YouTube is almost unusable now unless you pay for it

Believe it or not, YouTube is my favorite streaming app — and it’s not really close. I spend countless hours on YouTube each week, and it helps keep me entertained while writing articles like this. Over the years, however, it feels like the massive value YouTube once had has been slipping further away. Ads have always been there, and while they were annoying, it’s not like you couldn’t easily deal with them. Ad-blockers have been around for a long time, and for many people, they are essential to enjoying the platform.

The problem now is that there are far more issues with free YouTube than the inclusion of ads. Even if you manage to solve that battle, you still have quality-of-life features locked behind a paywall. Even simple things like double-tapping a video to speed up or skipping over commonly skipped sections of a video are features that are packed in with Premium instead of being available for all users.

As time goes on, more features are being taken and being put behind that very paywall. Even loopholes such as the background play workaround are being closed. It’s just about to the point where YouTube is either worth paying for or better off not being used at all. I wish it didn’t come to this, but I don’t see it getting any better.

YouTube Premium is great, but give free users a bone

The free version should still be worth using

Premium is excellent if you can spring for it. You get YouTube Music included with it, and it almost feels like it’s worth the price of admission for that alone. Even the relatively new Premium Lite gives you good value if you don’t need background play or don’t mind having ads on your music videos. As a big TV viewer, this is perfect for me. At just $8 a month, I’m perfectly happy with the stripped-down version. I tried to go a month without Premium, and what I noticed was that my use of YouTube just tanked. I don’t think it’s a worthwhile platform to use unless you pay for it.

With so many subscription services out there today, it’s a tough pill to swallow. Honestly, I’m trying to cut back on subscriptions instead of adding to them. YouTube Premium is one of the ones that feels like I can never get rid of. Given the popularity of YouTube, it’s a shame that a usable experience is locked behind a paywall, but hey, it’s the world we live in. To give YouTube just a little bit of credit, the Premium Lite tier doesn’t have to exist at all, so I’m happy that it’s there at least.

It’s almost essential for a TV viewer

Free YouTube is rough if you aren’t using a computer

People on computers have always had the luxury of installing an ad-blocker to avoid ads, but that’s not the case anywhere else. I’m sure there are some ways to get one installed on your TV in some way, but I can’t imagine it being worth the time for the average person. I’m not even sure the average person uses an ad-blocker on their computer. Without a Premium subscription, you’ll be met with frequent ad breaks in the middle of your videos and livestreams.

You’re stuck with a pretty bad experience on TV, and that’s not a good thing. I spend a large amount of my YouTube time on my Apple TV 4K’s app, so I would be a victim of all of this if I didn’t pony up for the Premium Lite subscription. With streaming services, there’s always an alternative you can sign up for, but YouTube isn’t the same. There isn’t a YouTube replacement out there, and if there is, I have never heard of it. Google has flaunted the high viewership of YouTube, so it almost feels like part of the plan to get people to sign up for Premium in one form or another. I wouldn’t put it past a corporation to act like this, and it feels like it’s the same thing with Netflix, where that ad-supported tier is starting to look more appealing, considering the other tiers keep rising in price.

For casual users of YouTube, it’s probably easier to get away with not paying. If I only spent an hour or so on the app a week, I wouldn’t be paying for it either. I think back to just a few years ago, and it feels like YouTube wasn’t like this. Of course, that was then, and this is now, and companies want your money. As strange as it seems, a Premium subscription is probably my best streamer available, so I’ll just keep on paying and cut back on other services. With how well YouTube is doing, I don’t see things getting better for the free users going forward. Soon, your choices will be subscribing to a tier of Premium or avoiding YouTube entirely.