YouTube has its targets firmly set on younger paid subscribers and it has a new plan to cash in on their often inhibited cashflow. The company has announced new student discounts for its YouTube Premium and YouTube Music services, slashing prices up to 50 percent for those with a student ID.
YouTube Premium, the paid video streaming services that brings subscribers access to the company’s original series, as well as ad-free videos, will now cost just $7 per month for students ($6 if they subscribe by January 31, 2019). That’s down from the typical $13 price tag for those who’ve already snagged their degree.
But the better deal is YouTube Music, which can now be had for 50 percent off its usual $10 per month price tag, offering listeners ad-free access to millions of songs for just $5 per month.
The clear aim of this initiative is to get more college-educated young people — who have the highest potential to be big earners down the line — hooked on YouTube’s premium streaming services. Offering discounts to post-secondary students is fairly common practice in the streaming universe. Companies like Spotify and Apple have long offered various discounts to students, though it remains unclear how successful those initiatives really are. Then again, if anyone has the data to back up the decision to let college kids get up to half off, it’s Google, YouTube’s parent company. This move indicates that there is at least some water in the discount streaming well.
And they probably need it. Unlike most other major streaming services, YouTube has been very hush-hush about just how many people actually use its music and video streaming services, likely because the number is relatively minor compared to its huge number of unpaid users. In its first year (then known as YouTube Red), the company only touted 1.5 million paid subscribers, according to The Verge. That’s tens of millions less than major competitors like Apple Music and Spotify, which now grow by more than that on a near monthly basis.
So far, these discounts are only available for those attending college in the United States, but we expect that student discounts will likely spread to other countries where YouTube exists should it prove successful for the company.
