YouTube ends Premium paywall experiment for 4K videos

YouTube has ended a test that required Premium subscription for 4K resolution videos.

In the experiment, the Google-owned streaming platform asked some users to pay for a Premium account in order to view videos in 4K resolution.

Because of users' outrage, it has now stopped this test, reports TechCrunch.


"We have fully turned off this experiment. Viewers should now be able to access 4K quality resolutions without Premium membership," YouTube said in a tweet.

The streaming platform conducted the experiment to know how users would respond if a certain function was moved to the Premium tier.

"It is a part of our experiment to know better the feature preferences of Premium and non-Premium viewers," it had said in a now-deleted tweet.

The company claims to have more than 50 million paid subscribers of YouTube Music and Premium offerings globally.

The Premium subscription include features like ad-free viewing, video downloads for offline consumption, and background play, the report said.

Recently, the company had introduced handles, a way for people to easily find and engage with creators and each other on the streaming platform.

Handles will appear on channel pages and Shorts so that they will be instantly and consistently recognisable.

It will soon be simpler and faster to mention each other in comments, community posts, video descriptions, and more.