YouTube launches annual plans for Premium, Music Premium in India. Details here

Google has finally introduced annual plans for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium in India to let users pay upfront for a 12-month non-recurring subscription.

The company has also launched the plan in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Germany, Thailand and Japan. 

This comes years after YouTube had started offering its paid subscription models on a monthly and quarterly basis.

As an introductory offer, Google is currently offering discounted rates on the subscriptions till 23 January. You can get a yearly subscription for YouTube Premium for ₹1,159 and ₹889 for YouTube Music Premium.

The amount that users will have to pay once the offer ends is yet to be revealed.

Users will be able to shift to an annual Premium plan by cancelling their existing membership and signing up as fresh. Additionally, prepaid users will automatically be shifted to the annual plans once the prepaid plan expires.

Currently, there are no plans for partial refunds, which means you will want to wait till your current plan expires, and then sign up for an annual subscription.

It needs to be noted that payment for the new plans has been launched on a prepaid basis and is of non-recurring nature. It means that the user will need to manually purchase the subscription once the original annual plan expires.

The YouTube Premium annual plans can be signed up for using Android and the Web. However, the company is yet to provide an in-app sign-up option for iOS devices.

Google was until now charging ₹129 a month for Premium. The Family Plan which allows for a joint account of five family members costs ₹189 a month. Students can get monthly subscriptions starting at ₹79 per month, but they will have to go through verification annually.

YouTube Music Premium monthly subscriptions start at ₹99 per month, while family plans start at ₹149 per month. Students can avail of monthly subscriptions at ₹59 per month.