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Google confirms YouTube Music issue with Premium users hearing surprise ads
(www.androidauthority.com)
“Surprise”
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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It’s a ‘Feature’ 😏
Oops, that test hit 80% of customers, was supposed to be 20%.
Google confirms YouTube Music Issue with Premium users getting angry at their advertising injection attempt.
Give it six months, maybe a year. There WILL be ads in YouTube premium and you’ll have to pay another premium on top of that for ad free.
Premium Lite is already a thing.
Premium Pro
This only makes sense if watching for free with ads wasnt an option, if they wanted more money they would just raise the cost of premium
I mean, this exact thing has already happened with other services. Hulu used to have a free ad supported tier and a paid ad free tier, for example
I guess the other difference is that YouTube isn't traditional media, the content you consume on there has no exclusivity or anything. And the creators producing it are incentivized to go where the biggest audience is (which will always be something free) to maintain relevance and gain bigger sponsorships
Something like Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc. pays for the content in advance with MAYBE some royalties (and never a lot) and they own the media produced. YouTube doesn't pay for production (they tried this and it failed horrifically) they pay a portion of the revenue that gets generated from viewership
"No midrolls"
Don't even say that
Like the stupid duolingo pro and the pro max thing...and the pro max is just an extra fee to talk to an AI.
Lol, there should be a law that if you pay for a service advertised as ad free, they have to refund you a month of service for each ad they show you.
Consumer protection laws probably do apply. Ask for a refund and cite whatever laws apply to 'product not as described'.
I live in the US, what are consumer protection laws?
Trump says consumer protection laws cost us money silly, we don't need them.
Let's not pretend that the US' lax consumer protection laws have anything to do with Trump. The political elites have been helping the wealthy and corporations hinder those long before that dumbass ever ran for office.
I don't know, I am going to have to call BS on the idea that Kamala Harris would have dismantled the consumer protection bureau. On the other hand the Republicans have been trying to hamper it for awhile.
I agree that ultimately corporations are going to call the shots and they wanted it gone.
With billionaires now openly buying politicians (instead of greasing their palms under the counter), I'd say the odds of such a law have become even worse.
Gemini was crashing for days, YouTube went down, Youtube music Premium is playing ads, sheesh. Guess vibe coding isn't working
Now could they please fix the blatant advertisements disguised as “Featured” bullshit? I have zero interest in football, I’ve marked it as don’t show me a billion times.
I'm sorry you're upset at the recommendation , perhaps you could listen to something to relax and calm down. 84% of our users like you relax by listening to the following: 1.football 2.ballfoot 3.fboaoltl or if you don't like those, have you considered soccer?
So what you're saying is that you've engaged with football content a billion times.
Did Facebook's shift to emojis teach us nothing? Engagement > Preference. You're the product.
That’s not how it works with the rest of YouTube menus. You click the three dots, choose “not interested” and I never see those things again, including those channels. But for the YouTube Featured section it’s just a disguised ad roll. It doesn’t matter if you interact with it or not because they show it for whoever is paying them the most at that moment. Right now it’s Olympics, a few weeks ago it was Super Bowl, before that it was some games.
How else are football people going to advertise to people that don't like football and hope to convert them? Send ads specifically to people who try to opt out!
No joke, this is exactly why I cancelled Spotify and went back to piracy!
They “”accidentally“” started playing ads one night, didn’t apologize or offer any refunds, and it was the easiest decision ever to dust off my pirate hat and not look back.
No regrets!
So much better listening to music I chose and actually enjoy.
And the app had so much garbage and bullshit put in it that it was slow and horrible to use. I downloaded musicolet and its miles faster than Spotify aids
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"accidently on purpose"
Oops, we accidentally ripped you off, again.
Don't use Youtube if you're going to be giving them a cent. Ublock Origin on PC works well enough, Newpipe is good for Android devices. Newpipe has every single feature that I ever had to see a Youtube premium ad for, and I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.
This. Big tech is complicit in the fascist takeover of the U.S. Ditch their services where you can, and where you can't leech and starve them using tech like this.
I'd like if there were a legitimate competitor for Youtube. The way things have been, the only place to make videos as a job is Youtube. I suppose that there's other platforms that people can branch out to, I remember one that was focused on more scientific creators for example, but Youtube seems to be the only viable way for people to actually see the videos that others make. It's a shame.
I believe that there isn't because, at least as I understand it, it costs considerably more money than it makes to operate it. It gets less bad at scale like Google has achieved, but they still lose money on it, so it seems doubtful that anyone else could break in and beat them at that game.
They continue to operate it because they get a variety of other things from it that don't directly make the YouTube division money, but feed into their other divisions where they collectively generate considerably more money than YouTube loses from it, in the form of user personal preference and demographic data collection, network affect driving users to their other services, and direct tie in to their juggernaut ad network.
Its not too much different than "loss leader" products at the store, which you may have heard of. The idea is that you take some product that almost everyone frequently buys, like milk or eggs, and you put one of the lower priced ones on extreme sale, often even at a loss, essentially all the time to drive traffic to your store. You put those products way in the back, and customers will often buy a bunch of other stuff on their way to and from getting it. The profits from the other products well exceed the loss on the "loss leader" one, even when some customers only by the loss leader, so the store considers it a winning strategy.
Yeah, but not truly free software (FUTO invented their own definition and license) which is frustrating. In comparison, NewPipe is actually free software (GPLv3)
Metrolist for Android, yt music only.
Interesting. I'd never heard of it. Good to know.
Google stealthing premium users lol
Suckers
Sounds like affected users should be paid whatever Google got paid to play the ad instead, plus a inconvenience penalty.
Closed as WAI. They were testing the waters.
Is the issue that there are people paying for YouTube Premium?
The amount of people who suggest YouTube Music when asked for alternatives to Spotify is absolutely mind boggling. Legitimately feels like some people have no self-preservation skills.
YouTube music premium has gotta be like, 90% people who have YouTube premium and got music along with it.
prenium was originally to get people off of using adblockers, nothing more it was always going to come down to forced ads one way or another.
I remember noticing YouTube's software quality taking a nosedive when they shoved Shorts into the app. At the time, it seemed like it was hastily done as a reaction to TikTok's explosion, but it's still a buggy POS , even after all these years.
Paramount gets confused about who is ad free too. You have to restart the app to fix it. I just got the ad version cause why bother if I get ads and can't fast forward or rewind anyhow?
They also for a long while showed ads in the interface despite premium. I confirmed with support thes cancelled.
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