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YouTube Red and Google Play Music Will Merge To Create a New Service (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the powers-combined dept.

YouTube's head of music, Lyor Cohen, confirmed that the company is planning on merging its Google Play Music service with YouTube Red to create a new streaming offering. "The important thing is combining YouTube Red and Google Play Music, and having one offering," Cohen said. The Verge reports: Right now, YouTube's music ecosystem is unnecessarily complicated. There's YouTube Red, which removes ads from videos and lets you save them offline, while also giving you access to Google Play Music for free. Then there's YouTube Music, which anyone can use, but it gets better if you're signed up for YouTube Red. And YouTube TV is also a thing -- an entirely separate thing -- but it's not available everywhere yet. The merger has been rumored within the industry for months, and recently picked up steam after Google combined the teams working on the two streaming services earlier this year. In a statement to The Verge, Google said it will notify users of any changes before they happen. "Music is very important to Google and we're evaluating how to bring together our music offerings to deliver the best possible product for our users, music partners and artists. Nothing will change for users today and we'll provide plenty of notice before any changes are made."

59 comments

  1. Music is very important to Google by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    your call is very important to us

  2. royalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and still pay next to nothing to musicians. Tiny fractions of a cent per stream

    1. Re:royalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the musicians dealt directly with the stores they would get more money.

  3. they were just exploiting the good work that ... by Hugh+Jorgen · · Score: 0

    Redtube already did for the play on the name. Yawn ... is Google profitable at anything other than selling ads?

  4. Re:they were just exploiting the good work that .. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

    Redtube existed before Youtube Red

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  5. Re: You know what else is ready to merge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your mom?

  6. uh oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh man, I actually like Google Play All-Access! I have no faith that google won't totally screw it up by merging it into Youtube Red. I guess I better get on the spotify bandwagon...

    1. Re: uh oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spotify sucks, already tried it. Thumbs down a song and it doesn't care, it will still play that song.
      Google Play Music is the most fun I've had with music in my entire life. I sincerely hope they don't butcher it. I have hundreds of hours invested!

    2. Re: uh oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Crap... Spotify always did look kinda crappy but I never gave it a chance. I'll just have to hope they don't butcher all-access

    3. Re: uh oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, Google play music is just great. If you like karaoke tier covers of classic rock.

  7. Not if Steve Bannon Has Anything to Say About it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stephen Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, has been pushing for regulating internet companies like Facebook and Google as public utilities,

    http://thehill.com/policy/technology/344185-report-bannon-thinks-facebook-and-google-should-be-subject-to-utility-style

  8. As long as we can continue to rip the free streams by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    >> XXX and YYY Will Merge To Create ZZZ

    As long as we can continue to rip the free streams, do whatever you want.

  9. Too expensive by pubwvj · · Score: 1

    The only feature I'm interested in with YouTube Red is the background play in my iPodTouch (e.g., iOS/iPhone). The monthly cost is too much to bother so I find the audio programs elsewhere.

  10. Intriguing by grimfate · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I use Google Play Music for my music playing and there's one feature I've wanted for ages: The ability to add YouTube videos as audio-only to Google Play Music playlists. When they merge, I hope this happens!

    1. Re:Intriguing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have not used Google Play Music ever, but that application still creeps its way to my devices. And the new merged application will also be appearing to my older Nexus devices (5 and 9), which Google has abandoned otherwise. Lets just hope EU will finally get its act together and sue Google for this monopolistic crap it ties into Android.

    2. Re:Intriguing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not monopolistic. They don't ban spotify, Pandora, etc, from the play store. It's an app. Hide the icon if you don't want to see it. But don't pretend it's Google being "evil".

    3. Re:Intriguing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kind of like how Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer into Windows a couple of decades ago. You could download another browser, but you could never actually remove Internet Explorer from the system itself.

    4. Re:Intriguing by norweeg · · Score: 1

      Curious if you also believe Apple should not bundle its music app on the iPhone. I find it absurd, though, that you would call including Google Play Music on android "monopolistic" when it is #3 at best behind competitors Spotify and Apple Music.

    5. Re:Intriguing by norweeg · · Score: 1

      Isn't this still true or can you remove Edge?

    6. Re: Intriguing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fallacy of false equivalence. You can get android without the play store installed. Internet explorer comes with every single install of windows. Google makes no such requirement

  11. Re:they were just exploiting the good work that .. by Hugh+Jorgen · · Score: 0

    That's my point ...

  12. Re:they were just exploiting the good work that .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean they are charging people less than it costs? How nice of them!!

  13. Re:As long as we can continue to rip the free stre by rtb61 · · Score: 0

    I am starting to smell more reasons why the big shit at alphabet was cutting off payments to YouTubers, they were selling competing content. Doesn't matter what kind of content, but if eyeballs and ears are paying attention to YouTuber content instead pay to play content, Google make less money and even worse pays money to make less money. Google seem to be creeping their slimey way to pay to publish, even when they take the bulk of advertising revenue on other people's content, it will never be enough, corporations always demand more, More, MORE. Screwing with searches for political reasons, censoring people, economically punishing them for legal political content that Google doesn't like, you know what, that is exactly what evil looks like.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  14. Give It Up by sexconker · · Score: 0

    No one wants to pay for YouTube. Give it up.

    1. Re:Give It Up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I might pay for YouTube if they could offer a service which on first glance appears to offer something of value. For this though, without looking into the specifics of what YouTube Red has to offer, I don't see how it can compete when RedTube is free. Google should probably think a bit harder about how they name the services they want to monetize.

    2. Re:Give It Up by GuB-42 · · Score: 2

      I gladly would but I can't (no YouTube Red in Europe)
      I hate ads but I still want content creators to be compensated.
      And direct payment (Patreon...) is not what I want. I watch videos from dozens of channels and there is no way I'm going to pay for each one of them, and I feel that only giving to the "best" ones is unfair.

      Right now, the AdBlocker is on. But not only it is sometimes troublesome, especially on mobile, and it isn't a viable solution since both Google and content creators deserve to get paid. IMHO, if you don't like ads, you should welcome alternatives, such as paid subscriptions, if you insist on blocking ads and refuse to pay, you are just a freeloader.

  15. Re:Your privacy is very important to us. by Noishkel · · Score: 1

    So I see someone's already down voting this. What kind of mental defective has a problem with privacy?

  16. How about actually offering it by cerberusss · · Score: 1

    Blah blah marketing... these two have been the same for the last year or so -- if you got one, you got the other. How about actually offering it? YouTube Red is available in five countries: United States, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and South Korea.

    --
    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
  17. that's cool but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm still not paying for shit

  18. Re:Not if Steve Bannon Has Anything to Say About i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Didn't #SwampThing campaign on less regulation, and smaller government, or am I misremembering things?

    Don't Bannon and the Koch brothers want to dismantle government?

    So I'm guess I'm not surprised then that Twitler and his minions are doing exactly the opposite of what they told everyone they would do.

    Piss and moan about Obama's three golf games in eight years, then go golfing every weekend. Promised to Drain the Swamp but diverted the sewer into it instead. Promised to Build a Wall, but can't; and have Mexico pay for it, but can't.. Promised to build the pipeline with American steel, but can't. Promised to bring back coal jobs, seriously? Implied intelligence in government, then appointed clowns like Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions, and Betsy De Vos. He promised to replace the ACA with something better, that costs less, instead it'll be worse and cost more and leave millions stranded without insurance because they can't afford it.

    Yeah, way to go #SwampThing.

    Go ahead Trump fans, you can mod it down, but you know it's all true.

  19. Google Hangouts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can never get enough of Hangouts. They should merge everything into hangouts.

  20. Both are failing by randomErr · · Score: 1

    YouTube has been free since it was created, Why pay for Red or YouTube TV when for the same price you can get Hulu and/or Netflix? Maybe that why subscriptions are flat.

    Google Music is terrible. I was listening to stream and it kept pushing a style of music I don't like to me. The more I thumbs downed the style the more it played. Once its said I ran out of skips I knew it wasn't listening to my requests. It was just pushing was the record studios were paying Google to play.

    I'll stick with regular YouTube because it knows what I like. And I'll gladly pay $10 a month for IHeart because it remembers what I like and don;t like,

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    1. Re:Both are failing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to train google music just like you have to train other music sites. If you pick a station (say, in my case "King Diamond radio") Google Music definitely knows what genre King Diamond is. Sure it puts in a couple of strange song choices, but not NEARLY as much as you indicate. Google Play remembers all I like/don't like through all my machines/platforms. I've never had it "replay" any song/artist I thumbed down. You must be doing stuff wrong. I thumbed down Guns and Roses and I haven't heard one of their songs since. Not even in the '80's metal' station.

      Here's a thought, perhaps learn to use the service before bitching about it?

  21. That's not how it works... by Wubby · · Score: 1

    I didn't sign up for YouTube Red and then got Google Music for free. I signed up for Google Music and they lumped in a useless service called YouTube Red that I don't use or care about. They better not F this up. I don't want to have to move my freaking music library AGAIN! I moved off of Amazon when they stopped supporting Linux despite using Flash for everything. It's just crap!

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    1. Re:That's not how it works... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might be interested to hear in a social network called Google Plus. It acts as the hub to all of your online activities with Google! Oh, you don't want to integrate with it? You're just mistaken. We'll keep asking you if you do whenever you sign in anywhere until we just go ahead and sync it for you anyways.

      I get the feeling that Red is going to have the same sort of integration. I'm already seeing a bunch of Red stuff pop up all over YouTube, and I'm not at all interested in it. The service works just fine for me right now, and the additional content isn't anything that I care about since there's already so much available without Red. I'm guessing they're going to force the integration anyways in the near future.

    2. Re:That's not how it works... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny... that never happens with my stuff. I don't see the "google+" spam at all. I have a subscription to google music, which has all the bands I want to listen to without ads, and I got Youtube Red for free. I never noticed I even had Red until I read (heh) the site icon one day while watching videos (coincidentally not music videos.) Viewing youtube videos without having to install an adblocker is a nice feature. It doesn't influence my purchase of a google music subscription, though.

      We're seeing this sort of "convergence" from ALL companies... not just Google. The difference between Google and say, Apple or Microsoft is that you can ignore Google. The other two force their "features" via OS updates you can't stop, and walled gardens you can't leave.

      I'd say Google Music/YouTube Red integration is going to be a tempest in a teapot. *shrug* I've been wrong before, though.

    3. Re:That's not how it works... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You never experienced Google popping up everywhere to get people to sign up with Plus? Lucky. It was very frustrating. If you search for "youtube forcing google plus year:2013", you'll see what I mean.

      But you're absolutely correct. The larger corporations are in a scramble to build their walled gardens higher. It makes sense for them because those companies want to streamline the paths to profitability. Google is going to try to make it harder to ignore, especially since they're pretty much ubiquitous online

    4. Re:That's not how it works... by norweeg · · Score: 1

      You might find this useful http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/...

    5. Re:That's not how it works... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. Don't sign up for a google account, ever.
      2. Get Nuke Anything extension for Firefox. When youtube annoys you with prompts about "accepting terms of service" or "reviewing privacy policy" although you're logged out and don't have an account, you can right click on the crap and remove it from view.
      3. Block youtube in your hosts file or whatever and access youtube in a secondary somewhat anonymous browser.
      4. Delete youtube's cookies as often or whenever you want to.
      5. Youtube deletes an entire user account according to a "legal request".
      Sometimes, they're deleting content for political reasons unrelated to copyright. They do delete stuff that pisses off the US military industrial complex.

    6. Re:That's not how it works... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know how I accomplished it.. if I did, I'd certainly share it. :)

      The fantastic fact is, I'd rather google bug me than Microsoft/Apple. :)

    7. Re:That's not how it works... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to have a youtube account because some videos are soft porn and require an account to verify you're 18+-year-old [you can download these videos with other means], and also the youtube account allows you to comment. Fine.
      They turned the youtube account into a Google account - I assume I must have pressed some "OK" or "Yes" or "agree" button somewhere when prompted.
      The "Google Plus" was never an issue. Don't give a shit about it. On the other hand, the Google account stalked you from youtube to vanilla google search. That was the warning call. I don't give a shit about Google Plus. It's Google vanilla that became a problem on that day. What's more, if you signed up with your historical email address, that's an underhanded way of Google to get to your real identity. (they can buy data about services you signed up to with that old "official" email and you gave your real name to some of those services)

      DON'T ever make the mistake of signing up for a google account.

  22. I wish there were more details by norweeg · · Score: 1

    I actually have Google Play Music/Youtube Red and I'm just dying to know what they plan to do! Hopefully its better than their half-hearted attempt to add podcasts to GPM (when they announced it, I was hoping they were going to by Pocket Casts and roll that into the GPM app, but no such luck)

    1. Re:I wish there were more details by caseih · · Score: 1

      Don't even say it! Pocket Casts is my most used phone app and the last think I'd want is for Google to buy it and ruin it like they seem to have done with most things they've acquired and really what they've done to most of their stuff people actually use. Please don't give them ideas!

    2. Re:I wish there were more details by norweeg · · Score: 1

      I think you're safe, they already fucked up and missed the opportunity to have a usable podcast service.

  23. Doing what Google is best at by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Creating confusion. Conflating products. Changing names. Moving the goalposts. Making sure that nobody know exactly what does what. Is it Hangouts? Duo? Allo? Google Talk? Google Voice?

    1. Re:Doing what Google is best at by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I do wonder how there seems to be no guiding intelligence behind what's going on in these areas at Google. They have no discipline or vision it would seem.

  24. o0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As long as Play Music keeps the personal storage, and Instant Mix, I'm happy.

  25. Subject doesn't mean "first 8 words" by tepples · · Score: 1

    I suspect your comment was misunderstood because you started a sentence in the Comment Subject and finished it in the Comment. It's more common here for a subject to summarize a comment than to begin it. I would have formatted it like this:

    YouTube exploited RedTube's goodwill

    They were just exploiting the good work that RedTube already did for the play on the name. Yawn ... is Google profitable at anything other than selling ads?

    1. Re:Subject doesn't mean "first 8 words" by Hugh+Jorgen · · Score: 0

      subject is the topic of discussion which is understood but /. really needs to refresh or die.

  26. Still occupies system partition space by tepples · · Score: 1

    Hide the icon if you don't want to see it.

    Hiding an application's icon doesn't reclaim the space that the application occupies on the device's internal memory. This hurts especially on a device lacking a microSDXC slot because of Microsoft's exFAT patent. Even "Uninstall updates" followed by "Disable" leaves a copy of the app in the system partition.

  27. In other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Youtube Red isn't doing as well as we'd hoped, so now we're going to try and force people to adopt."

  28. Stop trying to make YouTube Red a thing. by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

    The only way it could ever possibly be worth paying for is access to higher bitrate so the compression doesn't dump mud all over everything. Keep fucking up existing services trying to get people into the new tier though, see how that works out.

    1. Re:Stop trying to make YouTube Red a thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm interested in low bitrates, this means I'd like 144p and 240p in VP9 + Opus so that the sound can sound good thanks. AAC is 1990s garbage, it's about the biggest scourge on the internet currently.

      The biggest offenses come from the content creators though, irregardless of codecs and rates : there still are dumb nuts who manage to turn audio into saturated bad-sounding garbage even though they're copy-pasting digital audio and video into digital audio and video.
      Others after years of posting videos manage to get 4:3 video squashed into 16:9, and as that's 4:3 video that contained 16:9 video plus black bars and a logo in the top left that becomes a "doubly 16:9" video which looks like mail slot video with squashed fat people in it. I'm dumbfounded that people can't even watch what they're doing. I assume they can tie their shoelaces and manage to walk in the streets without their dick sticking out of their pants, so why not get the aspect ratio right while they're at it?

  29. What Is It? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it Hangouts? Duo? Allo? Google Talk? Google Voice?

    Nope. It's discontinued.

  30. So you're saying, YT Red is pointless? by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 0

    There's YouTube Red, which removes ads from videos and lets you save them offline

    There are extensions for blocking adds and youtube-dl for saving the videos offline...why tf would I pay for YouTube Red again...?

  31. Is it called "steal artists' music for free ?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is the new product called "stealing artists' music for free, and charging to play the stolen music?"

    Google loves to steal people's content, copyright, and intellectual property, and make unlimited supplies of money off the stolen content, without absolutely no repercussions whatsoever. They've even bundled the new service into 1 convenient area where everyone can steal everything for free, if you pay Google a small fee for that.