The truth about YouTube Premium

Ryan Houk
5 min readOct 5, 2022
a mosaic of streaming service logos

Not long ago I came across a Medium post about the highest-rated subscriptions people pay for. The author asked for people to mention their favorite subscriptions in the comments. I obliged and commented that YouTube premium is among my favorite subscriptions. Mind you, I subscribe to all sorts of services ranging from video streaming, music, news, podcasts, software, blogging platforms and so on.

What caught me off guard was how many of the readers thought my paying for YouTube Premium was silly and unnecessary. This was namely because of the popularity of countless ad-blockers. These dissenters have a point. Why pay for something when a browser extension does it for free?

There’s an app for that

In the world of endless subscription services there are the popular kids like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime and dozens of others. And then there are the lesser popular, but still formidable, services like Audible, TIDAL, Wondery+, Apple News, and all varieties of forms of media on offer for a handful of dollars per month. But a name that doesn’t get mentioned often among top tier services is YouTube Premium.

YouTube has evolved quite a bit from its initial launch in 2005. It doesn’t really fit in with other video streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock, Disney+…

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Ryan Houk
Ryan Houk

Written by Ryan Houk

Product designer of 15+ years — I write about tech & design.