YouTube Premium is a necessity at this point, specially with kids. Also a better business model.

It is a fantastic service. It is a little concerning Google hasn't touched it since it matured. $17.99 for commercial free YT for a family is a bargain considering how much we use it. I have to think there is a major price increase coming.

That's already substantially more expensive than a 1080p Netflix subscription!

The rates can get grandfathered in, I still pay $14.99 for the family plan (hopefully they don't see this and come after my $3/mo)

Hmm. Grandfathered? I've had YouTube Premium Family plan for years, since it was called YouTube Red, and I think mine recently went up to $19.99

YouTube music is really bad if you're anything beyond a very casual music listener though. The feature set is abysmal.

I share YouTube Premium and Apple Music family subscriptions but if pressed would give up YT Premium before I gave up Apple Music.

Most people are very casual listeners. Like in most of their products, google seems to be targeting the majority.

Also, you're comparing different products in terms of price. YT can offer a "pro" version at an additional premium (though they probably won't... Since they focus on the main use cases)

> I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't just buy YouTube+ or whatever it's called that gives you free streaming music + no ads on YouTube.

For me, it’s because YouTube is clearly going the way of cable TV, and when they finally start showing ads on those fancy paid subscriptions, I’ll have to deal with the hassle of unsubscribing.

I’ll just watch YouTube until it becomes unwatchable, at which point I’ll stop watching.

If a hypothetical Music Streaming services has a perfect score of 10, Spotify would get 7, Apple Music would be 6 or 5.5, and Youtube Music wouldn't even score a 5.

And as usual with Google, they either dont know what they are doing or they dont seems to care about YouTube Music.

I have ublock origin and NewPipe on the phone.

What ads?