YouTube Premium’s Latest Perk Brings High-Quality Audio To Your Favorite Music Videos
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube has announced new experimental features exclusively for Premium subscribers.
- Premium users can now enjoy 256kbps audio for music videos and up to 4x playback speeds.
- iOS users gain features like picture-in-picture and smart downloads for YouTube Shorts.
Google has introduced another wave of YouTube Premium updates, continuing its trend of experimenting with new features to sweeten the deal for its subscribers. These updates, announced in a blog post today, seem to focus on drawing in short-form content enthusiasts while addressing the ever-shrinking attention spans of viewers.
Alongside these feature rollouts, Google also revealed a new bundling option for YouTube Premium and Google One subscribers.
One of the big changes announced today is that YouTube Premium subscribers can now test multiple experimental features at once. Previously, you were only allowed to enable one experimental feature at a time for your YouTube account. Here are the new features that Google announced today:
- High-quality audio: Premium users can now enjoy music videos with upgraded 256kbps audio. Google promises more clarity and depth, which should be great for those who treat YouTube as their primary music player.
- PIP for Shorts on iOS: This feature, which has been available for Android since mid-2024, lets iPhone users watch Shorts while multitasking with other apps. So, you can now keep those addictive short clips playing in the corner of your screen even when you are finishing other tasks.
- Smart Downloads for Shorts on iOS: Another feature that launched on Android last year is now available for iOS users. Smart Downloads automatically downloads a batch of recommended Shorts to your device, so you can keep scrolling aimlessly even while offline.
- “Jump Ahead” for web: This feature, previously available only on mobile devices, allows web users to skip directly to the highlights of a video, reducing aimless scrubbing to find key moments.
- Upto 4x playback speeds: A new option to play videos at up to 4x speed is coming to mobile. Whether you will be able to make sense of any spoken content at that speed is debatable, but hey, it’s there if you want it.
Google is also trying a little cross-promotion by bundling YouTube Premium with Google One for US subscribers. By purchasing a Google One Premium plan with at least 2TB of storage (starting at $20/month), subscribers can add YouTube Premium for $11.99/month instead of the usual $13.99/month.
While the $2/month savings might not be game-changing, the bundle could be appealing if you’re already paying for both services.
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