YouTube is asking some customers to buy a Premium subscription to look at in 4K • TechCrunch

YouTube’s Premium paid subscription contains advantages like ad-free viewing, video and track downloads for offline consumption, and background performs. Now, it may additionally be shifting video streaming in 4K decision (at the moment free for all customers) to the premium tier.

Over the weekend, customers throughout Reddit and Twitter famous that YouTube had been asking them to improve to the premium tier to look at movies in 4K.

It’s not clear if the change is a part of a restricted check, or if the corporate is considering capping free customers to 1440p decision. Google refused to touch upon the story when contacted by TechCrunch.

The corporate has tried numerous strategies to transform free customers into paying ones. Probably the most infamous ones was displaying them as much as 11 unskippable adverts earlier than the beginning of an extended video to allow them to have an uninterrupted expertise.

Final 12 months, Google stated that it crossed the 50 million subscriber mark throughout YouTube Music and Premium. Whereas the value of those subscriptions varies throughout areas, within the US, it fees $9.99 monthly for YouTube Music and $11.99 monthly for YouTube Premium.

In its Q2 2022 earnings, the search big stated that YouTube introduced in $6.87 billion in income — which was a lot decrease than analyst expectations of $7.51 billion. So it’s not sudden that the corporate may strive new methods to extend paid customers for its video streaming providers.

Final week, YouTube TV launched a brand new program to let customers subscribe to add-on channels like Showtime, HBO Max, NBA League Go, and MLB.TV with out buying a $64.99 a month base plan.