Based on recent reports, YouTube is actively restricting access to Premium accounts created through VPNs and cracking down on users accessing Premium content across different regions. According to user discussions, YouTube now detects and blocks VPN connections when attempting to stream Premium content[1][2].
Some key impacts:
- Users report being unable to play YouTube Music through Sonos speakers when using a VPN, with the service becoming accessible only after bypassing VPN connections[1:1]
- Premium subscribers attempting to access content from different regions than their subscription face connection errors and service disruptions
- The restrictions appear to be part of YouTube’s broader strategy to enforce regional content licensing and subscription terms
The crackdown coincides with YouTube’s increased focus on Premium subscriptions, including showing longer unskippable ads to free users in 2025 to drive Premium adoption[3].
I’ve been weighing my music streaming options lately. I tried Apple Music, but its catalog is limited, and the app is slow and unpolished. I dislike Spotify’s privacy policies, just like YouTube premium, but if I wanted a great music selection and had to compromise on privacy, YT Premium with a separate login and VPN would be the answer.
After this bullshit move I’ll go back to using a NewPipe fork on Android or FreeTube on my desktop. This company’s greed is bottomless.
Why can’t a paid service protect your privacy these days? It wants to have its cake and eat it too; Google will sell you a spendy subscription while ruthlessly tracking and data mining you into oblivion. Gotta bring in another 100 billion for shareholders I guess.
It wants you to pay for its cake and feed it to itself.
You only get to taste the remains of icing that stays on your fingers.
And even that, it will have spit on
Money is power. It’s not about money, it’s about power. Hail the kings.
My issue with Apple Music is the interface which I agree is slow and unpolished…which just seems crazy to me since they really should have the best UI experience. I refuse to support Spotify. Anyone got recommendations on alternatives? I’m debating trying out Tidal or Deezer.
There’s also qobuz, which, in case you want to boycott the US works because they are French afaik.
I’m confused by both of you saying Apple Music’s UI is unpolished — compared to what? Spotify always looked trashy to me. Tidal sucks and Deezer was my favorite before Apple had lossless and HiFi but its UI was always clunky too.
The minute Apple supported lossless and HiFi it was game over.
For me, it’s that the Apple UI is so unintuitive. I thought Spotify was fine before I uninstalled it. Going back and forth between playlists and songs or other playlists is a lot harder in Apple Music. My Apple Watch had a more seamless control of Spotify as well which is super odd to me. I had Spotify premium before ditching it for Apple Music so I found the UI pretty straightforward. It operated as I expected a music interface to operate. None of this is worth going back to Spotify but I do find it weird that apple is harder to navigate since they had such a head start in developing music players. Following and getting new music updates from artists was super easy on Spotify, following label and distributors along with their playlists was easy. Maybe Spotify has changed over the past 4-5 years I’m not sure as I haven’t used it since the whole Joe Rogan thing.