YouTube has now joined the many companies worldwide that are increasing the prices of their products and services amidst a global inflation crisis. For the first time since YouTube Premium was introduced in Malaysia back in 2019, it has implemented a significant price hike, at least for one of its tiers.
Specifically, the company is increasing the price of the Family plan of YouTube Premium by 26%, from RM26.90 per month to RM33.90. This RM7 difference seems to come with no upgrades or changes, so effectively, users are getting less bang for their buck.
The individual YouTube Premium plan as well as the student rates seem to remain unchanged for now, costing RM17.90 and RM10.90 per month respectively. There is seemingly no explanation as to why only the family plan is getting a price bump as the company recently rolled out five new features for the subscription across all tiers.
Through the family plan, up to five family members can enjoy the perks of YouTube Premium, including an ad-free experience, background play on mobile devices, downloads for offline viewing, and even access to YouTube Music, its music streaming service.
Among some of the newer features is “1080p premium”, which is a 1080p resolution for videos but with a higher bitrate, which should provide higher quality. 4K streaming is still available to all users on the platform after a brief experiment of paywalling the resolution only to Premium users. The video queuing system that was previously exclusive to its desktop site is now available on the mobile app for Premium users as well as the ability to watch videos together on separate devices through Meet Live Sharing.
The move isn’t much of a surprise given how almost every company is bumping up their prices to keep up with rising costs, so you can’t really blame the tech giant for going with the trend. However, there are still some companies that are going against the tide, such as Netflix which recently significantly reduced the cost of its basic plan in Malaysia, or Crunchyroll, which localised prices last year and cut the rate of its subscription by over two-thirds here.
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