YouTube Premium review: Is it a service worth paying for?

So let’s get started with a small review of YouTube Premium, the features, pricing, pros and cons and everything else you should know before subscribing to this platform.

Google has recently introduced its paid membership for YouTube in India, and there are two modules in the premium subscription that is offered by YouTube. The first one is YouTube Premium, and the second one is YouTube music aka. YT Music. Previously, the feature was called YouTube Red in other countries, before it was rebranded worldwide, and released in India a few months back.

If you watch videos on YouTube regularly, a question might come in your mind, whether it will be a judicial idea to upgrade to the premium platform of YouTube or stick to the old and good free version of it. 

Things should be clear after you read my review. It is almost a month now that I am using YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, and I am quite satisfied with the performance and the overall experience of using the service. We are living in the age, where there is an overabundance of video and music streaming services, and talking about India; YouTube Premium is a budding service, and I am sure it will go through more improvements in the future.

The cost of YouTube Premium is neither high nor very pocket-friendly. It is reasonably priced, and if you are looking just for YouTube Music, you can even go for that at a more affordable price compared to that of YouTube Premium, let’s see the review to know more.

YouTube Premium Pricing in India

First Things First. The first thing most people worry about is the subscription fee before they pay for using any services. So let me sort it out first. Here is the India pricing, however you can check out your country’s from here.

	YouTube Premium (per month)	YouTube Music Premium (per month)
Individual user	Rs. 129	Rs. 99
Family plan (up to 5 members)	Rs. 189	Rs. 149
Eligible students	Rs. 79	Rs. 59

*All the subscription plans are applicable, and the billing will start after the one-month free trial.

YouTube Music Premium Features:

Before diving deep in review to know more, let’s have a look at the features of YouTube Premium, which is pretty much everything, that you need, to decide whether the service is worth paying for.

• YouTube Premium comes with ad-free videos, and YouTube Music Premium is also free from all kinds of ads, that everybody comes across, on YouTube.
• You can download all the videos in full HD and can watch them later on no matter what the video is all about, including the YouTube Originals.
• By subscribing to YouTube Premium, you can see the YouTube Originals without ads, which are basically some premium and exclusive content by creators from across the globe.

• YouTube Premium comes with support for background playback and this is applicable even for the videos, besides the background music playback on YouTube Music.

• YouTube promises effortless discovery of music on YouTube Music Premium app and you can get almost every music you can think of on the platform.                     

• YouTube Music Premium also integrates with Google Play Music, which is an existing music streaming service by Google.

So those were the features of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium that you should know about before subscribing.

Pros:

NExt in this review is to look at the process of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium to help you find out how it actually works in everyday life.

• YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium are completely free from ads. Besides skippable ads, there are no ads in the middle of a video, no banner ads and no ads in any part of the web page. The complete and pure ad-free experience if something that you will get by subscribing to YouTube Premium.
• Talking about background music and video playback, you can play music and videos in the background without worrying about them getting paused. You can lock the screen, and besides that, you can if you switch between apps, and the video will be played in picture-in-picture mode or PIP mode, which is again something that adds up to the wonderful user experience.                           

• If you are fond of watching web shows and movies, its subscription also comes with YouTube Originals, where you can discover and watch from exclusive movies and shows, though the catalogue doesn’t get updated regularly. The collection of YouTube Originals might be small but the shows are interesting at the same time.
• Unlike most other music streaming services like Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, Saavn, Gaana, etc., YouTube music doesn’t only bring music from the original creators. Besides the original version of a song or music, you can even find different versions of the same music or song covered by others, which can also be equally entertaining sometimes. Though there are songs and music covers in other music streaming services, the content is not as vast, as it is on YouTube music.
• All the music and videos that you download using YouTube or make them available offline will be downloaded in your SD card, which can help you save a lot of your space on the internal storage for apps and games. However, you can even change the configuration if you are not using an SD card, your handset doesn’t have an SD card slot, or you simply don’t want to put your music and videos in the external SD card.
• If you face weak connectivity issues while commuting and in other times, YouTube music will automatically download and make those songs, you listen to regularly available offline, when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Besides that, it will also download other songs, which YouTube thinks might interest you. The feature can come in really handy if you don’t want to download music on making them available offline manually.
• The YouTube music app comes with ‘Your Mixtape’, which is an unending playlist where you can listen to your favourite songs and the selection of songs will be based on your likes and playing history. The ‘Your Mixtape’ playlist can actually help you play songs instantly if you want to refresh yourself by listening to some random songs that you like. The songs in ‘Your Mixtape’ will hardly disappoint you in any way.
• In the YouTube music section, a user can also watch the video for that particular song, which is great, as well. However, the user can also choose the song to be played by default to conserve data. The user can also choose between the song and the music video with just a single tap.

• A user can pause the YouTube Premium or YouTube music subscription from 1 month up to 6 months. This can be useful for a number of users if they want to take a break from the premium subscription. You can know more about how to pause and resume a YouTube subscription here. Giving this much independence to a user is something that I really like. 
• Last but not the least, YouTube music comes with a very user-friendly interface, and I don’t think I need to say anything about the basic user interface YouTube, and it also applies for YouTube Premium. Well, the only difference lies in the ‘Premium’ tag beside that red Cool YouTube button, and that should make you feel privileged.                                                                           

So, those were the pros of using YouTube music and YouTube Music Premium in everyday life. I know there are a number of pros, and you might have already taken your decision. But wait, look at the cons before you leave.

Cons:

Now let’s have a look at the cons in this review of using YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium. There aren’t many but I will talk about things that require improvement.

• Sometimes when I tried playing offline YouTube Originals on my TV connected to Chromecast, it was troublesome. I got a message saying I need to make payments to watch the videos. However, the video played buttery smooth on my TV connected to Chromecast after I deleted the video from my offline list, and played it normally on my TV.
• Talking about the YouTube Originals, there are some interesting contents to explore, but the catalogue is not updated regularly. I don’t want to say it will be the next Netflix but there are a number of other regional streaming services which come with new content almost every single day. YouTube originals being a part of Google, I don’t think it will be a very big demand if the premium users expect a few more shows and movies.
• There isn’t any long-term plan at the time of writing this review. However, the subscription fee will automatically be deducted from the chosen payment method every month, But yearly subscription option is available on almost all the streaming platforms today and such plans also come with additional discounts. I wish a yearly was available for YouTube Premium and YT Music Premium, as well.
• I wish YouTube Music gets some inspiration from the Spotify app, when it comes to offering some additional content like lyrics, behind the scenes, and other interesting facts about a song or album, the song is a part of. The same thing is also displayed by taking full advantage of the big screen on TVs. There isn’t such a thing on YouTube Music, and revamping the interface with such interesting tidbits of information will really make the service more interesting.

So those were the cons, and as it is an online service, the service can be improved to remove the cons.

YouTube Premium Review Verdict:

Now, should you go for the deal? Well, if ads frustrate you on YouTube, the only way to get rid of them is to pay for it. Besides that, if you are a music lover, the catalogue of YouTube Music is unbeatable. No argument can stand against it. So if you want to enjoy the YouTube Music in its full glory, without any ads, and want support for background playback, without which, pretty much every music app is crap, you have to subscribe to YouTube Music. You can’t get background playback and there will be ads. 

If you are planning to pay for music streaming subscription, YouTube music at just Rs. 99 per month for normal users is the best one that you can go for. But if you want YouTube Premium for the YouTube Originals, you will not be impressed and can rather be disappointed, to say the least. The catalogue of YouTube Originals isn’t as rich as its competitors and you can get a number of great original shows and latest movies on other services like Amazon Prime, Netflix; Hotstar, Zee5, ALTBalaji, if you are in India, and many other online video streaming services.

Hope you have taken your decision, whether you should take for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium or not. do you have any questions in mind or want to add any good or bad point about YouTube Premium? Feel free to comment on the same below. 

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• How to play YouTube music in the background on Android, with Ymusic