Some years ago ago, I was a happy subscriber to Google Music. But, they added it to the graveyard, and instead grafted on some music playing functionality to YouTube and called it YouTube Music. So, I went back to Spotify.

Then I started paying for YouTube Premium Lite. It wasn't unreasonably expensive, although it was a bit annoying I couldn't just have "YouTube" in the household, like with Netflix. So if wife would cast a video to the TV, it would play with ads.

It was about a year ago, when Google starting cracking down on adblockers, that they also removed an option to pay for the service. I think YouTube Premium Lite wasn't a thing in the US (correct me if I'm wrong), but they removed YT Premium Lite, and the only option left was a twice as expensive YouTube Premium bundle that included YouTube Music.

Tldr: fucked up Google Music, then removed an option to pay for YouTube premium, leaving a fairly expensive alternative with the pile of shit they replaced Google music with. It'll be a rough time if they manage to force ads. I won't pay for it, out of principle.

Edit: I looked at the numbers again. I'd have to pay more for YouTube than for the highest Netflix tier. It's more than Prime and HBO combined. They also don't have to front large sums to fund risky projects. If they didn't include YouTube Music, I might have considered it. But with it, it just pisses me off, they can go get f.ed