Anyone Notice Performance Service Changes When Using YouTube Music with YouTube Premium and without?

AlienC on 24/12/2024 - 17:59
Last edited 24/12/2024 - 18:17 by 1 other user

I have been using YouTube Premium for many years now thanks to a great OzBargainer but we ran into trouble few months earlier which caused me to try YouTube without premium for a while to see how it is.

One thing I really liked was YouTube music using it at work every day. After leaving YouTube Premium I noticed that some songs don't buffer, or some features don't work like replay repeat song function. Obviously offline downloads shouldn't work on YouTube non premium accounts, but I noticed that just the general other non premium features start to suffer as if they have a tiered system of service for premium and non premium users.

Has anyone else noticed this with just simple music playing?

Like just now my song didn't automatically go to the next song in queue I have to manually interact with it to play next song. I'm thinking of going back to YouTube Premium now because of this annoyance but wondering if maybe just YouTube Music has started doing this in the past recent months or something.

Anyways Merry Christmas Eve!

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Comments

  • eug on 24/12/2024 - 20:46

    I don't use YT Music but use YT Premium at home and YT non-premium at work. I don't notice any difference in video loading times or anything.

    • AlienC on 24/12/2024 - 20:54

      Ah thanks for this anecdote that is interesting. I'm more specifically looking for youtube music experiences though but that's good to know youtube premium YouTube videos are not affected. So thank you for confirming this.

      • eug on 25/12/2024 - 11:50

        The way I see it, they wouldn't degrade the performance of the free tier because that's what potential customers typically use to gauge whether or not it's something they want to subscribe to. If the experience is poor, they wouldn't bother subscribing.

  • tomclancy on 24/12/2024 - 22:54
    +1

    Has anyone else noticed this with just simple music playing?

    Yes 100%

    Same as you, after being YT Premium for years I couldn't justify the non-Turkey price, so I went down the adblock/Smart tube/Revanced/brave rabbit hole, and only have my google home speakers/screens left on YT Free plan. They are painful to work with now:
    - songs regularly pause and buffer for 5-10 seconds, at exactly 0:59 mark
    - every fourth song will pause at a random spot in the song, and requires manual intervention "do you want to continue playing this song? Yes / no" button to press to keep playing

    This is on top of the ads, lack of choosing own song etc that is well documented.

    I'm looking for an alternative for google home speakers. I have Amazon prime but Amazon music (via echo speakers) is pretty crap compared to Amazon Unlimited

    • AlienC on 25/12/2024 - 00:00
      +2

      Ah thanks for your anecdote and experience on this topic i thought I was going crazy but now I know for sure.

      So youtube is using dirty tactics to mess with users decisions.. Hmm i thought so.

      Thank you.

      Yes i have been trying Amazon music lately because youtube music is unreliable now I have to use youtube itself to play music.

      I might go back to making YouTube playlists to substitute YouTube music but creating a YouTube playlist just for this purpose has become tiresome.

      • eug on 25/12/2024 - 11:54

        So youtube is using dirty tactics to mess with users decisions.. Hmm i thought so.

        Have you confirmed this on different devices, browsers, or internet connections?

        There's the famous saying - the plural of anecdote is not data. If youtube were using dirty tactics, the user below would also be experiencing the problems you were having.

        • tomclancy on 26/12/2024 - 00:43

          The user below is using PC. The buffering issues are on google nest speakers or hub.

          My PC (brave), TV (Smarttube) and phone (Revanced) are unaffected.

          It's been confirmed by friends in a different house. All timed exactly to the day of not renewing YT Premium

          • eug on 26/12/2024 - 12:22
            +1

            @tomclancy: I would be wondering why they would throttle nest speakers or hub but not a PC, which more people would be using.

            If they were using dirty tactics to mess with users decisions, shouldn't they also target a larger crowd, i.e. browser users?

            It's been confirmed by friends in a different house. All timed exactly to the day of not renewing YT Premium

            If you want to properly confirm it, you have to physically note down how it performs every day - even if everything works fine - for a period of time. Then renew YT Premium for another period of time and note down the performance every day. Then cancel YT Premium and do the same.

            Most people couldn't be bothered, but that's the difference between anecdotes and data. Anecdotes are affected by negativity and confirmation biases while data is objective.

            • tomclancy on 26/12/2024 - 22:49

              @eug: If I had t guess, I'd say they can fully control their speakers & hubs because of the locked rom?

              And yes I agree with your analysis of confirmation bias vs data. Thing is, just in the past 6 weeks on my google nest hub both music and videos now pause at random times in the song whilst a pop-up appears on-screen "do you want to continue listening? yes / no". I listen to music on it for a couple of hours each day (it's in the kitchen) and have been doing so for years. These pop-ups have never appeared before and now they appear ~ 5 times per day. It's not me imaging it - it's a massive change from before.

              Maybe you could say it's a feature that Google implemented to the general public? I doubt it though as they would drive users away in droves. More likely an intentional annoyance to encourage renewal. Much like the hourly ads "renew YT Premium to regain the benefits you once had". They aren't delivered to the general public - they are targeted specifically to our household. Wouldn't be that hard given their control over the firmware

              • eug on 26/12/2024 - 23:03
                +1

                @tomclancy:

                Thing is, just in the past 6 weeks on my google nest hub both music and videos now pause at random times in the song whilst a pop-up appears on-screen "do you want to continue listening? yes / no".

                Right, those pop-ups are expected. I was referring to you mentioning the songs that don't buffer or replay repeat not working.

                Google has to pay for each streamed song. To lower their costs, they don't want e.g. people hitting play in the office and leaving it playing 24/7/365 even when no one is there. Netflix does the same thing with their Are you still watching? screen when autoplay is on.

                I would hardly call that a dirty tactic to mess with user's decisions. It would be a waste of money if a few tens of millions of people were playing songs to nobody while Google still has to pay the record labels for playing those songs.

  • stickingly on 25/12/2024 - 07:26

    I also used to use Premium all the time on the PC whilst working. Since the Turkey dream died I have been using Standard through Brave browser and noticed no difference, and also get no ads

  • Counter Intelligence on 25/12/2024 - 12:03
    +1

    Yes, Youtube are sabotaging free users. It's a random A-B test, sometimes playlists will stop working and sometimes they work fine for free users.

    Premium users don't have the same issues, as far as I'm aware.

  • Bignudge on 25/12/2024 - 12:51

    Just used Revanced. Problem solved.

    • tomclancy on 26/12/2024 - 00:40

      No Revanced/Smarttube/brave on google nest speakers or hub 😢

    • AlienC on 26/12/2024 - 04:36

      Have been using Revanced and all it's variants/modifications/rvx etc.

      Some work alright but have found a lot to not work perfectly thus the thread post.

      But when it works fine Revanced is amazing love the customisability.

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