That’s not what Grandfathered means. Basically, original subscribers are being forced onto a new contract.
Ya. I was originally a Google Play music subscriber which got turned into YouTube music, for $9.99usd. Now they’re increasing the cost by like $4 after December. So I moved to the spotify family plan and now I share with my love ones for only a little bit more than the new YT price.
YT music was turning to sit though. It would always play music video audio with long ass shitty intros when the studio album music existed in their catalog. Even with the music video option turned to off.
Yeah, I fell into the same situation. I had a YouTube Music family plan that they told me was no longer grandfathered in, so I also switched to Spotify and have been happy with it. In my case, though, I lucked out because I only needed to keep one other person on the plan with me, so I went with the duo plan instead of the family plan and ended up saving money in the end.
If Google wants me back they can offer ad-free YouTube for $2/mo and that’ll be back as it was. That’s really the only thing I still miss, because god knows the music player itself wasn’t great.
Ya. This was my last straw. Figured I’d give them until the end of the original 9.99. So far the transition to Spotify has been good.
What about ReVanced? Or ViMusic?
Definitely open to other options, but now I’m basically stuck since I have family on my family plan now.
If you were in the beta. It’s 7.99.
I’ve been paying 7.99 since day one of Google Play Music. They added YouTube Red (Premium) shortly after.
Damn. I was early to Play Music, but not beta early. That’s an amazing price.
Right? I’m gunna miss it a lil. YouTube was pretty much the last monthly service I was paying for purely because I was grandfathered in at such a price.
Oh well. Snip snip
Ya I was with the service for so long. I miss that little ugly orange triangle with those yellow headphones.
I moved over from Play Music, and if they had a music- only cheaper option that’s what I personally want, but the rest of the family does use YouTube for other stuff, and only the penultimate child is into sailing the seas of content. Per user price is not bad considering how much music we listen to.
I am honestly less mad about the price and more still mad that they shut down the best music streaming app (best recommend algorithm, the glorious “playing near you” function that was able to find bands I would like but had not heard and only within a few miles of home, the way it would adjust the music for morning, night, weekend, it was so good) and pushed everyone onto the YouTube Music before it was ready. It’s OK now but it’s been years and no way is it as good as Play Music was.
Ya. I just want what I had with GPM. After moving to Spotify, was suuuuper surprised to see how it’s changed. Audio books, podcasts, random gifs for album art, bunch of small changes that feels like it clogs up my music listening experience. I don’t even intuitively know how to train the algorithm since I can’t heart or dislike songs. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon now?
Why Spotify? They’re the worst streaming platform with the lowest pay for artists.
They are a well known brand/ company with reasonably priced family plan. Since I wanted to give back to my family I figured it’d be the easiest transition for all of them since they’re not very tech savy for the high seas or random other better ways to listen to music that take more time to learn, setup, and troubleshoot. (I’m not about to be tech support for everyone). Now another benefit is I can be basic and listen to spotify, on an apple product drinking my daily starbucks while driving my Tesla then scroll through insta and tiktok all day after eating Chipotle.
Also I think YouTube Music pays the least to artists… at least according to some random chart I saw a while ago.
Ahhh yes, brain off. You’re one of those.
Grandfathered on the sense that the price increase was delayed compared to new subscribers. They were temporarily grandfathered in at their old rate.
Thank you. I was thoroughly confused by this title and the article’s use of “grandfathered”.
Maybe It should say grandfathered you tube users are to be estranged.
My understanding of grandfathered is that you pay the rate you signed up for, and when it increases, new users pay the higher rate but you keep your rate as long as you stay subscribed. If that is not what you think grandfathered means, what does it mean to you? And if my definition matches yours, how is this not the correct use of grandfathered?
You both got it right, but OP got it wrong. They’re not grandfathered if they’re getting the price increase, and they are.
We were previously which I believe is what op is referring to. I was one of the original sign ups for GPM back when it was $7.99 per month and I haven’t received a price increase until now. I was “grandfathered in” to the old price.
the ublock origin experience is cheaper
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Back in the olden days, there used to be a variety of free software called postcard-ware. It was free to distribute and use, but if you wanted to you could send the author a postcard.
I think the reason so many new software projects have authors asking for donations is the barrier to writing software is now incredibly low. In the 90s you’d have to have a pretty nice PC, a good dial up plan, and writing software was much more of a hobby unless you were a pro. Nowadays internet access is ubiquitous, and with the tooling and wealth of resources available anyone can write good open source software. Often those people legitimately could use a donation to help fund their free time work. That and the open source projects that are just used as dependencies for corporate projects are all too common. I absolutely blame the system where people need more money to get by rather than thinking open source software devs are more greedy nowadays
anyone can write good open source software
lol ok maybe not anyone
I hadn’t really been coming at it from that perspective, but your post got me thinking. I’ve been in the business one way or another since then in multiple capacities - hobbyist, military, government, academia, and commercial.
Back in the 70s, there was barely a major called “computer science” at most colleges. Most people writing software were largely self-taught, and software companies were a couple of dozen people. Going into the 80s, as the industry expanded, more computers were being sold (mid-sized and mainframes, with a small but growing PC market. Being a programmer would give you a solid middle class career. These were the days when Donald Knuth wrote the cost complete and comprehensive software for laying out text and equations available (TeX, now used via LaTeX) because such a thing wasn’t available and he wanted it to be. He was a professor at Stanford, meaning he had a salary already, so he just released it for free. Those were the days when people argued that software couldn’t be copyrighted because any piece of software is really just a mathematical equation, and you cannot copyright math. Anyway, many of the people writing software had a day job, “programmers” included a large proportion of people who wrote COBOL in tiny chunks for not very much money. There was a large chunk of people whose greatest dream was getting paid to do software for a living, and it was seen kind of people whose dream it was to be a professional librarian. Very few were in it for the money.
It all took off in the mid-late 90s when the industry got financialized. Fast forward to today, and no one on my team has less than a six figure salary, I make more than most MDs, and my bosses make far more than that. Because of our age demographic, few if any of them have even a bachelor’s degree, much less one in computer science. It was really that 90s transition when it started to be about money.
But I wouldn’t use the word greedy. The industry just changed, and so did the social relationships. I still have nostalgia for the days when it was more like Wargames and Real Genius than like Black Mirror, but I would never say it’s a result of the folks writing an app that want to do it for a living on their own terms. I think people like Christian Sellig (the author of Reddit client Apollo) represents the best of that earlier mindset, and I sincerely hope he made fuck-you money off of his app before spez shut him down. If anything, it’s people like Spez who are at fault.
Anyway, that was just a rant, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Wtf really? I love ublock so much I was about to donate some money to it this year.
Send it to Wikipedia instead.
Will do
Or don’t, as they already have more money than they know what to do with. Donate to a charity that could actually use more money
0.00! Cheap is cheap
People are paying $23 for this???
Honestly shocked.
And it’s Google, so you know they are going to keep raising prices, probably adding some ads also in the near future. And of course selling your behavior to advertisers as well, that’s a given.
Just curious: Where in the article does it say $23? It says $13.99, so I’m wondering if it was a typo.
They may be confusing it with the family plan? Which is $23 for up to 5 people, which imo is a pretty good deal if you know 4 other people to go in on it.
You and five others, so 6 total.
Ah thanks! Duh. “Add up to 5 members” not just “5 members”. Whoops.
And it specifically allows sharing outside of a household. So me, both my parents, and my ex all share a subscription. And it covers YouTube Music as well. It was better when it was GPM, but that’s been a while now.
That’s the family plan. The individual price is $13.99. Absolutely worth it to me. 10/10, would shill again. I watch almost exclusively on Apple TV, so unless I had a DNS ad blocker, I would see ads. And even those will eventually be detected and blocked, I’m sure. This is how much I’ve consumed since signing up in August:
I love supporting the creators of the excellent science and math content I subscribe to. Plus I watch a ton of stupid Tim & Eric sketches, SNL sketches, kitten videos and such. I couldn’t imagine seeing an ad for every 1:00 video!
Presented with a choice of paying or seeing ads, imma pay. The price is less than one movie ticket a month.
I’ll upvote you back up.
I’m the same way. I use YT on my AppleTV, and I’m an adult with money so $14 isn’t that bad. That’s basically one double quarter pounder meal these days.
Do I want to see the price increase? Of course not. But I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
Thankfully, It’s only increasing for people currently paying just $10. They will now be paying the same $14 as us.
I had the grandfathered in YouTube Red plan from years ago, but I was paying just via the App Store so there was the Apple tax. The price there was going up to $18/m, so I canceled and will renew in about a week (when my normal payment is due) directly from YouTube. I honestly haven’t really thought about the price in a while so I don’t realize it was already $12/m that way (I think), and going this new route the price change is just $1 more for me.
But I think it’s worth the no hassle with no ads on every device. I go to friends’ houses and they put on YouTube with ads, and I don’t know how they live like animals like that.
Even DNS blocking wouldn’t work. DNS blocking only works if they serve ads via a different name server than they serve their content from (like content from videos.youtube.com and ads from ads.youtube.com). If they give you both ads and youtube content from the same domain, then your DNS blocker can’t selective block the ads. So DNS blocking doesn’t work on YouTube, and plenty of other streaming ad-containing streaming service.
I’ll pay YouTube when they stop ducking over content creators with DMCA laziness and terrible royalties for music streams. A service that’s worth it is one thing, but that service essentially exploiting it’s employees who have no other viable alternative is bad. I’d rather pay my content creators directly through merch, Patreon, etc…
Get Nebula, you boot licking clown
Per year or per month? I’m afraid to look.
per month
Just use a VPN in Turkey and get it for pennies on the dollar.
I’d be worried they’d figure it out and ban your account.
I had no idea how expensive that was. I wonder when prices will max out. $23 is waaaay too much for YT.
$23 for a family account. Which is cheaper than the single user ($11.50 a person if you were to have two people, $4.60 if you used all 5 accounts).
Given the quality and quantity of videos on YouTube, it’s probably the best streaming service.
YouTube have worked really hard this year to help people balance their media consumption with real life.
Everytime I am confronted with another irritating YouTube advert I close the App and say “Thanks YouTube. You are right, I didn’t need to watch a detailed unboxing review for a product I neither want, nor need to know exists. I will do something in the real world and try you again in an hour”
I now find myself thinking twice before even opening the App.
Even better on my PC, because I use AdBlockers, YouTube doesn’t even let me waste my time, even when I want to.
Truly, Do No Evil
You shouldn’t get ads on PC. I use it daily for hours a day and never see ads.
You know things like revanced exist?
I mean, they’re still not wrong. Same thing happened with Reddit, curbing my use of it made me think twice about what I was really using it for and it turns out it wasn’t that much that was really necessary. It made me reach a better more healthy balance of how I use these sites (Lemmy too).
grayjay is better, it simultaniously blocks ads and chips away at the youtube monopoly on independent content creators
revanced is still $0/month
grayjay as well
NewPipe is freer. GrayJay is proprietary.
https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/blob/master/LICENSE
On GitHub != free or open source. It’s missing vital freedoms to qualify for free software, and it doesn’t meet the open source definition as published by OSI.
It’s source-available and that’s it. It’s about as free as Minecraft (as Mojang provides deobfuscation mappings to enable you to view the source unobfuscated)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms
The whole license is a problem, and there are some pretty nasty clauses.
The excuse for this is pretty weak too. As if malware distributors care about a pesky license.
Not grandfathered then is it.
Oh bullshit. I’ve been on that 7.99 since Google play music all access first launched. They said it was a permanent 7.99 if you signed up that first month it launched. Guess I’m moving services or going back to piracy.
Your account might be exempted, because that’s an old old deal, pretty sure “grandfathered” in this case are people who’ve signed up like the last couple years lmao
The article mentions 7.99 prices specifically.
I signed up day one, then when they added the family plan I moved to that day one. They started charging me full price earlier this year. Looks like they are resetting everyone’s price unfortunately.
Nope. I was one of those and I too received that email.
For music:
https://www.f-droid.org/packages/it.vfsfitvnm.vimusic/
Or
https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.anandnet.harmonymusic/
There’s also alternatives for YouTube like newpipe & libretube etc
Or just ReVanced.
I’ve been slowly de-googling over the past few years.
If you use Plex+ plexamp, and subscribe to Tidal, you can get very close to the original Google Play Music experience.
Hope this helps!
I was grandfathered in at the announcement Google Play Music All Access price of $7.99. They better not raise it. They said during the announcement they would never raise the price for those that signed up then.
Edit: Class action anyone?
I’m in this exact same boat. I also remember them saying they’d never raise the price on us. I imagine their defense will be something about how GPM doesn’t exist anymore and YouTube premium wasn’t part of that offer or something. It’s still bullshit but I can’t imagine we’ll win.
I miss Google play, I used to actually buy music that way. I just kind of find MP3s now…
This is disappointing. I was thinking of subscribing since I heard content creators got paid more per premium view, and $10 didn’t seem like a bad price.
But if this is the second price hike in a single year, that definitely gives me pause.This is not the second price increase in a year. This was a misunderstanding on my part. I’m still uncertain on the $14 price point.
Youtube will never give their content producers a fair payout. Just get Nebula.
I have Nebula but it kinda sucks. Content is too narrow and too US focussed. I really want a YouTube alternative but until they start to let more creators on the platform, not sure this is it.
Nobody can afford to be a YouTube alternative. Upload whatever you want, as large of a video file as you want, entirely free for everyone (costs no money, not freedom free)? Nobody can afford to do that. If someone wanted to make something similar to YouTube without the resources of Google, they’d need to at least limit uploads. Potentially even charge for uploads. But this would be punishing for new creators, especially if their broke. Except new people are exactly who need the strictest limitations, because random people could use it as personal video storage, like many do with YouTube.
Then there’s the matter of making money. Trying to get enough advertisers would be a pain in the ass, content moderation would be a nightmare and very costly however you decided to do it. If you tried to just make the platform a paid platform, then you’re highly restricting viewership. To try and make a YouTube without Google’s resources is nearly impossible. I’d love for it to be done, but not enough people care either. Most people who just say “why not just use YouTube” just like that insane masses sticking with Reddit.
I tried a trial a long time ago, and perhaps things have improved, but there was so little content on there that I didn’t find any value in supporting it so broadly.
I’ve instead remained subscribed to YouTube Premium and make monthly contributions to four creators I especially like. (I especially love Climate Town, that is top notch content!)
This isn’t the second price jack. There was one price increase, and then there is now the phasing out of grandfathered users. All users will have to pay the new price (which hasn’t gone up again). Not defending YouTube, but just pointing out there isn’t another price increase
Thanks for this, it made me go back and read through a second time. Just to explain my confusion, the article states that the price went up from $9.99 to $13.99 earlier this year, however, users that were subscribed through Google Play Music or YouTube Red were able to keep getting the old price for a little while longer. Then the article mentions “$9.99 – or even $7.99 – grandfathered users will now pay $13.99/month for YouTube Premium starting in January.”
Somehow, my brain interpreted this all to mean that there was a $7.99 to $9.99 increase in July. I think maybe I was thinking that because it’s odd to have an article about an old price increase. But really, the article is about the end of the grandfather period for Play Music and YouTube Red subscribers. All other users already had the price increase.
Welp time to cancel
Every cancel is worth 2 price increases! You canceling loses them more money than 2 other people taking the increased price!
It’s cheaper for me to just bump up my Adguard DNS subscription on my home router. Though I’ve only done limited testing to see how efficient it handles YT ads. (so far seems to work).
Honestly, the $3 CAD I spend on Adguard DNS through my router has been incredible. I’m flabbergasted when I connect to someone else’s Wi-Fi and see what the Internet looks like outside my door walls.
Are you speaking about Adguard Home? That’s free, if you’re talking about their premium DNS, there are free alternatives with ad-blocking.
You can’t block Youtube ads via DNS for quite some years now.
Pi-hole is a beautiful thing…
I thought Pi-hole didn’t work on YouTube? Or has that changed?
Both do not.
I just meant for ads in general. As for YouTube, Firefox with ublock origin is still working wonders for me.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is an ad blocker for, say, Roku, where I do most of my YouTube viewing
Really wish there was a viable alternative, and not just because of the ads, yt is the last Google thing I still consciously use
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why are you paying for DNS?
Nextdns was $22/year and worked very well for me for 3 years. I maintain my own now, but for many people it’s perfectly fine to pay for a working service, not everyone wants or needs to fine tune their DNS like some. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s better and vice versa.
Never found a free one that works as well at blocking ads and trackers.
NextDNS is paid but quite versatile. $20/year.
My Pi does the same. 20€/year in electricity + hardware for a docker host.
I doubt the Pi costs that much in electricity tbh.
- Depends on the region it’s operated in.
- I pulled a number out of my behind :D
- [Insert 3rd reason here]
- I doubt you could get that high, honestly. Even at a high energy cost. They sip power.
- Fair enough ;D
- Most compelling reason of all, you’ve changed my mind. ;P
I deployed it for a while on my home server, but in the end, the uptime wasn’t really satisfactory and I didn’t want to lose my ad blocker due to fibre damages due to poor weather or similar issues, so I decided to go for NextDNS.
How can the uptime be not satisfactory.
If it doesnt work, you either set it up incorrecrly or your server/home infrastructure has issues.If the internet goes out due to bad weather, I think I you have other problems than no ad block, no?
Not regular bad weather, but torrential weather. ISPs do have downtime once in a while as well.
I can only do 3 9s of uptime for now, and it makes enough sense for me to pay for the convenience.
Good for you? Glad you know everyone’s situation.
have you tried quad9?
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Revanced is a bit of a hassle to install but really worth it.
I prefer NewPipe
I do like having recommendations though. Newpipe gives me the super normie feed and I’m just not that interested in the latest KSI vs Logan Paul.
Vanced still gives you a normal feed with recommendations. And I’m pleased to say I don’t know who KIS is (no one tell me)
I got tired of trying to install revanced. Just uninstalled YouTube completely and open everything in my opera browser. Blocks ads does the same job.
GrayJay works fine for me tho
Why is it a hassle? You can just use a pre-built one, and it’s like installing any other APK.
There isn’t an official pre build app. The one you get might be fine, but you can’t be sure…
There isn’t an official, that’s so Google can’t ask them to shut it down, as they technically are not disturbing it. The “unofficial” works completely fine. It’s revanced-magisk-module by j-hc.
Still, why is it a hassle?
mobilism has the revanced apps already. i just go there to get what i need
Reading this makes it sound like a hassle.
Welcome to the club, I was on the $14.99 Family Premium from YT Red/GPM. I left in a fit to Spotify, but crawled back since I just do not get along with Spotify. It was quite an increase to $22.99, but I literally watch YT as my main source of entertainment, and listen to YT music via Android Auto in my car, as well as through the house all the time. So I am getting a lot of use out of it. but I am not sure I could stomach another increase anytime soon.
Jesus $23?? No thank you! Spotify and FreeTube is good enough for me 😅
It’s the most expensive major service. I couldn’t stomach it at even $20.
I mean it’s a family plan. If you’ve got enough people it’s a good deal, if not then it’s not. That’s how family plans tend to work.
Even with just 2 people it’s cheaper than to each have your own account
Up to 6 users as it is a family plan but ya it’s pricey
I mean, if you have a family it’s a pretty good deal
Found family is also allowed if they live in the vicinity
I actually have grayjay on my phone (and paid for it). I don’t mind paying for stuff I use.
I’ve also used revances, and smarttube tv. But as I said right now the value is still “ok” but reaching it’s limit for sure.
MobileAndroidDuh. I guess there’s a third of those weirdos buying Apple.
Not even close to the experience.
One of those is ublock, literally the same experience minus the ads. How is that not close to the same experience? Do you miss the ads?
How do I install it on my TV? How do I sync? Do I install on every device I use? What if I don’t have admin rights? What if it’s out of date and the ads play anyway?
For less than a Starbucks coffee I have a month of premium, and I don’t have to play cat and mouse.
How expensive are your Starbucks coffees? O.o
If you want a TV solution, look at iSponsorBlock, not as seamless but much improved. And free.
You don’t need admin rights, and it auto updates.
I have premium, but only because I can get it ridiculously cheap by using a VPN. I would never pay current asking price for premium, especially when they increased the price twice in a one year period.
A Starbucks coffee is around 5 euros.
I don’t want to look into anything, much less if it’s less seamless, I’m satisfied with the default YouTube app on my TV.
You need admin rights to install any software.
A Starbucks coffee is around 5 euros.
And YouTube premium is over double that, potentially triple come January.
You need admin rights to install any software.
A) This is absolutely not true.
B) It’s a browser extension
Ublock is simply removing adds & more things you might want to be gone and Revanced is literally the YT client with many of the PrEmIuM features for free. But sure, pay up and get milked if you’re into that sort of thing.
What about my TV, where I watch most of my content? What about inter-device sync? What about paying the creators for their work?
I could also shoplift in my local supermarket, but I’m into “that sort of thing” (paying for people’s work).
How would I know? I don’t have a TV for well over a decade now and it isn’t my responsibility to teach you how to use your hardware and software.
And please, you’re robbing YT, not the content creators, which I don’t care about nowadays either since YouTube became WhoreTube. It’s all about cash and milking people with low effort clickbait garbage content. If you feel you have to pay for that then that’s on you but I’ve been distancing myself more and more from the platform for how shit it and its content became.
Ah yes, the #worksonmymachine thinking.
If you watch low effort content you will get low effort content. I watch amazing content that is well worth the few bucks a month. Late night shows, stand up comedy, documentaries, news analysis, tech reviews, car reviews, programming news and tutorials, chess commentary and courses, architecture and interior design tours, sport summaries, popular science…
BTW, Walmart is a huge company, I assume you also don’t pay there? Apparently robbing corporations and farmers it also would be fine, because “the products are so low quality nowadays” …
Ah yes, the #imtooentitledtodomyownresearchandwork thinking.
Followed by a bunch of mumbo jumbo that clearly shows that you also have no idea how their algorithms work. A little hint, they’re nowhere near as smart as you think they are, and neither are you.
Walmart left my country for not being able to compete here, so no, I don’t pay there. Not that this false equivalency makes any sense at all because no one is robbed for me not watching a bunch of garbage ads. Maybe stop shoving your head into big corporate assholes.
It went from 10 to 20 on me. Considering all I lost (YT red premium content, google play music, etc) I just canceled then enabled a single user free account I get via Google fi. With money saved, bought family a spotify family plan
That’s with the $110/mo (for 2) Google FI plan right? And it’s only for a year.
grandfathered-ish
Its complicated
Decentfathered
