I pay for Premium, and have for several years now. The Lite version is not what anyone wanted. I want no ads on YouTube, without also paying for YouTube Music (which I never use). If $8/month still gets me random ads on some videos, it’s no good. I’m sure their thought was people would turn the normal YouTube app into their music player, but I’m not so sure. Eliminating background play from Lite may solve that well enough. I’d be fine with that as a compromise. I watch a lot of music related content on YouTube that isn’t stuff I’d just listen to in a music app, that I think would get caught my the music filter. On the Apple TV, videos it thinks are music don’t show comments (even when there are comments on the website). I assume all those videos would get ads on the Lite subscription, and there are a lot of them.
I’ve tried cancelling my subscription, thinking it would make me watch less YouTube. I didn’t last 48 hours. The ads were too annoying and I signed back up.
YouTube music isn't really a different service rather than a different YouTube app. Under the hood YouTube music is just YouTube with a music player UI. Taking it away wouldn't really lower the cost much.
That's part of the problem with YouTube Music. I tried to use it, but having music playlists clutter up my video playlists is pretty terrible, among other things.
I find it hard to justify paying for 2 music streaming services, so I cancelled Apple Music, because I'm paying for YouTube Music through Premium. However, I don't like it, so I'm back to manually managing a local music library in Apple's Music app. This is probably a better long-term approach than renting access to a music library on a monthly basis.
Can I ask what you mean by "having music playlists clutter up my video playlists? I use YT music (along with my local music library) specifically because it uses YouTube content - which means that all sorts of live / niche / otherwise hard to find music is there. However, my YouTube music playlists are not visible on "regular YouTube".
I made playlists in YouTube Music, and when I went to save videos to playlists on YouTube, it would show everything. Without making some kind of naming convention with prefixes, it was hard to know what was from YouTube Music and what was from YouTube. I just had to remember, which gets harder as the number of playlists increased. This dissuaded me from using more than 1 or 2 playlists, which limited the overall value of the service.
That may be their internal justification, but due to their marketing, it feels like I’m forced to buy two things, when I only ever wanted one. This is why people have been asking for a YouTube Premium Lite, and what they delivered isn’t what anyone asking really wanted.
I understand what you’re saying, but the point still stands. YouTube has positioned this as a 2 for 1 value, that people don’t see value in. The optics are bad. It might be technically valid, but that’s irrelevant when it comes to consumer sentiment, especially when YouTube itself framed it this way.
I had YouTube Lite for a couple years. They sent me an email saying it was being discontinued in my country. I had always been watching with an Ad Blocker. The main difference now is that they refuse to accept the money I am willing to pay them.
