Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube plans to launch a “Premium Lite” plan.
- This plan will allow users to watch videos, except for music videos, without ads.
- Premium Lite will be announced soon for the US, Australia, Germany, and Thailand.
Late last year, there were reports of users seeing offers to subscribe to YouTube Premium Lite, a cheaper alternative to Premium that ended in 2023. At the time, a spokesperson for Google told Android Authority that the company was “testing a different version of Premium Lite,” so users in “Australia, Germany, and Thailand may see the option to sign up.” Now it looks like YouTube may be almost ready to debut this new version of Premium Lite.
According to Bloomberg, YouTube is planning to introduce its new Premium Lite tier soon. This plan will be available in the US, Australia, Germany, and Thailand. While the initial group of markets will be quite small, it appears Premium Lite will eventually find its way to other countries.
“As part of our commitment to provide our users with more choice and flexibility, we’ve been testing a new YouTube Premium offering with most videos ad-free in several of our markets,” a YouTube spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We’re hoping to expand this offering to even more users in the future with our partners’ support.”
Similar to Premium, this Lite plan will allow users to view YouTube videos without having to be subjected to ads. However, as the Lite name suggests, you won’t have access to all the perks that come with a Premium subscription. The catch here is that you’ll still have the watch ads for music videos.
This will be the first time YouTube Premium Lite is available in the US as the original version skipped over this market. It will be interesting to see if the cheaper plan will be enticing enough to convince those who refuse to pay for Premium to sign up.
