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Chris Welch is a senior reviewer who has worked at The Verge since its founding in 2011. His coverage areas include audio (Sonos, Apple, Bose, Sony, etc.), home theater, smartphones, photography, and more.
YouTube is expanding its pilot of a new Premium Lite subscription plan to the United States, the company announced today. Priced at $7.99 per month compared to the $13.99 charge for regular YouTube Premium, the cheaper tier offers “most” videos without ads — including “gaming, fashion, beauty, news, and more.” The major exception is music. For ad-free music videos, you’ll still need to step up to the standard Premium plan, which also gives you offline downloads and background playback.
Premium Lite doesn’t include those perks: it’s really just about removing ads from your YouTube experience. And as someone who let his YouTube Premium subscription lapse a few months ago, let me tell you: there are a ton of ad breaks these days.
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“In the coming weeks, we’ll also make Premium Lite available to all users in our current pilot countries — Thailand, Germany, and Australia,” the company added in its blog post, noting that YouTube Music and Premium reach over 125 million subscribers globally (when you include trial users). Premium Lite will expand to additional countries later this year.
YouTube has been testing the plan off and on in select markets for several years now, with the earliest reports dating back to 2021. In more recent tests, the company clarified that subscribers may still see “non-interruptive ads when you search and browse” in addition to the video ads attached to music and shorts. It continues to boggle my mind that there’s still no YouTube TV and YouTube Premium bundle. Surely that can’t be far off.
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