YouTube is expanding its more affordable $7.99 per month Premium Lite subscription service with new features, including the ability to download videos for offline access and watch videos in the background even when the screen is off or you’re using other apps. These options were previously only available to customers complete planningwhich costs $13.99 per month.
The company said the additions were the result of user feedback, as customers in the pilot program shared that they wanted these specific features to make the subscription more attractive.
YouTube Premium Lite, which launched last March, introduced a more modestly priced subscription tier that would remove ads from “most” videos on the platform, including videos in popular verticals like gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news and more. However, ads would still appear on music content and music videos. Additionally, customers on the Lite plan will not have access to the ad-free YouTube Music app.
With the arrival of these new features, ad-free music content will now be the only reason to upgrade to the full Premium subscription. It will also likely make the Lite tier more attractive to customers who wanted to pay not only for ad-free content but also wanted other upgrades.
The Lite plan was previously first introduced in Thailand, Germany and Australia come to the US last year. It’s now available for some other global marketsincluding Canada, Brazil, the UK, India, Mexico and other parts of Europe and Asia.
YouTube’s subscription business has been growing steadily. Combined with advertising, YouTube’s total revenue would reach $60 billion by 2025, according to information shared by parent company Alphabet during its quarterly earnings earlier this month.
The company also reported that YouTube ad revenue rose 9% to $11.38 billion in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, its subscriptions, platforms and devices group’s revenue rose 17% to $13.6 billion in the fourth quarter, which the company attributed to strong growth in YouTube subscriptions, particularly YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.
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Alphabet reported more than 125 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium users worldwide as of March 2025. The company didn’t share an updated statistic during its quarterly earnings call earlier this month, but said it now has more than 325 million paid subscriptions for consumer services including YouTube Premium and others like Google One.
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