YouTube Tests a Cheaper ‘Ads Off Only’ Alternative to Premium

I have a theory that no matter how huge some black holes in space must be, none of them will ever come anything close to the one where I really should be thinking about going to sleep, but I think to myself, ‘ah, go on then YouTube, one more video’. – Admittedly though, while watching videos from content creators and such on the platform is excellent, adverts can be a pretty huge pain in the backside. You generally get at least 1 every 3-5 minutes and, more often than not these days, that ‘skip’ option is being less and less given.

While consumers have always had the option to sign up to the YouTube Premium service, where adverts can be disabled among a number of other perks, the cost has perhaps prevented this from being a huge success with consumers. Following the somewhat quiet launch of ‘Premium-Lite’, however, we may have a new and less expensive alternative.

YouTube Premium-Lite

The new service, which was seemingly only discovered by accident after a user went to cancel their ‘regular’ subscription, has a very simple premise. Rather than the standard premium account where users can access music, download videos for offline viewing, and, of course, not be subjected to masses of adverts, this new ‘lite’ version simply targets the latter.

For €6.99, a price just over half what the current premium service charges, YouTube users can have a full-blown ad-free experience and nothing else. Is this good value for money? Well, I suppose it basically boils down to two key points. How much YouTube you watch, and how annoying you find the adverts.

Trial in Limited Countries!

From what we can ascertain, the service is primarily being rolled out across a number of European countries, but certainly not all of them. At the time of writing, only residents from the following nations can sign-up for the ‘Premium-Lite’ subscription option:

• Sweden
• Belgium
• Denmark
• Netherlands (aka Holland)
• Luxembourg
• Norway,
• Finland

As such, if you check this out from any other country (via the link here) all you’ll probably see is that, at least at the time of writing, this new subscription alternative hasn’t yet been made available in your region. Based on its significantly more affordable price, however, could this be a success for YouTube? Well, I can certainly see a lot more people signing up for this than their frankly overpriced standard ‘Premium’ service.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!