We use YouTube TV for our TV viewing. Both Carrie and I frequent regular YouTube for watching videos. Recently, I signed up for a trial of YouTube Premium. I had a 30 day trial of the premium service which simply means that I had ad-free viewing, background play, downloads, and YouTube Music Premium.
For me, I did the 30 day trial because we are YouTube TV customers and have been happy with the service. We have had the service for over a year at this point and enjoy the endless recordings. The features included in the YouTube Premium of ad-free viewing, background play, downloads, and music really did not do a lot for me for the four options. I did trial as I wanted to see if I could have TV streaming in the background or picture-in-picture feature on iOS. Nope! This is not possible!
I do not understand why these additional features of Premium are not included in YouTube TV. I did not realize until I was researching this that YouTube Music Premium is normally $9.99 a month, but if you subscribe through YouTube Premium, not only do you get music, but also the ad-free viewing, background play, and downloads. It seems that with those of us being YouTube TV customers, we should already be considered Premium and get the extras included in our subscription.
This is nothing new and I recall seeing people post on Reddit, Twitter, etc., about this in the past. I simply make the case again that for those of us already subscribing to TV through Google, we should have the premium options available to us without requiring us to subscribe to those extra services.
I have since canceled my trial of YouTube Premium simply because the benefit of the extra features was not enough to continue paying $11.99 a month. I can live with the ads but it was nice to be able to play in the background. A much needed addition to YouTube TV is to be able to play in the background or the ability to play picture-in-picture on iOS as many other streaming services have allowed.