YouTube Premium is YouTube’s very own (and admittedly confusing) subscription service. It removes ads from YouTube videos, gives you access to YouTube Originals, lets you listen to YouTube Music ad-free and includes a Google Play Music subscription.
At just $11.99 per month, it’s not a bad deal, considering you’re getting access to two music streaming services, YouTube Originals and removing ads from all YouTube videos. However, if you’ve got an entire family that wants access to those benefits, you can sweeten the deal by sharing your YouTube Premium with them. Here’s how.
Sharing YouTube Premium
Like with an Amazon Prime or Spotify subscription, you can share your YouTube Premium subscription with your family. You can add up to five other household members, but it will cost you — $8 more per month, to be exact.
Once you upgrade to a YouTube family plan, all six family members will get to enjoy the same benefits. That means an ad-free YouTube and YouTube Music experience and Google Play Music for all.
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To upgrade your Premium subscription to a family plan, log into YouTube and go to youtube.com/premium. Click Manage. Then click Manage membership, followed by Upgrade. Click Upgrade once more to confirm. Alternatively, you can go straight to youtube.com/premium/family and click Get family plan to upgrade.
Once you confirm, you will instantly be charged a prorated fee to upgrade to YouTube Premium Family for the remainder of your billing period.
Next, you’ll need to invite members of your household to a family group. Members have to be at least 13 years-old and have a Google account in order to be added.
To add a new household member, go to your paid memberships page, click the action overflow button next to YouTube Premium and select Family sharing settings. You can also go straight to families.google.com. Click on the plus sign to add a family member. Start typing in their email address and select them from the suggested contacts. Click Send.
After you’ve invited new members to your family group, they’ll need to accept before the invitation expires (or within 14 days from the day the invitation was sent).
Family members will also get other benefits by being added, such as Google Play Family Library, which shares purchased content with the other members of the family, YouTube TV ($40 at Google Store) (if applicable), a shared payment method, shared Google Keep notes, shared photos and videos and a shared calendar.
Once you’ve added family members, you can only change the group once every 12 months.
