How to get your money's worth from YouTube Premium

Whether you're likely to find a YouTube Premium subscription valuable depends largely on whether you're taking full advantage of its benefits. The bundled perks range from a slightly improved video viewing experience to the aforementioned main draws. It can also depend on how much you're paying, since it's often possible to find discounts bundled with other goods and services. YouTube has also rolled out a Premium Lite tier which does away with some features in exchange for a reduced price of $9 a month, but we're strictly looking at the full-fat version of the service here. That's the tier that starts at about $16 a month.

With all that in mind, here are just a few ways to make sure you're getting your money's worth from YouTube Premium.

If you're already in the process of buying a new smartphone or tablet, keep an eye out for bundled YouTube Premium credit. The same goes when shopping at certain stores, signing up for service with certain wireless carriers and more. Many products and services come packaged with an offer for multiple free months of YouTube Premium. Depending on how you shop, you can end up going a long time without paying a subscription fee.

YouTube is of course hoping you'll keep your subscription going after these freebies expire, but there's no penalty for cancellations. Even if you stay aboard, you're reducing the overall cost of the service — if six months of a year-long subscription are free, that's equivalent to paying half-price for the whole year.

If you have an active YouTube Premium subscription, you automatically have access to YouTube Music. If you're paying for a separate service such as Spotify or Apple Music, it's worth giving YouTube Music a shot (and canceling the other subs) to save some coin — especially if you don't care about enthusiast features like lossless audio, or if you already use YouTube to listen to your favorite music. That listening history means you can hit the ground running, with YouTube Music already keyed into your tastes. In my testing, I've found its automatic playlists and mixes to be great at dredging up songs I'd forgotten about, and reasonably good when it comes to new music discovery.

If you've got a large library of local music files, YouTube Music is a great way to listen on the go. From your computer, you can drag tracks directly into the browser-based app. Once uploaded and processed, they will show up in your library on any device. Unlike other services that allow local uploads, such as Apple Music, YouTube Music has a handy Uploads tab in its mobile apps, allowing you to keep your