YouTube Media Kit grows — Premium rises

YouTube is giving creators a fancier sales deck at the same moment it is asking viewers to pay more for the ad-free version of the app. In the United States, the individual YouTube Premium plan now shows $15.99 a month on YouTube’s pricing page, up from $13.99, and existing members are being told the higher rate will hit with a billing cycle in June 2026. (youtube.com) (9to5google.com) (support.google.com) On the creator side, the product is called Media Kit, and YouTube describes it as a downloadable package of audience data and channel metrics that creators can hand to brands when they pitch sponsorships. It is available to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program and can be downloaded from the Earn page in YouTube Studio on desktop. (support.google.com) That kit already included basics like channel stats, top videos, audience segments, shopping categories, and paid product placement campaign videos. The recent change people spotted is that the audience section now goes deeper into who those viewers are, including fields such as family status and household income, which makes the document look more like an advertiser profile than a simple channel résumé. (support.google.com) (almcorp.com) YouTube has been moving in this direction for months. At its Made on YouTube event in September 2025, the company said new Studio features would provide “deeper audience insights” alongside artificial intelligence tools for planning, testing, and collaboration. (blog.youtube) The editing side is changing too. In the YouTube Create app, YouTube now says creators can generate vertical video clips with Google DeepMind’s Veo model by typing a prompt, choosing lighting and style, and even describing audio. (support.google.com) (blog.youtube) YouTube Create also now includes image generation with a tool called Nano Banana. The help page says users over 18 in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the United States can make images from text prompts and reference images on mobile. (support.google.com) Those tools are not fully open to everyone yet. YouTube says the artificial intelligence features in Create are experimental, available only to a limited number of creators in select countries, and prompts that touch sensitive topics or violate policy may be rejected. (support.google.com) The price side is much less experimental. YouTube’s current United States page lists Premium at $15.99 a month, Family at $26.99, Annual at $159.99, Student at $8.99, and Premium Lite at $8.99, with Lite covering “most” non-music videos rather than the full bundle. (youtube.com) Reports on April 10 said new subscribers are seeing the higher prices immediately, while existing subscribers got emails saying the increase would arrive with their June billing date. One support page explains the rule behind that timing: existing members are charged the new rate in the first billing cycle at least 30 days after a plan price increase. (9to5google.com) (support.google.com) Put together, the picture is simple: YouTube is giving creators richer audience dossiers to win brand money, giving creators more artificial intelligence tools to make clips and images faster, and charging viewers more for the subscription that removes ads. The same platform is widening both sides of its business at once, one aimed at advertisers and creators, the other aimed at paying consumers. (support.google.com 1) (support.google.com 2) (youtube.com)