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With ad tracking facing intense scrutiny in courts around the globe, tech companies are looking to subscription models as a way to make up for lost revenue. Twitter has recently triedmultipledifferentschemesto get users to pay for things that used to be free, and though Google already offers a YouTube Premium subscription, features it has tested lately suggest the company could be moving some free functionality behind a paywall to make its Premium service more enticing.
One user on Reddithas spotteda new1080p Premiumvideo quality setting with “Enhanced bitrate” (viaThis Is Tech Today). On the surface, this may sound like an innocuous way to brand full HD videos with higher-than-normal image quality, but there’s reason to believe YouTube could be testing the waters on saving bandwidth and thus money when streaming to free users.
You’ll notice that Premium is capitalized, which could easily be a reference to YouTube Premium being required to access this video quality option. This is incredibly similar to the phrasing used duringanother test in Octoberrelated to frame rates where YouTube tipped its hand a little more: the 2160p60 setting was labeled as Premium just the same, but rather than saying “Enhanced bitrate,” the caption read “Tap to upgrade.” This made it a lot more clear that Google was thinking of putting certain frame rate settings behind a paywall.
There are also user reports that the bitrate on some YouTube content has been lower lately, which could be a result of the company separating 1080p videos into lower and higher bitrate tiers to test this new setting. Plus, YouTube’s longtime CEOSusan Wojcicki recently resignedafter nine years at the helm, so there are bound to be changes in the company’s business strategies.
As a reminder, the bitrate determines how big a digital video file is and how little or how much compression it shows when streamed — higher is better here. The frame rate, on the other hand, determines how many frames you will see per second, where higher numbers look smoother (which isn’t always desireable).
Thanks:Mishaal
UPDATE: 2025-07-17 06:06 EST BY MANUEL VONAU
YouTube confirms experiment, denies quality reduction for free tier
This article previously conflated frame rate and bitrate. We’ve updated it to clarify the difference between the two terms and added an explainer.
