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YouTube Premium Lite with ‘some ads’ won’t please anyone
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Remember that scene in The Sopranos where Tony struts out on to the driveway to remonstrate with Carmella about the orange juice variant she purchased?
“This says With Pulp” he contests, pointing at the offending half gallon of Tropicana. When Carm’ points out that he likes the one with pulp, he quickly corrects her.
“Not this much. I like the one that says Some Pulp,” he reasons, a second before a cordless phone is careening towards his head.
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The moral of the story is that while “some” might be a valid choice when it comes to orange juice pulp content, it isn’t when it comes to advertisements.
So news that YouTube is testing a Premium Lite subscription that will cut down on the number of ads you see, but not get rid of them entirely, is mystifying.
According toscreenshotsposted to social media, YouTube would charge $8.99 a month for Lite in Australia instead of $16.99 a month for Premium. For that would get you ‘Limited ads’ on YouTube and YouTube Kids. It’s YouTube Not Very Premium.
The company says with Premium Lite “most videos are ad-free but you may see video adds on music content and Shorts and non-interruptive ads when you search and browse.”
That’s fair enough, I suppose. But, I’m not going to get uninterrupted YouTube music videos on a Friday night after a couple of pints? There’s no way I’m going to pay nine bucks a month for that! Or whatever it ends up being in the US or UK.
For your Lite subscription you’re cutting down the number of ads you see, but not getting any of the other Premium perks, like access to YouTube Music, the ability to download and play offline, or play in the background. That’s a pretty raw deal overall for more than half the price of Premium.
As consumers, we’re getting used to paying extra for no-ads, or getting our subscriptions cheaper if there are ads, but paying for some ads? That’s a new one on us.
It is a bit different, I suppose. YouTube has always been a free to watch platform, so has to do things a little bit differently to Netflix, Disney, Max and the like to monetise it’s content.
YouTube has been on a crusade in the last couple of years, to stop users deploying ad blockers to get around the commercial interruption that creates its profits and revenue for content creators.
And this may convince more people, who are scared off by the high price of Premium, to take the half measure to cut down on ads and remove them from “most” videos.
However, Premium Lite is unlikely to please anyone. Even Tony “Some Pulp” Soprano.
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Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He’s based in South Florida, USA. …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
