YouTube TV Raises Prices Again, Days After Hinting It Wouldn’t
from the down-the-tube dept
A few years back, Karl Bode wrote about YouTube TV’s 2020 price hike, going from $50/month for its base package, to $65/month. The framing of that post was spot on: Google was behaving much like that of a cable company, with the exact customer-angering actions being taken that drove so many people into YouTube TV’s arms to begin with. Regular price hikes devoid of any real additional value, channel packages filled with unwanted content, and so on. In its announcement of the 2020 price hike, here is how Google justified it to customers.
“We don’t take these decisions lightly, and realize how hard this is for our members. That said, this new price reflects the rising cost of content and we also believe it reflects the complete value of YouTube TV, from our breadth of content to the features that are changing how we watch live TV. YouTube TV is the only streaming service that includes a DVR with unlimited storage space, plus 6 accounts per household each with its own unique recommendations, and 3 concurrent streams. It’s all included in the base cost of YouTube TV, with no contract and no hidden fees.”
Got it? Google raised its YouTube TV rates for two reasons. The rising cost of content was one. The other was the true value for YouTube TV due to the listed features: lots of content, unlimited cloud DVR space, and multi-device streaming.
Well, YouTube rates are going up again, and the story is largely the same.
Due to the rising cost of content, we’ve updated our membership pricing to reflect the complete value of YouTube TV. The new price for a Base Plan is $82.99 per month. This change has been implemented since December 12, 2024.
The updated price will continue to include 100+ channels, a DVR with unlimited storage, up to 6 accounts per household, and 3 concurrent streams. No additional fees are required for broadcast, HD, set-top box, or DVR.
That’s so close to the previous message that you have to wonder if there was some copying/pasting going on here. I will say that it’s refreshing for a company to come right out and demonstrate via the written word that it is hiking prices without adding in one iota of value for the second time in a few years. And, given that, it would be quite nice if Google would be more transparent on the delta in costs in producing content. Otherwise, this just looks like typical shareholder-driven enshittification within the tech industry.
And because this is Google we’re talking about, it fumbled the communications on this fairly badly.
The move comes just days after a Verizon promotion on Facebook suggested that customers could save $10 per month on YouTube TV, in which the “Current subscription price of $82.99/mo applies.” As seen on 9to5Google, the verified TeamYouTube account responded on X (formerly Twitter) that it was aware Verizon promoted “the incorrect price for the YouTubeTV Base Plan.” It’s true that the price was incorrect—for three days, or about five weeks, depending on how you count.
Raising prices in the most confusing way possible isn’t exactly going to engender a great deal of goodwill from the customer base. Especially when you consider the brisk pace these price changes have undergone in the mere 7 years YouTube TV has been around.
YouTube TV launched for $35 per month in 2017. It rose to $40 in 2018, $50 in 2019, $65 in 2020, and then $73 in March 2023. Google did decrease the cost of upgrading from HD to 4K to $10 per month with its last price hike.
The move away from cable television had to, and always was going to, happen. What didn’t need to happen was for Google to ignore the lessons of cable TV’s past and instead slowly give in to the dark side, like a Luke Skywalker that gives into his hate and fails to make the positive changes as a result.
If Google wants to become the next Comcast, in other words, it ought not be surprised when it earns a Comcast-like reputation.
Filed Under: fees, price hikes, youtube tv
Companies: google, youtube
Comments on “YouTube TV Raises Prices Again, Days After Hinting It Wouldn’t”
This is why I block ads (including on this site) and pirate everything.
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Thank you for justifying the efforts of maximalists in making copyright laws horrible for everyone else. Not. Recently, I bought Metroid Fusion and something to play it on all without paying a cent to Nintendo, and I didn’t have to resort to copyright infringement to do it; I merely purchased an old DS Lite and a GBA cart of the game pre-owned. This way, I get to play Nintendo games without paying any licensing fees to Nintendo, but I don’t provide the company with any excuse for making current laws worse.
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You what? How dare you! I’m going to talk to my Senator!
— Nintendo, probably
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The Japanese game and music companies did lobby the Japanese lawmakers, such that physical media rental is now illegal there without permission from the copyright holders. It’s hard to imagine that Nintendo wasn’t involved (or that they’d give permission), although English information on Japanese laws is quite limited.
Copyright law is unjust, and no justification is required to ignore unjust laws. In my opinion, that’s better than supporting such laws and monopolists via second-hand sales. People are more willing to buy things, or will pay more for things, when they know there’s a second-hand market. We should be giving these companies as little money as possible.
(They’ll “justify” their lobbying via any means possible, whether supported by facts or not. That doesn’t matter.)
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So Japanese law is now in line with the most of the rest of the world. And?
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Since zero of the proceeds of second-hand sales actually reach copyright holders, please explain how they support maximalists and the laws they lobby for. Go on, I’ll wait.
Re: Re: Excuses are not necessary
Oh my sweet summer child, I hate to break it to you, but the only excuse they need to raise prices is the quarterly rerun of increasing shareholder value.
Whatever you do or do not makes no difference. The excuse is there and they will use it each and every time.
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TIL: Gaming publishers rely on changes to the law to raise prices and the prices of pre-owned items are dependent on the price of new media. Who were you calling a “sweet summer child” again? Because it seems like you fit that description much more than AC.
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They use their profits to subvert democracy.
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What profits if the majority of people buy pre-owned?
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Well, that’s an argument, i guess, if i have to.
Re: piracy
piracy is always the easiest and cheapest solution
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Piracy is the “option” that gives maximalists every excuse they want to lobby for laws that fuck the rest of us over, so your position subversively supports maximalists.
Here is what I don’t get. Google is a trillion-dollar company (at least if I remember right it is). Yet they’re raising prices because of the “price of content”. Isn’t Google earning so much revenue from all their other services that they could absorb that cost practically indefinitely? Even if they lowered the price of YouTube TV to $15, I doubt the “price of content” would actually impact their bottom line all that much unless the “price” is like $5 billion per item of “content” (whatever that actually means…)
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Well, sure, but what if they could make even more profit instead?!?
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Your argument seems to be hinged on the idea that Google(or more accurately its shareholders) would be willing to do something that would benefit the customer and make the shareholders slightly less money.
That’s not how it works. Company shareholders want to make all the money, no exceptions. “Short-term profits over long-term customer retention and satisfaction” is the modus operandi.
Re: Re: And other idiotic practices
Exactly this. No public company can make a multi-year investment that reduces quarterly profits. Even if the investment is virtually guaranteed to pay itself off and increase future profits, provide a competitive advantage and/or set up the company for long-term success, Wall Street will have none of it.
Too many quarters of “missed analyst predictions” means you’re out, regardless.
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Have you heard the good news? Jessie Singal has been banned from Bluesky! YEAHHHH!
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Who’s Jessie Singal? I thought the guy’s name was Jesse.
What content?
I’m puzzled. I’m not a YouTube “subscriber” (in the sense of paying them any money) but I’m a “watcher” (in the sense of using their app and having an account that I sign into, and numerous channels that I “subscribe” to). Everything I watch on YouTube is content that is produced by people who do it all themselves and just upload the finished work to YouTube. As far as I can see, other than paying those content creators some fraction of revenue earned from ads, Google has zero costs of production. And, for that revenue fraction, as far as I can see Google sets the terms on a take it or leave it basis. There would seem to be no way for content creators to pass on “increasing costs of production” to Google so what the actual fuck are they talking about?
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Near as I can tell, YoutubeTV is a kind of Netflix-like subscription service, with content unique to this service and not accessible to us plebes on youtube.com. It is the “exclusive” access to these videos that costs Youtube money, which they pass along to their subscribers.
I had a family relative that wanted to cut cords. I was looking into how hard it’d be to set up an in-home Plex/DVR setup in their house when they simply went to YoutubeTV. Seems it had local TV channels, too, so that solved all that. A few years later, I’m kind of giggling over each price increase.
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Well, they’ve done a fantastic job of selling it then. The sole take-home message I’ve received each time they’ve tried to inveigle me into subscribing is that it would be ad-free. Almost as stellar a job as Apple has done with thus far failing to convince me that AppleTV+ offers any more than fourth fifths of diddly-squat. Had Prime for the shipping but that went beyond the enshittification line and got cancelled. I’m so over being milked. The answer is no.
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Cashcarry,
You are confusing YouTube (what you are describing) and YouTubeTV (which is entirely different). YouTubeTV (the subject of this price increase article) is an over-the-top streaming service that provides LIVE TV along with other network programming similar to a cable company’s TV subscriptions. “Channels” in this case are actual television programming streams (like channels on a TV) and not the content-provider “channels” that you are describing for YouTube or other social media.
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YoutubeTV IS cable, with a few more TV channels. What you are talking about is Youtube, two different things.
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That’s the impression I got too. So, they’re buying the same stuff from the same copyright monopolists, with basically the same business model (packages of mostly-unwanted channels) and without the potential advantage of broadcasting or multicasting. Why would anyone expect them to stay much cheaper over the long term?
Re: Re: Re: Expectations?
Mmmmaybe to avoid the proverbial meteor that killed the dinosaurs the last time?
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
— Cory Doctorow, 2022
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Have you heard the good news? Jessie Singal has been banned from Bluesky! YEAHHHH! Jessie Singalhas been banned from Bluesky! YEAH!
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Who’s Jessie Singal? I thought the guy’s name was Jesse.
That translator is just so handy
Due to the rising cost of content, we’ve updated our membership pricing to reflect the complete value of YouTube TV.
One sec, need to run that through the Corpo-to-English translator…
‘While we’re certainly making a bunch of money at the current subscription price we’re not making all the money, and since the number must always go up we’re jacking the price up(again).’
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Jessie Singal has been banned from Bluesky! YEAHHHH! WHOOO HOOOO!
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Who’s Jessie Singal? I thought the guy’s name was Jesse.
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Remember, Line must go Up and Right, forever. Or else.
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If line goes left, we have a much more serious problem. Or someone who can’t graph.
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Time Traveling Profits 2: Back to the Last Quarterly Report
Again, service doesn’t worth anything on their own, but worth the money all users are spending for it.
Without users, even the best service doesn’t worth anything.
That’s the concept of the free market that more and more big companies seem to complain about, even they’ve made their profit from it.
I am a recent YouTubeTV subscriber (since March of this year), so this is my first price increase I am experiencing for YTTV. Even with this price increase (while I do not like it for my own budget), YTTV is still definitely far cheaper than what I’d have to pay if I had continued with my cable provider’s package model, because the channels that we watch (both local LIVE TV and other cable programming) with YTTV are spread out across three different layers of packaging in our cable provider’s offering, which together would still cost twice as much to subscribe to.
Google can spread it’s costs over a national subscriber base, which only all by the largest cable providers can do, and that does still help keep the individual subscription cost down. Google will eventually reach the point where even that subscription cost becomes too much, and subscribers will begin to shrink. But that point doesn’t appear to be here yet, as other customers like me continue to leave the traditional cable providers even higher costs.
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What? You say that cable is still around? Didn’t we spray the place for them just last month?
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Have you heard the good news? Jessie Singal has been banned from Bluesky!!
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Who’s Jessie Singal? I thought the guy’s name was Jesse.
Not for me...
I got their email about the price increase. An hour later I had unsubscribed. A day later I had found an OTA antenna and connected it to my TV. As it was their service was worth perhaps 1/3 of what they charged – I never found anything there of much interest and I don’t do sports. With the antenna and streaming I can get pretty much anything I need. Now I need to start looking at my other subscriptions which looked like a good idea at the time but proved to be less so.
piracy
youtube and all these other streaming services can go fuck themselves. ill continue to pirate everything instead of wasting time signing up for any streaming service. these regimes would never have to raise rates if they didnt release bullshit movies like kraven the hunter or madam web. i know they release these movies on purpose to launder $100s of millions
WHat alternatives
I suppose we could look into Hulu. but when I checked, their price was $8 higher than YouTube, and they had fewer channels by 4 or 5. (In other words, not much of a difference.)
And who’s to say Hulu won’t be following suit and raising their prices as well?