YouTube plans to implement Premium Lite subscription — details

YouTube is planning to introduce the new, cheaper version of its paid video service, which will provide access to its huge library of podcasts and educational videos without ads. The Premium Lite tariff will be announced in the United States, Australia, Germany, and Thailand in the near future.

Bloomberg reported it.

What will be available in the Premium Lite plan

While YouTube is mostly known for free videos uploaded by users, the company also offers a number of paid services. YouTube Premium is the package that costs USD 13.99 per month in the US (USD 4.99 in Ukraine) and allows subscribers to watch everything on the platform, including music videos, without ads.

"As part of our commitment to providing more choice and flexibility to our users, we’ve been testing the new YouTube Premium proposition, where most videos are ad-free, in several of our markets," the YouTube spokesperson said in the statement.

The Premium Lite plan has been tested in foreign markets for several months, Verge reports. But now it will be officially launched in a wider format, including in the US for the first time.

The new tariff option could change the way content creators make money on the platform. Previously, advertising revenue made up the bulk of their earnings on the service. This new plan, if it becomes widely popular, could make subscription revenue a more significant part of their business.

The launch of the new plan coincides with Spotify’s expansion into video content. Last month, the Swedish company launched a program where subscribers in certain regions no longer see dynamic ads in video content.

The new YouTube tariff may attract fans of certain shows who want to avoid ads to stay on the platform instead of switching to Spotify with an ad-free version.

To watch music videos without ads, YouTube users will still have to subscribe to YouTube Premium.

As a reminder, in 2024, YouTube introduced the Dream Screen feature, which allows creating AI backgrounds for Shorts. Now, the tool has been updated with the integration of Veo 2 AI video generator, which allows you to create certain moments in videos.

We also wrote that new test features are now available for YouTube Premium subscribers. One of the most interesting is the ability to play videos at 4x speed.