Google makes cheaper YouTube Premium Lite available more widely
Google has announced that it is expanding the availability of the recently added cheaper tier of YouTube Premium. The YouTube Premium Lite package costs a little over half the price of the regular YouTube Premium subscription which should serve as a lure to potential customers who have been sitting on the fence.
The lower price, inevitably, means having to make some compromises, but YouTube Premium Lite delivers what most people will be looking for – a broadly ad-free experience on YouTube.
Having initially launched earlier this year in the United States, Australia, Thailand and Germany, the availability of YouTube Premium Lite was quickly expanded to include Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Great Britain. The latest expansion sees the cheaper subscription tier being made available in many more countries.
Google says that over the coming days, YouTube Premium Lite should be available to people in Turkey, Poland, France, Romania, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Singapore, Chile and Colombia. The company says that the rollout is a gradual one, so if you live in one of these locations and don’t yet have access, it should just be a matter of waiting a day or two longer.
Announcing the expansion, Google says:
Premium Lite is now expanding to viewers in Turkey, Poland, France, Romania, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Singapore, Chile and Colombia! We’re slowly rolling this out over the next couple days, so viewers in these countries may not see it yet.
YouTube Premium Lite details
But the devil is in the detail. YouTube Premium promises that all YouTube videos will be free of ads, and the same is true of music and music videos. More than this, the more expensive Premium subscription allows for the playing of videos in the background, and even video downloads.
Not all of these perks are available in YouTube Premium Lite.
For $7.99 (USD) per month, subscribers still get an experience that is stripped of ads to some extent. Google says that the subscription makes “most videos ad-free”, but this is unhelpfully unclear. Further detail provided by the company elsewhere sheds a little more light on things, with the added promise that “you can enjoy gaming, fashion, beauty, news, and more ad-free”.
What remains ad-riddled, however, are music and music videos, so the value of YouTube Premium Lite really depends on the type of content you tend to watch on the platform. Google makes it clear that you will still ads even if you are a paying Premium Lite subscriber.
The company says that “ads may appear on music, Shorts, and when you search or browse”. And by “may”, Google really means “almost certainly will”.
Subscribe to YouTube Premium Lite and you will also miss out on the ability to watch videos in the background on your mobile device, as well as not being able to download videos – although, there are ways to get around this, of course.
Google’s breakdown of what a subscription provides is as follows:
- With Premium Lite, you can enjoy gaming, fashion, beauty, news, and more ad-free
- Premium Lite works across devices, including phone, laptop and TV
- Ads may appear on music, Shorts, and when you search or browse
- If you’re looking for additional features or ad-free music on YouTube or YouTube Music, Premium might be a better membership for you. Premium Lite doesn't include YouTube Music Premium or features like downloads and background play.
You can check to see if you are able to get YouTube Premium Lite by heading over to https://www.youtube.com/premiumlite.
Do you think YouTube Premium Lite offers value for money? Is it worth paying $8 (or the equivalent) each month so you can see fewer ads? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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