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Have you ever wondered why Google doesn’t offer a lower-subscription model for YouTube Premium that doesn’t include all the bells and whistles? If you have, you’ll be happy to know that YouTube Premium Lite is being tested in select European markets, offering an ad-free YouTube experience for just $6.99 per month.
This new plan was first spotted by someone posting on ResetEra, but has since been confirmed by the likes of The Verge and Android Central. In confirming Premium Lite, YouTube provided the following statement to Android Central:
We launched YouTube Premium nearly six years ago to give users more choice on YouTube. Since then, we’ve been working to build a subscription service that fits the needs of our users. In Nordics and Benelux (except for Iceland), we’re testing a new offering to give users even more choice: Premium Lite costs €6.99/month (or local equivalent per month) and it includes ad-free videos on YouTube.
Currently, YouTube Premium includes a rather vast subset of features, including ad-free playback, a subscription to YouTube Music Premium, background video playback, and offline downloads. With Premium Lite, most of those features removed, with the only remaining benefits being ad-free YouTube playback and access to YouTube Kids. Offline downloads is removed, along with background playback, and obviously you won’t be able to use YouTube Music Premium.
We’re a bit surprised to see that it took Google and YouTube this long to begin testing Premium Lite. However, for those who watch loads of YouTube videos and just want to ditch the ads, the $6.99 monthly subscription is definitely an easier pill to swallow than the current $11.99.
YouTube says that Premium Lite is currently in its “experimental phase”, but that it is “considering rolling out more plans based on audience feedback.” Unfortunately, there’s no mention as to whether this will make its way here to the States, nor do we know when this experiment would come to other markets.
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