- YouTube is adding downloads and background play to its Premium Lite plan
- It’s the first upgrade to the Premium Lite plan since its inception last year
- Music fans will still have to upgrade however, as ad-free music videos are still paywalled into the Premium Plan
YouTube locks tons of features behind the walls of its rather pricey Premium tier, but now it’s bringing a few of them over to its more affordable Premium Lite plan.
The platform announced on its blog that offline downloads and background play are both being integrated into YouTube Premium Lite, and are being rolled out now. This is a big upgrade; when YouTube launched Premium Lite in March 2025, it offered ad-free viewing for most videos (with the exception of music videos and music content) and not much else. Premium Lite subscribers don’t get the YouTube Music perk, either.
Until now, the only way subscribers could view all videos ad-free was by signing up to the full-price YouTube Premium plan for $13.99 / £12.99 (about AU$20) a month. While YouTube Premium Lite ($7.99 / £7.99, or about AU$10 a month) is still missing features such as jump ahead, queuing, and continue watching, downloads and background play were the most-requested features.
“Last year, we expanded our Premium Lite pilot to more markets and heard feedback about wanting these additional features included in the service. We’re excited for today’s update and to continue testing and building products that best meet our users’ needs,” the YouTube team shared in its announcement.
Going forward, the YouTube Premium Lite experience will give you an even bigger taste of what the standard plan has to offer. For most people who just want to enjoy mostly ad-free viewing and now the added benefits of downloads and background play on most videos, YouTube Premium Lite will be the ideal option, and the next step is to roll out a Premium Lite Family plan to give households a more affordable alternative.
That’s not the reason why I’m still more attracted to the standard YouTube Premium plan, though.
I’m nothing without YouTube music videos
I’ve been eyeing up a YouTube Premium subscription for quite a while now, and though I’ve come close to it many times, for some reason I always pull myself back. For the most part YouTube Premium Lite is the ideal plan, but leaving out ad-free music videos is a bit of a kick in the teeth. That said, I know exactly why YouTube does this.
As far as the best music streaming services go, YouTube Music is no match to Spotify or Apple Music on the features and popularity front. However, it has the edge over its competitors with one particular thing: music videos.
I’ve tested Spotify’s music video ecosystem many times, and despite being a subscriber for the last decade, I can see it doesn’t even come close to what YouTube has to offer with music videos. It’s all over the place, and the way videos appear in the playback page is quite unflattering. I’m not the only one who thinks so, and Spotify music videos have been at the center of heated discussions since their inception.
I think I speak on behalf of many music fans when I say that, despite being subscribed to audio streaming platforms that aren’t YouTube Music, we still revert to the standard YouTube app for the visual elements, whether that’s for music videos or live performances. So the fact that YouTube has identified and paywalled this advantage is no surprise whatsoever — it’s just frustrating to know that the Premium temptation is inevitable.
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rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies)
