I've used YouTube Premium for 5 years, and only 5 features matter

We often complain about the growing number of subscriptions: from Netflix and Google One to Adobe and Claude — all tiny-looking individually, but they add up to a substantial monthly cost. But for many of us, one subscription is an exception: YouTube Premium. This is one $16 monthly subscription that is well worth it. While I may question renewing Netflix each month, I am more than eager to renew my YouTube Premium plan each year, and that has been going on for the past five years.

In this time, I’ve found a handful of Premium features that, for me, are well worth the spend. Even if Google decides to take away other benefits, these are the five features I’d fight to keep.

Ad-free videos

The YouTube Premium subscription isn’t too in your face when it’s active. But you notice its absence only once the subscription has ended. Because then, you’re forced to watch multiple ads before, after, and in the middle of each YouTube video, for a seemingly “free” experience. Ad-free videos are such a huge perk that makes you want to continue using YouTube Premium.

YouTube remains one of my most used video streaming apps, be it for casual entertainment or to look up tutorials, much more than Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, both of which are injecting ads even to their paid subscriptions. In that confused world, YouTube Premium offers a clean experience, which is particularly useful for an app I use this much.

Honestly, if I were asked to pick between YouTube Premium and any other streaming service just for the sake of ads, I would pick YouTube Premium without a second thought.

YouTube Music

If you haven’t heard me rave about YouTube Music here at Android Authority before, let me tell you how much I absolutely adore the music streaming service. I’m aware of its various shortcomings compared to alternatives like Spotify and Apple Music, but the reason I’ve stuck with YouTube Music for so long is because I just love the vast sea of music and obscure music videos with 600 views on YouTube that I can add to my library. Those gems are why I’ll stick with YouTube Music.

In fact, my primary reason for subscribing to YouTube Premium wasn’t ad-free music; my main draw was YouTube Music, while an ad-free experience on the video platform was a bonus. That’s how fond I am of Google’s music streaming service. And if you compare the prices of a music and a video streaming service separately, you’d start to see how great a value YouTube Premium delivers.

Premium controls

YouTube has made a bunch of changes to its on-screen controls over the years. The most annoying one is being forced to move the play head on the scrubber bar instead of simply tapping it where you want it to be.

Premium controls don’t solve that, but they at least give me a more spacious control center that doesn’t need constant tapping just to show up. It is clearly laid out, and even if I am working in the kitchen, I don’t have to fiddle with the phone with my dirty hands to replace something or jump ahead.

The Premium controls experience extends to other areas as well. Subscribing to YouTube Premium gets you access to faster playback speeds. Yes, I do sometimes play certain podcasts with particularly slow-speaking guests at 3x speed, which is impossible on the free plan. Additionally, you get options like 1080P Premium with higher bit rate playback for better visuals, while my favorite one has to be Jump Ahead. It’s a tiny little button that appears on top of the scrubber and lets you skip boring parts like intros or in-stream ads. So, if you pay, you get to jump straight to the point in case the creator has spent outrageously too much time building up to the main part.

Background play

YouTube is meant for videos, but for certain audio-first experiences, you don’t need to keep the screen active all the time. I prefer my YouTube Music experience to be solely dedicated to music. That is the reason I play podcasts on the main YouTube app rather than the Music app, and for this particular use case, background playback comes in handy quite often.

I can have a podcast playing either on speaker or in earphones with the phone in my pocket without worrying about the screen blinding me in the dark while in bed or dealing with accidental touches in my pocket.

I use background play so mindlessly that I realize my Premium subscription has ended only when the playback stops after hitting the power button, in case I haven’t already giving it away.

Offline downloads

It has happened to me at least a hundred times that I have boarded a plane only to realize that I didn’t download any YouTube videos while I was connected to my home Wi-Fi. In that moment, I had to resort to other forms of entertainment — although YouTube Music does come in handy in these instances.

While you can manually download videos for offline playback, YouTube Premium also gets you Smart Downloads that, as the name suggests, automatically downloads a few videos of your potential liking beforehand. The list is always up to date, tailored to your taste, and is ready to go even if you forget to download anything manually.

Ever since I started using this Premium tool, I haven’t needed to remember to download videos just like I used to. Yet, as soon as my phone enters flight mode, I still have a lot of media at hand that I can watch.

Bonus: Experimental features

A nice benefit of YouTube Premium is getting to sample experimental features before they roll out more widely. Even tools like Jump Ahead and Auto Speed were offered as experimental features before making their way into the Premium feature roster. More recently, YouTube let certain users try out the “Ask YouTube” feature, allowing them to ask AI questions based on the vast library of videos on YouTube.

Did we miss any of your favorite features? Let us know in the comments below.