to monetize certain areas of the service, for example restricting all 4K videos to YouTube Premium users. While that only remained a failed test, YouTube Premium subscribers now get an enhanced bitrate 1080p option for certain videos and the monthly fee is now going up in some markets.
According to 9to5Google, the prices of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium individual, student, and family plans are now up in the following markets: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Chile, Germany, Poland, and Turkey. In Australia, reveals the same source, the individual YouTube Premium subscription is now AU$16.99. Thankfully, the users currently paying the lower legacy rate of AU$11.99 will not face the price bump for another three months.
While Austria, Germany, and Poland are now affected, other European markets faced price increases in the last year as well. In Romania, for example, the Family Plan (which had a cost of RON 26 one year ago) is now at RON 39 (about US$8.35). However, the price bump took place a while ago.
As part of Google's crackdown on ad blockers, video playback is disabled after just three videos if the platform detects an ad blocker. Sadly, Apple also pushed up the price of Apple TV, Arcade, One, and News Plus, a sad event that took place last month.
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