When I first heard aboutYouTube Premium, I’ll admit it: I was skeptical. The idea of paying for the popular video hosting platform when all the content was available for free seemed unnecessary. I don’t like ads when they’re interrupting my TV shows and movies, but for online video, I really didn’t think I minded much.
It turns out, I was wrong. After subscribing to the service for an entirely different reason, I discovered that anad-freeYouTube is just too good to live without. Over the last few years, I’ve become something of an evangelist for YouTube Premium, even going so far as to include friends in myfamily subscription.
Ad-free, but at what cost? Why YouTube Premium lost me
YouTube Premium doesn’t carry nearly the same value it used to – my wallet and I both agree.
YouTube Premium
What exactly is YouTube Premium?
It’s just YouTube as you know it, but better
5 ways to never pay full price for YouTube Premium
I’ve found a bunch of YouTube Premium discounts and deals worth checking out now.
Why I signed up for YouTube Premium
The secondary features got me
I often found myself wanting to continue watching or listening to YouTube videos while traveling on the subway without any cellular signal.
While working from home, I would often have live YouTube-hosted talk shows playing while I was at my desk. But when I needed to go outside to walk the dog, the only way I could keep listening live was to keep the YouTube app on my phone open and the screen on. If I left the app or shut my screen off, the audio would stop.
YouTube Premium’s killer feature
It was the ads all along
Though I may not have signed up in order to remove ads, in the end, it was the feature that really did away with my skepticism about YouTube Premium.
I certainly enjoyed the ability to listen in the background and save videos offline, but as my work situation changed, and as cellular service expanded on the subway system, I found myself less in need of either feature. They were and still are very nice to have, and it’s hard to imagine doing without them, but they weren’t the features that ultimately got me to hold onto my subscription for many years.
After years of becoming accustomed to watching YouTube without ever seeing ads, their sudden intrusion was maddening.
It really was the ads all along. I thought I was fine putting up with ads at the start of videos, or peppered throughout longer ones. It turns out, I didn’t know how good the ad-free life could be. In fact, I understood the benefit best when, recently, I temporarily paused my subscription.
I spent just a few weeks having to deal with ads on YouTube, and readers – it was terrible. After years of becoming accustomed to watching YouTube without ever seeing ads, their sudden intrusion was maddening.
YouTube Premium might not offer a large suite of features, and it might seem like paying $14 per month for no ads and background audio capabilities on your phone, but as I discovered, it really is worth it.
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You don’t want to sleep on YouTube Premium Music, especially when it’s so much better than a certain black and green streamer.
