YouTube’s promised reboot of its music and video services will launch on Tuesday armed with new features. Borrowing from the Spotify playbook, a freemium ad-supported version of the new service will be used to lure $9.99 per month subscribers.
YouTube’s new music and premium video services will officially launch on Tuesday.
For its debut, YouTube Music will be available in just 4 countries United States, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico. Google promises it’s “coming soon” to Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
What To Expect
At the core of the new YouTube Music is a “reimagined mobile app and brand new desktop player that are designed for music.” Along with the usual millions of tracks, YouTube Music promises thousands of playlists, downloads, intuitive music search (a real problem for Spotify) and a music hub that takes advantage of YouTube’s plethora of content and brings together remixes, covers and live versions.
For $9.99, or the local equivalent, all ads disappear.
To encourage users to make the shift to paid – something YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen has promised labels is a priority – the number of ads delivered across the entire service have noticeably increased.
Not quite disappearing, but back burnered, is Google Play Music. YouTube Music is now the brand. But a, bit confusingly, Google promises that “if you use Google Play Music, nothing will change – you’ll still be able to access all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always.”
Gone for good is YouTube Red – at least as a brand.
YouTube Premium combines YouTube Red’s ad free video experience, original programming and offline viewing with YouTube Music for $11.99 per month. YouTube Premium will initially launch in the four countries above plus South Korea.