- YouTube is experimenting with charging users for its playback speed tool, recent experiment reveals
- A Reddit user shared an image indicating that a YouTube Premium subscription is required to access playback speeds, although this may not be apparent to everyone
- If YouTube decides to lock the feature behind a subscription, it could encourage more Premium signups – or turn off free users.
Although many people subscribe to YouTube Premium, its free experience is still widely used by millions of people, including me – but one of its best free features may soon be locked behind the Premium paywall.
Speed Play is one of the platform’s last handy free features, but now there’s evidence that YouTube has been experimenting to make it a new paid feature as part of YouTube Premium. If true, it will join other Premium benefits such as offline listening, ad-free viewing and background viewing, as well as the five new handy features rolled out in September last year.
The experience was first spotted by a user on Reddit, who shared a screenshot of a YouTube Premium pop-up showing that they no longer had access to change the video playback speed – but it doesn’t appear for everyone.
Youtube and playback speeds from r/youtube
It appears that YouTube is testing this by dividing users into two different groups: “Group A” and “Group B”, as categorized in the Reddit thread. Users in Group A will still have access to the free playback speeds, so nothing changes, while users in Group B will encounter the pop-up that requires them to be a YouTube Premium subscriber to use the playback speeds.
Although this is not set in stone, we are not ruling out the possibility of this happening at this time. We’ve reached out to Google and YouTube for comment, and we’ll update this story when we know more.
Opinion: What a way to push away more free users
This just shows that YouTube is desperate to persuade more free users to move to the Premium side, but at what cost?
For the most part, I find that most YouTube users are pretty happy with what the free experience offers. While the benefits of Premium are a game-changer, there are enough free tools to not pay for another subscription service – but this potential move could be the one that pushes free users over the edge.
Speed Reading is one of the latest free tools that keeps me locked in, and it’s the same for many users. I love using it to speed up videos that are way too long to watch at standard 1.0 fare, especially long interview videos. Luckily, I haven’t been hit with a YouTube Premium pop-up yet, and I hope it stays that way.
While this would be a huge inconvenience for us free users, I’ve always been intrigued by YouTube Premium and how it improves the viewing experience. I can’t say I’ve never been tempted by a free trial – I think it would be a game-changer for music video watching. Who knows, maybe this is the year I give in.
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