Google finally announces YouTube music subscription service
Google (GOOGL) finally unveiled its paid, ad-free Youtube music service on Wednesday and it looks a lot more appealing than the company’s previous music offerings.
Dubbed Youtube Music Key, the new service will allow subscribers to use the YouTube phone app to watch music videos and listen to songs of their choosing -- without any ads -- for an introductory price of $7.99 a month. The music keeps playing even if the subscriber switches to do something else on their phone or loses their Internet connection, Google says.
The service opens to beta testers next week and to the general public at some future date to be determined. The introductory price eventually could go up to $9.99, the same as Google’s existing Play Music service and competitors like Spotify, Google says. A subscription to Music Key will include all of the Play Music features, as well, such as saving songs to your phone for offline listening.
The new service marks a smart change in strategy for Google. Instead of copying existing services like Spotify or Apple’s (AAPL) Beats, Music Key builds off of Google’s already massively popular YouTube service. Thanks to YouTube, Google ranks first in online video with almost 200 million unique viewers a month, according to Comscore. And music videos make up 38% of all YouTube videos watched, according to analysis by Tubular Labs last year.
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In addition to the new pay option, Google’s YouTube apps on Android and iOS, along with its web site, will get a new tab to highlight music, complete with favorites, recommended playlists and trending titles. And songs will be organized better, allowing users to search by album or artist and find a complete discography.
But subscribers won’t avoid all advertising on YouTube, just those on music videos.
More competition could be coming soon. Apple is said to be negotiating with the major record labels to offer subscriptions to its Beats service, which it acquired in May, for only $5 a month.
Google’s YouTube music efforts haven’t drawn the same criticism from top musicians that Spotify has recently received. Taylor Swift last week pulled all her music off Spotify, just as she introduced her new album “1989.” But a YouTube video of the song “Blank Space" from the new album has already attracted almost 18 million views in less than three days.
That may be because YouTube has been more flexible with artists, allowing them to spread out the release of songs from an album, for example, instead of posting everything at once, as Spotify requires.
