YouTube launches cheaper $8 Premium Lite plan without the best parts

YouTube Premium ain’t cheap at $13.99 per month for ad-free streaming, especially since it seems like YouTube is intentionally making itself worse to get you to pay up. How does $7.99 sound instead?

Starting today, YouTube is offering its Premium Lite paid tier to users in the US after having tested it out in a handful of other countries. You pay less for fewer features, but you still get to block ads… mostly.

According to the announcement, YouTube Premium Lite offers a mostly ad-free experience for watching videos on desktop and mobile apps, but there are a few provisos and quid-pro-quos. First, you don’t get to play videos in the background or download them for offline viewing — that’s a big kick in the teeth compared to the full-fat version of Premium. You also don’t get YouTube Music Premium, which is half the draw of Premium.

Premium Lite also doesn’t completely banish ads altogether. “For Premium Lite, ads may appear on music content, [YouTube] Shorts, and when you search or browse.” So you’ll still see occasional advertisements when using YouTube… in addition to the sponsored ads that creators put directly into their videos. (“Use my coupon code to get 20 percent off at Gamer Supps,” etc.)

Even as someone who stubbornly refuses to pay for YouTube Premium on the principle that Google is clearly inundating free users with annoyances to get them paying up, I admit I’d be tempted by an $8 monthly plan that was truly ad-free. But that isn’t the case here. The mere existence of a cheaper option implies that Google understands YouTube Premium is too expensive for many users… but the compromises on Shorts and downloads means they’re not ready to deliver enough value.

I think I’ll continue using my combo of ad-blocking on desktop and Revanced on Android to blissfully experience YouTube with zero ads until Google delivers a better deal. Since I see ads for ad blockers on YouTube every time I watch without these tools, even though ad-blocking is explicitly against the Terms of Service, I’ll do it with a clear conscience.