If you want to subscribe to YouTube Premium, you currently have 3 separate monthly plans to choose from. The $14 Individual plan, $23 family plan and $8 student plan. The last one being exclusive to college students, naturally. But that may be about to change, with Google confirming that more YouTube Premium plans are on the way.
This news was announced in a community blog post, explaining all the changes coming to YouTube Premium in the near future. Google said that it’s “committed to bringing members more plan options”. Part of this involves expanding the service to more regions, alongside “introducing new plans and exploring ways for you to share your benefits with friends in the future”.
Google wasn’t forthcoming with the details, so we don’t know any specifics on how much these plans might cost or the kind of features they’ll have to offer. The note about sharing benefits with friends sounds like it could be hinting at something akin to Spotify’s Duo tier, which lets two people share a premium subscription and all the perks.
That would be ideal for people happy to share the monthly payments, but don’t want to have to recruit extra people in order to share a family plan. It’d also be nice if Google offered a cheaper that scrapped all the ads but didn’t offer quite as many premium features. I’m sure a lot of people can live without features like downloads if it means uninterrupted access to YouTube videos and Music for a cheaper price.
And considering there are a bunch more Premium features on the way, it makes sense that Google may offer a simpler, less extravagant subscription option.
More is coming to YouTube Premium
Google also confirmed that YouTube Premium itself will be getting an upgrade with brand new features and experiences. Among those features is the ability to watch YouTube Shorts in picture-in-picture mode, and an AI-powered tool that lets you jump through a video’s preamble and take you to the good stuff.
There are third party YouTube clients that can do exactly that already, and it’s about time Google has brought it to the official app. That feature is already available to premium subscribers on Android in the U.S. and will be launching on iOS “in the next few weeks”.
On top of that pair of useful additions, Google is giving premium subscribers early access to experimental features. Those include a new smart download for YouTube shorts, that keeps your phone automatically populated with a fresh batch of shorts available for offline viewing. There’s also a redesigned Watch page that is supposed to help improve the viewing experience and make it easier to find new content and the comments section.
Arguably the biggest experimental feature is the addition of conversational AI on Android phones in the U.S. It sounds like a chatbot that can answer your questions, suggested related content, and other things without interrupting the video playback. You just have to tap the “Ask” button beneath the video.
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