- YouTube is experimenting with charging users for its playback speed tool, a recent experiment reveals
- A Reddit user shared an image that says a YouTube Premium subscription is required to access playback speeds, although it won’t be visible to everyone
- If YouTube decides to lock the feature behind a subscription, it could encourage more Premium signups – or turn off free users
While many people subscribe to YouTube Premium, its free experience is still widely used by millions, including myself — but one of its best free features may soon be locked behind the Premium paywall.
Playback speed is one of the platform’s last remaining practical free features, but now there is evidence to reveal that YouTube has experimented with making it a new paid feature as part of YouTube Premium. If true, this will join other Premium benefits such as offline listening, ad-free viewing and background viewing, as well as the five handy new features it launched last September.
The experiment was first discovered by a user on Reddit who shared a screenshot of a YouTube Premium pop-up showing they had lost access to change the video playback speed – but it’s not showing up for everyone.
Youtube and playback speeds from r/youtube
YouTube seems to be testing this by dividing users into two different groups – ‘Group A’ and ‘Group B’ as categorized in the Reddit thread. Group A users will still get access to free play speeds, so nothing changes, whereas group B users will run into the pop-up window requiring them to subscribe to YouTube Premium to use play speeds.
Although it is not set in stone, we are not ruling out the possibility of this happening just yet. We’ve reached out to Google and YouTube for comment, and we’ll update this story when we know more.
Verdict: What a way to push away more free users
It just goes to show that YouTube is desperate to persuade more free users to come over to the Premium site, but at what cost?
For the most part, I think most YouTube users are pretty happy with what the free experience offers. While the benefits of Premium are game-changing, there are enough free tools to be enough to not pay for another subscription service – but this potential move could be what pushes free users over the edge.
Playback speed is one of the last remaining free tools that keeps me locked and it’s the same for many users out there. I love using it to speed up videos that are way too long to watch at the standard 1.0 speed, especially long interview videos. Luckily, I haven’t been hit by a YouTube Premium pop-up yet, and I hope it stays that way.
While this would be a huge inconvenience to us free users, I’ve always been fascinated by YouTube Premium and how much it upgrades 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 watching music videos. Who knows, maybe this is the year I cave.
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