Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube Premium Lite is again from the lifeless, after seemingly being canceled a yr in the past.
- Google’s at the moment working Premium Lite checks in Australia, Germany, and Thailand.
- It’s not clear but what Google’s long-term plans are right here.
YouTube Premium has obtained to be one of the crucial contentious paid variations of a streaming service. There’s good purpose for that, because it’s not like many of the relaxation on the market, providing free entry to principally every little thing — for those who sit via some adverts. And that’s typically fairly a number of adverts. At present we’re studying about a technique that YouTube is trying to give viewers a option to eradicate these adverts with out requiring a full-blown Premium subscription, as Google confirms that it’s introduced again Premium Lite for some new testing.
Premium Lite, it’s possible you’ll bear in mind, was principally a half-priced YouTube Premium plan that removed adverts, however that was just about it — no background playback, no YouTube Music, no additional perks. However for what it was, that may hit the worth sweet-spot for lots of viewers. Whereas it had been accessible for some nations up to now, we obtained phrase a few yr in the past that YouTube was shutting Lite down.
Quick-forward to immediately, and we discover ourselves working into recent studies of YouTube Premium Lite being marketed to customers. We reached out to Google principally out of confusion, considering that Premium Lite was soundly up to now, however the firm in the end confirmed to Android Authority that this can be a new, energetic check:
We’re testing a distinct model of Premium Lite and a few customers in Australia, Germany and Thailand may even see the choice to enroll.
That also leaves a ton of uncertainty on the market regarding future plans for the subscription providing. Totally different how? Will that quickly broaden to extra nations? What number of customers in these markets are even being invited to enroll in Lite? And perhaps our largest query can be what’s up with the backtracking right here, and why does Google seem like doing an about-face on its plans? That shouldn’t be essentially a criticism — we like paying much less for good issues as a lot as the following man — however it’s nonetheless fairly odd.
Hopefully Google comes ahead with some kind of unified strategy to Premium Lite quickly. And if it ever needed to make it accessible within the US, we wouldn’t complain.