YouTube is experimenting with paywalling this popular free feature

If YouTube is going to convince more users to sign up for a Premium subscription, then it needs features that will make it worth the money. Premium already offers plenty of exclusive benefits, like no ads, background play, offline downloads, and more. A new experiment suggests that YouTube could soon add another must-have feature to this list. However, adding this feature would come at the expense of the platform’s free users.

One of YouTube’s most popular features is playback speed. This option lets you speed up or slow down how fast a video plays. While the feature has largely been available for anyone to use, it may not stay that way forever.

Over on Reddit, a user noticed that YouTube appears to be running a new experiment. In that experiment, users are separated into one of two test groups. Those who are in Group A will still have free access to playback speeds. Meanwhile, playback speeds will be paywalled if you’re in Group B. The user claims they were able to spot the experiment because one of their accounts is in Group B, while their other account is in Group A.

If YouTube sees this experiment as a success, it could result in playback speed becoming a permanent Premium perk. Android Authority has reached out to Google for comment. We will update this article once new information is available.