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YouTube launched its subscription service, YouTube Red, in autumn 2015. Adweek noted the name had been the subject of a slew of jokes about its similarity to porn sites such as RedTube.

In May 2018 Google broke the service up. Fortune reported that YouTube Red was no more: a revamped YouTube Music would cost $9.99 a month, and YouTube Premium, which included everything the music service offered plus YouTube's original programming, would cost $11.99. Adweek put the jump for subscribers at $10 to $12 a month. YouTube's own announcement described the new YouTube Music as combining music listening with the magic of YouTube, with a reimagined mobile app and a new desktop player, and said Premium would keep the ad-free experience, background play and downloads across YouTube's millions of videos.

The timing leaned on content. The rebrand came shortly after the Karate Kid revival Cobra Kai, the service's biggest series to date, which Fortune said, citing Parrot Analytics, was outperforming several Hulu and Netflix shows. Google promised more and bigger original series and films, and YouTube listed the dance drama Step Up: High Water, the sci-fi thriller Impulse and originals coming from the UK, Germany, France and Mexico. Fortune read the restructuring as Google's strongest sign yet that it was ready to fight the music and video streaming giants.

At the Television Critics Association press tour that summer, YouTube's global head of original content admitted the company had 'valiantly tried' to make the old name work.

The rollout was broad. YouTube said Premium would come first to its existing markets, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea, then to a list of new ones including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Existing YouTube Red and Google Play Music subscribers in the original markets would get access automatically at their current price, and Liza Koshy's Liza on Demand was listed among the upcoming originals. Moving people over at the price they already paid is the quiet trick that makes a rename painless.

This is a naming fix, not a design story, and it is the right one. Red described a colour, not a benefit, and the joke wrote itself. Premium is bland but says exactly what you pay for. Splitting music out was the smarter brand decision of the two.