Credit: Joe Maring / Android Authority A few months ago, Google and YouTube realized that I no longer lived in Lebanon and told me I couldn’t skate on paying just $9 per month for a Lebanese family Premium account. I had to face the music and switch to a two-person French Premium subscription for €19.99 per month instead — more than double what I was initially paying. Of course, this made me wonder whether it was worth it, but also whether I wanted to keep paying for Spotify Duo, too, which had been my music streaming service of choice for over 18 years.

But considering the included YouTube Music access in my now very expensive Premium subscription, I had to ask myself the question. And the answer, as I soon realized, was very easy: I just don’t want to use YouTube Music, even for “free.”