YouTube has announced two new paid YouTube packages essentially killing Red.  But the new packages may not necessarily be a bad thing.

I’m a YouTube Red subscriber and I love it.  It’s not for the content, although Cobra Kai is fantastic.  Rather, it’s for the value.  I get to watch the service ad-free and listen to Google Music at the same time.  That was, until yesterday’s announcement.  Google announced a complete retooling of their packages and this time it’s going to cost you more money.  But it’s not all bad news.

The good news is that Google Music is basically dead (not officially) and the company is transitioning to YouTube Music.  YouTube Music Premium is $9.99 a month like all the other music services and offers ad-free music with downloads for offline playback and background listening.  The retooled service is very much focused on music discovery and will allow for advanced search algorithms to find music based on obscure terms.  For example, if you were looking for that song by an 80’s band about the city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, it would direct you to Guns N Roses’ Paradise City.  Now Google Music isn’t really dead, but a Google Play Music subscription will also get you access to YouTube Music Premium so it’s hard to imagine Google keeping around two music services.

But the announcement didn’t end with music.  YouTube Premium is taking the place of Red video service.  The Premium version of the service will run you $11.99 a month.  Fortunately, it will also include the aforementioned music service.  The service is basically a rebranded version of Red and will still include advertisement-free videos as well as access to premium and original content, such as Cobra Kai.  The announcement of the price increase comes on the heels of Cobra Kai becoming the company’s biggest hit and garnering critical acclaim.  The sequel to the Karate Kid movie franchise has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The good news for existing Red customers is that they will be grandfathered into the service under the old $9.99 price tag.  For how long remains to be seen.  But customers who sign up before the transition will also be grandfathered.  Further more, Google is saying that they plan to expand exclusive content with bigger and better things so, if Cobra Kai is any indication, now might be a good time to sign up.  YouTube Premium will begin rolling out soon with YouTube Music dropping on May 22nd so don’t expect Red to stay around much longer.  But if you have been holding off waiting for something better, now might be a good time to give Red a try.