YouTube Premium Family Plan Will Soon Require Members to Be in the Same Household

If you pay for YouTube’s Premium Family plan and share its benefits with family and friends, Google may have some bad news for you. According to a report from Android Police, the company has started emailing family members who don’t live with the manager of the YouTube Premium Family plan that their benefits will be paused.

“Your YouTube Premium family membership requires all members to be in the same household as the family manager. It appears you may not be in the same household as your family manager, and your membership will be paused in 14 days. Once your access is paused, you will remain in your family group and be able to watch YouTube with ads, but will no longer have YouTube Premium benefits. If you believe this was an error, please contact us to confirm eligibility and maintain access,” the email reads.

To be clear, the terms for the YouTube Premium Family plan already required members to be located in the same household. A support page also mentions that “every 30 days, an electronic check-in will confirm this requirement.”

It’s unclear whether Google has started flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren’t in the same household globally, but this is bad news for a service that remains great value despite recent price increases. As of today, a YouTube Premium Family plan ($22.99/month) can be shared with up to five other family members who get all YouTube Premium benefits plus YouTube Music Premium.

Earlier this month, Google started testing a new two-person YouTube Premium subscription for select users in India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and France. A cheaper YouTube Premium Lite plan is also available in the US and other international markets. These additional options clearly don’t beat the value of a shared YouTube Premium Family plan, however.