Youtube Lauches Music Streaming Service

Tech companies always seem to find new ways of creating new revenue streams overnight and In a bid to increase profitability and scale the businesses even further YouTube will be taking on the streaming music market. YouTube is launching a music streaming service, offering both videos and audio tracks, in an attempt to compete with the likes of the popular streaming services Spotify and Apple Music.

What makes YouTube music special

YouTube Music will combine millions of "official" tracks with the vast catalogue of rarities and remixes uploaded by YouTube's users and just like Spotify, it will offer a free, ad-funded app, alongside premium subscriptions costing $9.99 per month.

Screenshots of the new YouTube Music App

What will YouTube Music offer users

In a blog post, he added that the service would offer a mix of "official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube's tremendous catalogue of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can't find anywhere else".

He promised that the new app would offer personalised playlists based on users' streaming history, much like Spotify's Discover Weekly.

YouTube is already a streaming service

YouTube is already the most popular platform for streaming music in the world (excluding China) - accounting for 46% of all listening. Although the site attracts more than a billion music fans every month, it has repeatedly been attacked by the music industry for allowing users to upload videos that infringe on copyright, and for failing to pay artists properly.

The new service is evidence of a rapprochement between Google and the music industry, and new licensing deals were negotiated last year. Although more than one billion people stream music on YouTube every month, the Google-owned company lags behind its competitors when it comes to paid-for subscriptions.

When will YouTube Music Be available

It will launch in five countries, including the US and Mexico, on 22 May. The Google-owned company said YouTube Music would come to Europe "soon".

The five territories where YouTube Music will launch are the US, Australia, Mexico, South Korea and New Zealand. Not by coincidence, these are the countries where YouTube Red - a subscription service offering original programmes and videos - already exists.

Its current offerings - Google Play and YouTube Red - reportedly have a combined user base of seven million paying customers. That service will soon be re-branded YouTube Premium, which will include access to all YouTube Originals as well as YouTube Music for $11.99 a month. The price paid by current YouTube Red subscribers won't change.

Motivations behind launching YouTube Music

YouTube is estimated to be on track to make $10bn in ad revenues this year, according to eMarketer. The Google-owned service paid $856m in royalties to music companies last year which is an estimated 67 cents per user per year.

Streaming is music's biggest money-maker at the moment and YouTube recognises this. They can see the corralation in behaviour and know users jump between YouTube and streaming sites when accessing music and theya re aiming to consolidate that, keep users on their site longer, serve more ads and of course sell some more subscriptions.

Along with the aid of Google Assistant and access to a wealth of user data, the app will offer recommendations automatically based on the time of day and the user’s location and listening habits and create curated deeply personalised experiences using the platform.

What about Google Play Music?

Existing Google Play Music customers will get a YouTube Music package thrown into their subscription for free, while Roman reassured users that their playlists, purchases and uploads would remain intact once Google Play was phased out.

YouTube Music will supersede Google Play Music, which will continue to exist as a cloud locker service, to which users can upload their music for portable streaming. Existing subscribers will receive access to the new service.

What I Think of YouTube Music

YouTube as a brand has really become a corporate sell out and decision making on initiatives and how they support content on the platform has been solely in the interest of shareholders. They have moved away from being an independent content creator website that made them famous in the first place and pivoted into an online media company.

While I do get the value of moving in the streaming music market and consolidating the distribution and consumption of mainstream media I feel YouTube has sold out on its original promise. This leaves YouTube pretty vulnerable to being picked off by other sites and attracting large sums of independent content creators and along with them their viewers.

Twitch has begun to stake its claim in the streaming and video gaming content side and proves that YouTube isn't all powerful. Could this be the opportunity for a Vimeo or a Dailymotion to step up and become what YouTube used to be or is the adoption to YouTube too strong? Only time will tell.

Have your say

What do you think of YouTube getting into the music streaming scene? Is added competition in this space needed? Why not simply acquire Spotify? Will you try out YouTube music?

Drop me a comment and let me know what you think!

Let's connect

For more technology and my opinion on the industry feel free to follow me @chekohler

Sources:

• BBC News
• Rollingstone
• The Guardian