• YouTube Premium’s prices are increasing to R81.99 for an Individual subscription and R149.99 for a Family plan.
• YouTube Music standalone subscriptions are also increasing to R64.99 and R99.99 for Individual and Family plans respectively.
• The platform says that the increases will help it improve the service while supporting creators and artists.

Here’s some bad news to wake up to – YouTube is hiking the prices of its YouTube Premium subscriptions in South Africa.

The video streaming platform told existing subscribers that prices would be hiked in the wee hours of Friday morning. The good news is that subscribers will only see prices increased from 4th July while new subscribers will have to contend with higher prices right away according to the official website.

A YouTube Premium Individual subscription will now cost R81.99, up from R71.99 and YouTube Premium Family will cost R149.99, up from R109.99. YouTube Music subscriptions will also be climbing, an Individual plan will cost R64.99, up from R59.99 and YouTube Music Family will increase R10 from R89.99 to R99.99.

“We hope that you are enjoying your YouTube Premium benefits, including ad-free and downloadable videos, background play and uninterrupted access to over 100 million songs with the YouTube Music app,” YouTube told its Premium subscribers.

The platform explains that the increases are in service of improving YouTube Premium while also supporting the creators and artists on the platform.

YouTube really wants folks to pay for a Premium subscription instead of using an adblocker. The platform has, over the last few years, waged a war against adblockers in a number of ways including baking adverts right into videos from the server side. However, as YouTube lands a blow, people manage to work around them and find a way to block adverts.

Frankly, YouTube’s advertising has become incredibly aggressive in recent years so it’s little wonder that the users are trying to block them from appearing. In fact, we believe that YouTube Premium is a small price to pay to remove advertising entirely because without it, the website is a chore to navigate through.

As mentioned, existing subscribers can expect the price of their subscription to increase on 4th July.