Even though subscription fees are becoming more of a pain than a convenience, YouTube seems to thrive in that department. The streaming service has finally reached its 100 million mark for its Premium service, which extends to YouTube Music.
YouTube Reaches the 100 Million Mark
A hundred million people are already enjoying YouTube's ad-free experience right now. This signifies a double in subscriptions since September 2021, and a 20 million increase from the subscriber count it had last year.
The company must be doing something right if users continue to pay and join the subscription service, especially since it saw a $2 increase in the monthly fee for the Premium service, as reported by Engadget, following other subscription increases in the last year.
It could have something to do with the fact that YouTube Premium will not only allow you to watch videos without the pesky ads, but will also provide access you YouTube's music service. While it's successful in the video department, it has a long way to go to become the top music provider.
It's hard to determine how many people use YouTube Music since it comes with a Premium subscription, but it's still clear that the streaming giant has yet to beat Spotify. As of the third quarter of 2023, Spotify already has 220 million subscribers, which is more than double of YouTube's.
It might be ahead of Apple, but that is also unclear as the iPhone maker no longer discloses its numbers. The last known official count was 60 million, but that was back in 2019 and the service may have achieved a much bigger subscription count now.
Why the Sudden Surge in Subscription?
It's hard to say why people are suddenly using the Premium service, but there are a lot of reasons behind it. For one, it's hard to enjoy YouTube videos when you are constantly bombarded with ads, especially ones that are unskippable.
It could also have something to do with YouTube cracking down on ad blockers. Back in early November, YouTube finally restricted ad blockers in the form of add-ons, extensions, and programs as it became a violation of its Terms of Service.
Previously, YouTube would warn users that they may only watch three videos using the ad blockers before they can continue using the site, but it looks like that's no longer the case. In fact, users noticed that the website slows down when ad blockers are detected.
Adblock and Adblock Plus users are claiming that the extension is causing the performance drops on the site, as reported by Bleeping Computer. The slowdown seems to affect video loading times, full-screen transitions, and even thumbnail previews.
Upon testing by installing the Adblock Chrome extension, it was confirmed that the ad cheat was indeed the reason for the performance issues. The website loaded very slowly, to the point that even scrolling down showed signs of degradation.
Further evidence that it might be the specific ad-blocking extension was discovered when other YouTube Premium users did not experience the same kind of issue, as well as those who used a different ad blocker called uBlock Origin.
