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Advertisements playing, despite being Youtube Premium user.

Uriah
Community Member

Hello, for the past few weeks, Advertisements have begun playing on my Google Home Max, despite being a Youtube Premium user. I'll ask Google to play music on the device or group of living room devices, then after one song it will start playing an Advertisement...

I've confirmed my Google Home app is still set to use YouTube Music service to play from.
I've confirmed my subscription is very much still active, I've been sub'd for years to Google Music which gave me YT Red, which now turned into the YT Premium which Youtube Music uses.

yt
Can you tell me why I'm getting ads on Youtube Music through my nest device now? It's this how the paid service works or is something misconfigured?

3 Recommended AnswerS

Muddi
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey folks,

 

My apologies for the lack of updates on this. Quite a few of you have been having troubles getting advertisements on Premium YouTube Music accounts when playing music on Google Home/Nest devices. Thank you to everyone who updated this thread with details on what you're experiencing.

 

To help the team further to look into this, if you could send feedback from your Google Home/Nest device using the keywords, "GHT3 Getting Ads when playing YouTube music on <ei. Nest Hub Max>" that would be great. Within your feedback report, feel free to detail what's been happening, your location and the firmware version of your device. For instructions on how to send feedback, check this out.

 

I know some of you already provided the information above within the forum post and this will be shared with the team, but having this information included in the fresh feedback sent from your device is very important.

 

I'll hop back on this thread once I have some more details to share. 

 

Cheers,

Muddi

View Recommended Answer in original post

Muddi
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey folks,

 

No new updates to share for now but rest assured that the team is looking into this issue at hand. For those users who haven't send feedback, please do so by follow the steps below:

 

1. Turn on device usage data and crash reports:

 

  1. Open the Google Home app
  2. Select the speaker/display device card
  3. At the top-right, select Settings and then Recognition and sharing.
  4. Turn on Send [device model] device usage and crash reports to Google. (Example: Send Google Home device usage and crash reports to Google.)

Note: For iOS devices, turn on Send device usage and crash reports.

 

2. Reproduce the issue (play YouTube music) then after the issue occurred, immediately send feedback from the Nest Hub Max device by saying "OK Google, send feedback" then say the feedback keyword "GHT3 Getting Ads when playing YouTube music on <ei. Nest Hub Max>"

 

Let me know once they're done.

 

Cheers,

Muddi

View Recommended Answer in original post

Muddi
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey folks,

 

Sorry for the lack of updates here. I know that this has been an ongoing issue for quite sometime now, but rest assured the team is working overtime to fix the issue.

 

We need more help as we are not getting new feedback about the issue. Please make sure to send fresh feedback from your devices once you experience the issue. This will help the team to investigate it further. Please make sure to follow the steps below on how to send feedback so the team will be able to investigate the issue further.

 

1. Turn on device usage data and crash reports:

 

  1. Open the Google Home app
  2. Select the speaker/display device card
  3. At the top-right, select Settings and then Recognition and sharing.
  4. Turn on Send [device model] device usage and crash reports to Google. (Example: Send Google Home device usage and crash reports to Google.)

Note: For iOS devices, turn on Send device usage and crash reports.

 

2. Reproduce the issue (play YouTube music) then after the issue occurred, immediately send feedback from the Nest Hub Max device by saying "OK Google, send feedback" then say the feedback keyword "GHT3 Getting Ads when playing YouTube music on <ei. Nest Hub Max>"

 

Update this thread once you send a feedback.

 

Cheers,

Muddi

View Recommended Answer in original post

352 REPLIES 352

JohnyRicio
Community Member

I probably fixed the issue... Or it is looks like that, because I don't have more advertisements... 

What I did?

On my cell phone I start application youtube music with my premium account.
After it I stream it from my cellphone on Google nest device by icon in application which is square with wifi symbol... 
I did it on all my devices and from my all devices.

It starts to work again. 

NOTE TO GOOGLE: THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION.  DO NOT MARK THIS AS A SOLUTION.  IT IS A WORKAROUND THAT NOBODY WOULD EVER GUESS.  GOOGLE NEEDS TO FIX THE ACTUAL PROBLEM.

Okay, having said that, @JohnyRicio , that's an awesome workaround, and it worked for me.  Kudos, and thanks!

 

Uriah
Community Member

Generally, casting to the devices won't aee the problem but voice prompting them will. 

GarrettDS
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey everyone, 

I appreciate your patience on this, and wanted to hop in here to let you know that this is something that we are aware of thanks to all the feedback reports from you all, and our engineering team is currently investigating this and we will provide more information when we have some. 

 

Best regards, 

Garrett DS

GarrettDS
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there, 

I appreciate the patience from you all on this, and I understand that this is frustrating. I wanted to jump back in here to let you know that this is still being looked into and I appreciate all the feedback that is being provided. 

 

I'll be back once I hear any further information on this. 

Happy Holidays, 

Garrett DS

Thanks, it's great that you're confirming that this issue is being looked into. Much appreciated!

 

It would be really good if the same information could be passed to the Support people, so those folks don't waste customers time by telling them that it's a problem on the customers end. People really, really hate that.

WichitaGuy1981
Community Member

I was on with both YouTube and Google Nest tech support for over an hour. We rebooted, factory reset, checked subscriptions, retrained voice match, I even cancelled and renewed my subscription (at a higher rate). After weeks of this I'm giving up and getting Apple music which works, has higher audio quality, and is $3 less a month. It sucks that I'll see ads on YouTube but I can't justify paying $17.99 a month for YouTube with no ads when I hear ads literally taunting me for not having YouTube premium on my speakers.

I had trouble setting up a family plan on Apple Music so I used Spotify. The experience has been great. It works exactly the same on my numerous Google Home/Nest devices. If Google isn't willing to seriously look at this issue the real fix is to change your subscription.

Nickycanada
Community Member

Just to add to this topic: I have had YouTube premium for years and this trouble with hearing ads to "sign up for YouTube premium" just started popping up over the last month or so. 

Tremendously frustrating, and the problem appears on both of 2 nest mini speakers.

No problem with YouTube premium on phones, desktop computers, tablets etc. 

gsaundry
Community Member

I aslo began experiencing this issue this fall, and was able to resolve it in a manner of speaking. For me, the issue was limited to voice commands (or routines) that played music via YouTube Music Premium over an audio group of Google Home / Nest devices. 

Fortunately, I have a reasnably large number of devices, and so as an experiment I created new audio groups with various combinations of devices and was able to narrow down the problem to a stereo pair of 1st gen Google minis. Any combination of group audio devices that included this stereo pair would result in commercials in between every song. Any combination that exluded the pair resulted in no commercials.

What I didn't do is split the pair up into individual speakers to see if the problem persisted. I also didn't test playing music to JUST the stereo pair. For thoroughness I should have done both of these tests.

What I did do is replace the pair with gen 2 Nest minis (again linked as a stero pair) and the problem is gone. It's been several days now and we've not heard a single commercial.

One oddity that I did observe when setting up the new minis was that the setup dinged at me about special characters not being allowed in the naming of the devices. The odd part is - and this perhaps could have been the problem all along - is that both gen 1 devices had special characters in their names. These were old devices, and so perhaps I had named them before the character restrictions came into place during a later updated. For clarification, and because these two devices were being used as a stereo pair, I had them named "Kitchen speaker - left" and "Kitchen speaker - right", and during the setup of the replacement den 2 devices I attempted to use the same naming convention, and the dash in the name was not permitted.

So, three things for people with this issue to check out:

  1. Do you have any gen 1 minis in use
  2. Do you have any stereo pairs in use
  3. Do the names of your devices contain any special characters

If yes to any of the abovce, if possible try a different combination of devices until you can narrow down if the problem is limited to certain devices. Hope this info is helpful to others, and good luck.

 

Agree on the diagnosis of stereo pairs. First issue I encountered a month ago was a group containing Home mini - gen 1 pairs. No special characters in their names... But the speaker group overall did originally have a special character in it.

But I since have had (and currently have) an issue with a group containing only a Nest Audio Pair and a 2nd gen mini.... No special characters in any. 

Cozmic337
Community Member

Having the same issue and started when I pair speakers 

webdev7x6
Community Member

I received 2 Nest Audio speakers and 2 Nest Mini speakers today. 

I have YouTube Music Premium subscription, but I am also getting the upgrade ads. IT IS VERY ANNOYING.

I have verified that I have the correct account linked and it even states that YouTube Music Premium is connected.

Please fix this issue.

DALEEDWARDPOWEL
Community Member

SOLUTION!

My wife was in the Google Home Household group. She is not on YouTube Premium, only I am. I kicked her out of the Household (didn't divorce her, just kicked her out) and now the Google Home Minis are all mine and no longer play ads. Check that no one is set as a manager in the Household group that doesn't have YouTube Premium and remove them.

hunter
Community Member

Also getting this issue on my google home. No ads with Spotify premium, yes ads with YouTube music premium 

StardustOne
Community Member

The same happens to me too. And I had paired two Google Nest Audio as stereo pair many months ago.

I cannot play Youtube Music on my Nest Audio speakers anymore without hearing all those ads to subscribe for Youtube Premium. So please, Google needs to step in and fix this.

We customers are not stupid, we paid for Youtube Premium already and I was just about throw all this Google Nest stuff out of the window, Bu I am afraid that I could hurt somebody.

By the way, a great indicator that this is completely broken, Google Assist when asked to play a specific song is not playing the songs I ask to play. It plays someting randomly,with the ad. Definitively not a problem that sits in front of a Google Nest device.

I cannot even remove Youtube Premium from my Google Home. no suchmbutton shown. It is really a sign that the Google Home app needs some upgrades.

ikaritensi
Community Member

Can confirm, I'm getting the same thing.

andreaseidhagen
Community Member

I have the exact same update despite latest firmware. 

RT8496
Community Member
I can confirm that the following happens and seems to confirm that the problem is with speaker groups.
  • Removed the speaker group
  • Asked Google to play my Supermix - works brilliantly without ads and play the music I want
  • Created the group (Office group) again
  • Asked Google to play My Supermix on 'Office Group' and immediately got an ad. Then asked it to play a specific tune, which it said it would, then defaulted again to a random playlist - impossible to play the music I wanted.
  • Removed grouping and asked it to play on one of the speakers - works fine with no ads.

Conall
Community Member

Interesting it is speaker groups for you. The problem for me is with speaker pairs. Or groups with a speaker pair in them. 

If I don’t have any speaker pairs in my house all my groups work fine. 

RT8496
Community Member

You are right. I have finally tracked it down to a pair that was in a group. 

Completely re setup the pair and added back to the group and all works fine now. Clearly a bug as it was all working fine before.

Conall
Community Member

See how goes. I have done that a few times and problem comes back or sometimes doesn’t go away at all. 

as a work around I’ve set up my speaker pair as individual speakers and turned one mic off. Sound isn’t as good but hopefully an update fixes it soon.

Megasporwic
Community Member

I have the original google Home in my living room. I have the google nest in my kitchen.  The google Home in my living room will play from my Youtube Music premium account. The google nest in my kitchen will not. It tells me "specif songs are only available through Youtube music premium". This only happens through voice.

PolYGame
Community Member

Same issue here. I have a Youtube Premium familly plan for 18€ a month and my LG Google Cast Speaker paired with a Home Nest Mini is playing ads for 3 days now! Ads in French and English between each song telling me to subscribe to Youtube Music?!!!! Please help me, I don't want to change my music service to Apple Music or Spotify...

GGoftheNorth
Community Member

I’ve been having this issue for over a month and I’ve wasted so much time rebooting, factory-resetting, uninstalling/reinstalling apps and trying everything else in between. It makes me angry to find out so many others have been going the same thing, while Google and YouTube support continue to give us the runaround instead of officially acknowledging the issue. I spent a good couple of hours chatting and emailing them back and forth, and they still act like the issue is at the users’ end. 

This is a pet peeve of mine about product support for tech companies in general. (I had a recent similar experience with Oculus support.)

I've done support myself for my small company, and I have a little secret to share: your customers will be surprisingly forgiving of bugs if you're just honest and own up to problems, and do your best to give for ETA of a solution. 

It's true that if one person reports a problem, it totally could be user error. Happens all the time. You help them through it and that's that. But when 5, 10, 20 people have the same problem, OBVIOUSLY it's not just a matter of user error. It's a bug. So the only correct support response at that point is very simple:

 

"This is a bug. We're sorry, and we're working to fix it. We'll give you an ETA as soon as we have more information."

 

That's it! That's all they have to say! But because they don't acknowledge that it's a bug (which is so obviously is at this point) they're wasting countless people's time and burning up customers' good will. 

Simple honesty would go a long way.

StardustOne
Community Member

I wonder whether Google can actually fix this problem, maybe it is time to subscripe to apple music? Seriosly, this problem exists now since weeks and no solution is available.

I do not understand why this problem cannot be addressed and fixed, this is not rocked science, it is a music playback related issue. 

I am a premium member and I am totally not okay with these ads. Plus one more thing, with this stupid mode my Nest Audio are now operated, I cannot even play the songs I search for with Google. I search for A Million on my Soul and instead of playing this song even though the google nest hub is clearly recognizing what I searched for (I saw it in the display, so no errors there), my Google Nest Audio play a completely different song.

Sorry but with this current flaw, youtube music does not work anymore with the Nest Audio and I constantly get ads in German and English, download it today and get instant access bla bla bla, sorry this is simply a joke that I cannot enjoy anymore.

Google get your act together and do something. But I am 100% sure not a single engineer at Google is listening or reading what we all complain about, they probably want us to get rid of Youtube Music so that they can then tell the world, we do not have any subscribers, we can now close this service.

I am 100% sure, that Google will not jump in to fix this problem that is getting on our nerves since many weeks. The company is too big to care about such little things.

PolYGame
Community Member

I don't know why, but after a 2 days trip in London (I'm from France), I don't have advertisements anymore on my Google Cast Speaker paired with a Nest Mini. I haven't done anything. Hope it doesn't come back.

KairRev
Community Member

Same!!! The worst part of many of the ads are telling me to get YouTube Premium to avoid the ads!!!...I HAVE YOUTUBE PREMIUM VONNECTED TO DEVICE!! I have it play to help my kids fall asleep and it never fails to play an ad right when they are about to fall asleep and we're up again.

StardustOne
Community Member

I have all my Google nest speakers added to group and it looks like playing with a speaker group is broken. Try to play only on a stereo pair. This is working for me. As soon as I create a group and add the same speaker stereo pair, I have these ads. Deleting group and tell Google to play on this stereo pair, no ads. This is completely crazy.

In case you also have speaker groups and added speakers to them, delete the groups and see if you can play YouTube music without ads on a stereo pair of speakers or on a single speaker that is not in a group.

In case this works for you too, we can say good bye to the grouping speaker feature. My group was created to have the same music played in the living room, bedroom and bathroom.

I do not have high hope that they will be able or willing to fix this. Unless Linus Tech Tips or some other YouTube tech influencer may does a YouTube video about this defect and gets the word out, I am afraid we have to live with this major issue from now on.

A few weeks ago, it played ads regardless of single speakers or groups, now, thankfully individual speakers seem to be ad-free. Lately, I’ve been able to trick it by first asking to play music on one speaker (or pair) and then when it starts say, “Hey Google, play this on [speaker group]”. This just proves this problem lies within the Google Home app, I don’t know why it’s taking them so long to fix this. 

grouping is not the problem. paired speakers are. your experience suggests its actually a combination of a "paired speaker" inside a "group". Sounds like you can unpair your paired speakers and then your speaker groups will function without problem.

Huh? Logic would have it that if paired speakers are fine on their own but paired speakers within a group are not, then the problem is in the grouping script not accepting stereo pairs to be part of a group. Speakers set up in stereo pairs are a big part of my listening experience, why should I compromise with a group of two unpaired monaural speakers?

junton
Community Member

This may be the culprit, but I specifically bought pairs of speakers to create stereo pairs. Creating a group is a secondary function for when we’re entertaining or cleaning the house, but it’s still a terrible experience to get advertisements.

Conall
Community Member

Make sure you log an issue with google directly and not just on this forum. I think we need to make some noise with this one as it’s really dragging on.

I’m going to be demanding a refund on Youtube premium subscriptions for the last couple of months as well. Otherwise they are charging for a service they are not providing. This is fraudulent and illegal in most countries.

StardustOne
Community Member

I fully agree, forums do not put the needed pressure on vendors, but how can you raise an issue with google directly? They do not have any method to contact them directly with issues.

TobiasK
Community Member

Testing this "paired speakers break YouTube music premium subscription features" theory. Will update next week.

Test speaker groups as well. Set one up and ask “Hey Google, play [song] on [speaker group]”. That’s where most people are having problems with.

TobiasK
Community Member

I unpaired the only "paired speakers" I have in my house, and I haven't had ads since (5 days ago). I still use speaker groups and there is no issue with speaker groups for me. If you are unclear on the difference between "speaker groups" and "paired speakers", educate yourself.

"Speaker groups" are simple and obvious way to have music playback simultaneously on as many speakers as you'd like, i.e. "downstairs" or "everywhere" or "outside" ... wherever you have multiple individual speakers you'd like to mesh for playback.

"paired speakers" are different and are setup deeper in the menu. They are if you want to effectively turn two speakers into a single 'stereo' speaker that has a Left track (speaker 1) and a Right track (speaker 2). If you don't know, many songs are recorded in stereo where the Left track is slightly different than the Right track (think Beatles songs). Google Home settings let you "create" a stereo pair by combining two specific speakers into a virtual single speaker that has a Left and Right track. The resulting "paired speaker" has a single name, and only the Left speaker will respond to voice commands.

Ultimately the bug that causes the "ads during premium playback" problem is that the speaker that is assigned to the Right track in a paired set, is effectively no longer assigned to your premium account, and thus it tricks YT Music into thinking music is being played back on an account that is not subscribed to premium.

The fix is to "unpair" the stereo set that was previously setup by someone, then re-connect that Right track speaker to your account with a regular name and identity, as though it's no different from any other speaker in your home, grouped or non-grouped.

At least that is what my findings have presented. Can google fix this bug? Yes. Will google fix this bug? Unlikely.

I have 8 Nest Minis, 2 Nest Audios and 2 nest Hubs as well as 4 Chromecasts in my house, in various pairs and groups, so I’m well educated in the difference between pairs and groups. I no longer have the ad problem when playing music on individual speakers or stereo pairs ( e.g. “Livingroom Stereo”), but when I start out my request for music on groups, e.g. “the entire house” or “the first floor” I get ads. My current runaround for this is I’ll first ask Google to play on an individual or paired device, I.e., “Livingroom Stereo “, then after it starts tell it to “play this on the entire house”. Inconvenient but hopefully it keeps on working for me.