YouTube is the most used video platform, and without a doubt one of the simplest, fastest and with the largest number of content. Logically, Google knows the importance of YouTube for the Internet, and is increasingly proposing more aggressive monetization systems.
Although it is logical to think that a platform of such dimensions needs recurring income, and that advertising is a fundamental part of it, YouTube is increasingly adding more ads and more complicated to skip them, a way to invite users to subscribe to their premium plan.
The company is adding more and more features to its premium plan that until now were available to all users, and it seems that the tests that YouTube is carrying out are going to be a before and after for its free users. In this sense, everything seems to indicate that watch YouTube in 4K with the free plan is about to end.
Do you want to watch YouTube in 4K? You will have to pay for the Premium subscription
As reported by several users from Redditthe company is testing the possibility that one of its most used features, watch videos in ultra high definition, become a paid feature, all focused on users subscribing to the Premium plan, which in addition to including additional features, does not show ads and gives direct access to music.
However, given YouTube’s insistence on its premium plan, it doesn’t seem to have caught on with the majority of users, accustomed until now to watching videos on the service without paying a single euro.
At the moment, yes, the company has not commented and it seems to be a test limited to a very specific number of users. It would be a movement similar to that of other services such as Netflix, which it only allows you to view 4K content on its most expensive paid plans, leaving the cheap version in SD quality. Something that, by the way, is a recurring complaint among many users.
If YouTube definitely ends up adding 4K videos to YouTube Premium, it may be enough to convince some users to pay for the subscription, but we fear that the majority, accustomed to the totally free version, will be quite reluctant to do so.