- YouTube Premium Lite offers a budget-priced paid subscription that removes most ads from YouTube.
- Exceptions have included things like music videos, and in some markets Google has warned that Shorts may show ads, as well.
- The company is now sending out notices to more subscribers warning them that ads in Shorts will start appearing at the end of June.
YouTube Premium is well worth paying for, giving users ad-free access to maybe the broadest library of content in streaming history. But especially if you get your music fix from another provider (like paying for Spotify Premium), it doesn’t make a ton of sense to be paying full price for YouTube Premium and not taking advantage of its YouTube Music access. That’s exactly why we were so happy to see Google introduce YouTube Premium Lite, which just focuses on removing (most) ads without worrying about any extras — and does so for a fraction of the price.
While Premium Lite removes the vast majority of ads from normal videos, we’ve known that Google has carved out a series of exceptions. Those consist of “music content, Shorts, and when you search or browse.” So far, at least in our experience, those have proved to be minimal, and we’ve found Premium Lite to offer a very reasonable compromise to paying full price.