YouTube Premium expands to 10 new countries, including 1 in North America

Published Mar 14, 2024, 6:20 AM EDT

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Chandraveer extends his passion for tech accessories into comprehensive reviews and curated buyer's guides, particularly in the realm of mechanical keyboards. With an academic background in design and manufacturing, his insatiable curiosity spans beyond the digital domain. Chandraveer's downtime is an eclectic mix of reading fiction, experimenting with 3D printing, curating an expansive library of FLAC audio, and indulging in leisurely drives.

Summary

YouTube's popularity stems from user-generated content and Google affiliations, with availability on various platforms and in over 100 countries.
YouTube Premium offers ad-free viewing, offline downloads, background play, and is bundled with Google subscriptions.
Google recently expanded YouTube Premium to include Jamaica and 9 other countries, also offering discounted student rates if people meet certain eligibility criteria.

YouTube has amassed a massive following, regarded today as one of the largest hubs for user-generated long-format video content. We can also attribute its popularity to affiliations with Google, and convenient accessibility on Android, iOS, smart TVs, and the web. This also applies to YouTube’s geographic availability, with the platform available in over 100 countries. YouTube also celebrated 100 million Premium and YouTube Music subscribers in February, but the expansion continues.

The YouTube Music home screen on an Android phone resting in a clay pot.

YouTube Premium is a subscription-style version of regular YouTube, which saves you the annoyance of advertisements, allows you to download videos for offline consumption, adds background play support, and also removes ads from YouTube Music. This subscription is often bundled with other Google brand subscriptions, such as Google One cloud storage. However, YouTube premium isn’t available everywhere YouTube is.

Google recently updated support documentation related to YouTube Premium’s geographic availability, and added Jamaica to the list, alongside nine other countries from other parts of the world. They are:

Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Libya
Morocco
Réunion
Tanzania
Uganda
Yemen
Zimbabwe

But that’s not all — the YouTube Help page for student discount eligibility on Premium subscriptions also features the exact same additions. This means students in these 10 countries are eligible for Premium at a discounted price for up to four years, as long as they meet the eligibility criteria, and can re-verify their eligibility every year.

To qualify for subsidized student pricing, you need to be enrolled in a higher education institution, or one which offers YouTube student memberships. The institution needs to be SheerID-approved, and you would need verification as a student from SheerID as well.

Hopefully, Google continues its efforts to expand YouTube, Premium subscriptions, and subsidized student memberships to new markets around the world in the years to come. It would help the brand remain competitive, and also make the service accessible with no workarounds.