If you’re a Google One subscriber in the US, we have good news for you. Google has announced that some Google One subscribers will be able to subscribe to YouTube Premium at a discount as part of a bundle. This is excellent news if you’ve always wanted a YouTube Premium subscription but felt it was too expensive.
Slight discount
Unfortunately, this bundle isn’t an all-in-one Google One and YouTube Premium subscription. Instead, it appears that Google is offering a slight discount on YouTube Premium of $2. This means that instead of paying $13.99 a month, you’ll only have to pay $11.99.
YouTube raised the prices of its Premium subscription back in 2023, so this discount effectively negates that. Also, one thing to note is that this discount isn’t available for all Google One subscribers. Customers will need to subscribe to the 2TB tier of Google One. This is priced at $9.99 a month and comes with 2TB of storage.
If you subscribe to any of the lower tiers, such as the Basic 100GB tier at $1.99 a month or the Standard 200GB tier at $2.99 a month, you cannot take advantage of this deal. It’s unfortunate, but Google needs to generate revenue as well! Additionally, if you already have a YouTube Premium subscription, you must cancel it first and then sign up again through Google One. The new price will not automatically transfer to existing subscriptions.
Experimental YouTube features
In addition to being part of a discounted bundle with Google One, YouTube has also announced that it is introducing some experimental features for its Premium users. This includes streaming audio at higher quality at 256kbps while watching music videos.
YouTube has expanded its picture-in-picture (PiP) mode on iOS to include YouTube Shorts. PiP is a feature exclusive to YouTube Premium users. This experimental update now allows viewers to watch Shorts in this format in addition to regular videos. Speaking of YouTube Shorts, YouTube’s Smart Downloads feature also works on short-form videos. It will allow users to watch Shorts even if they are offline.
YouTube is also bringing the Jump Ahead feature to the web. It was a feature that was previously only available on mobile, but this experimental feature lets web users use it, too. Last but not least, YouTube is expanding faster playback support on mobile. Users can choose speeds of up to 4x.
Note that these are experimental features, so there’s a chance YouTube could drop them or change them before the public release. However, some of it does sound useful and could be worth checking out.
