So this is some bollocks. Guess I'll be cancelling our plan since it's only used by two of us.
Current price $17.99/month, new price $32.99/month.
If they boiled the frog better I would probably have accepted a $5/month price rise, and then another later... But close to doubling in one go is a no from me dawg.
Thank you for being a loyal member throughout our journey. We created YouTube Premium so that you could enjoy all the videos and music you love without interruptions.
To continue delivering great service and features, we are increasing the YouTube Premium family plan price to A$32.99/month. We don't make these decisions lightly, and this update will allow us to continue to improve YouTube Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube. This is the first ever price increase for your subscription.
Links to cancellation etc: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12400348?sjid=6028684095030617608-AP
I'm reading this thread with lots of people saying they keep paying for premium because they watch so much YouTube, and fair play to them, it's more convenient to pay
But what the fuck are people actually watching?!?
Edit - just seen this lmao - https://mander.xyz/post/5718061
As an avid YT watcher: lots of high quality food and cooking shows, music and concerts, science channels, space and spacefaring channels and of course regular entertainment. Enough to fill your whole day, if necessary. With no fucking ads at all. I love it! ❤️
I watch a lot of long-form video essays about politics, economics, media analysis, and societal stuff like that, sketch or video game comedy, and some random hobby stuff, all by independent creators. I also watch stream vods on YouTube. Oh and asmr to fall asleep. I don't want to watch ads obviously but it would be much more expensive to support everyone I watch on patreon, even if I only gave a dollar to every one. And I do want to support them financially because a lot of that long-form stuff literally takes weeks or months to make.
This is what I don't understand either - as someone who stopped using Youtube the day that they brought ads in (except for watching embedded videos elsewhere as they don't have ads), I haven't been exposed to the long-form enshittification others have experienced and so maybe that's why I don't get it, but who is using Youtube for hours on end and what are they watching? Is it just conspiracy theorists falling further and further down the rabbit hole? I really don't know.
I use it every day. I watch videos that are i on a specific topic, and YouTube has lots of them. For now, my uBlock in Firefox works. I will not pay for Premium if they block me