It looks like the yearly plan went up $20 as well. Of course, the yearly plan doesn’t auto-renew for whatever reason, so at least people can’t forget and unknowingly get a higher charge.

I’ll have to debate between now and October when my Premium service runs out if I want to renew. I tried to go without it last time and made it all of 18 hours before giving in and signing back up.

I’m still rather frustrated that YouTube Music is bundled. I pay for Apple Music and hate YouTube Music a lot. The Lite membership feels like a non-starter, because it not only cuts access to YouTube Music (which is fine), it doesn’t serve up music related content on YouTube ad free. It seems like a flip of a coin whether or not a music related video is categorized as “music” or not. I often watch these videos sitting in the living room, as I would any other video, and it’s not a replacement for a music service or used in the same way at all.

With the influx of AI content across the internet as a whole, I’ve found myself reading more. Maybe this trend will continue and I can simply discontinue use of YouTube.