YouTube only announced YouTube Red last week and it seems that our friends in the northern hemisphere (more specifically, the USA) are able to get access to YouTube Red from today. The service, costing US$9.99 per month, allows users to enjoy music videos, movies, and other videos ad-free or offline for the ultimate in flexibility. Users who subscribe to Google Play Music will get access included in the one subscription, so there’s no need to pay for two services.
If you’re in Australia, though, you won’t have access yet … except that you might. If you were one of the very early adopters of Google Play Music, and you got your subscription on the US side of Google rather than locally, YouTube will report that you have an active YouTube Red subscription:
It doesn’t seem that this is meant to happen, though. Despite having YouTube Red active, I was still able to enjoy (read: not enjoy) watching videos complete with ads. This might be because my Google Account is set to Australia, while my Google Play Music subscription is actually from the US. If you’re a bit more clever than I, and you have a US-based Google account with US Google Play Music subscription, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to get YouTube Red, and better yet, actually use it.
I can’t change my Google Account, because it has existing Play credit on it, but if you give it a try and it works for you, let us know!
