Four New Experimental YouTube Premium Features Launched This Week
YouTube Premium expands its list of paid features —at least for those willing to experiment.
In a blog post this week, the company announced several new experimental features available to Premium subscribers. These features, although not enabled by default, can be enabled at youtube.com/new and used until they expire. Additionally, YouTube also announced a new feature that is in the works, as well as a premium discount for Google One subscriptions.
Higher quality music
YouTube Premium adds a new high-quality audio bitrate for music videos. Songs can now be streamed at up to 256 kbps, delivering the highest quality audio on YouTube Music. For now, this feature is only available on iOS and Android, from now until February 22nd.
Skip forward (online)
Jump Ahead is YouTube’s AI-powered feature that analyzes viewing behavior of any video to determine the “best” part of it, prompting you to “jump forward” to that section. YouTube initially launched the feature as a test almost a year ago and has since made it a YouTube Premium option on mobile devices. You can now access it online as an experimental feature until February 5th.
Picture in picture for short videos
Picture in Picture (or PiP) is a useful way to watch videos while multitasking on your device. However, if the video in question is a YouTube short, PiP will not work, presumably because the videos are quite short.
However, if you have a Premium subscription, you can enable an experimental feature that allows you to watch short videos in PiP. I guess this is good news for very busy viewers who want to watch videos that are 60 seconds or less, but need to get back to work immediately. Interestingly, this feature is only available on iOS and only until February 19th.
Automatically download short videos
Speaking of Shorts, the new experimental Premium feature automatically downloads Shorts for offline viewing. This feature is also exclusive to iOS: When you sign up for the experimental feature, you can go to the Downloads section of YouTube and scroll to Smart Downloads, where you’ll find all the short videos you’ve recently uploaded. This feature is available until February 19th.
YouTube Premium discount via Google One
Google is also offering a new discount on YouTube Premium when purchased with a Google One Premium (or higher) subscription. Google One Premium starts at $9.99 per month, and YouTube Premium usually costs $13.99 per month, but you can lower that cost to $11.99 per month. It’s not a huge savings, but I think it will be an interesting offer for anyone who already subscribes to both, or has one of the two subscriptions and is thinking about subscribing to the other.
If you’re thinking, “Wait, I pay $19 a month for YouTube Premium. What is this $14 a month?” this means you most likely signed up in the app rather than the website (at least on iOS). Companies often increase the cost of in-app subscriptions compared to online subscriptions because they have to pay Apple’s or Google’s 30% tax. If you signed up through the Android app, you probably didn’t have this premium increase.
Faster playback speed on iOS and Android (coming soon)
The feature is not yet live, but in a blog post YouTube announced a feature in development that will improve playback speed capabilities on mobile devices. iOS and Android users will be able to stream at up to 4x speeds. As for who would want to watch or listen to content at that speed, I can’t say.