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YouTube to Launch New Music Subscription Service in March (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube plans to introduce a paid music service in March, according to people familiar with the matter, a third attempt by parent company Alphabet Inc. to catch up with rivals Spotify and Apple. The new service could help appease record-industry executives who have pushed for more revenue from YouTube. Warner Music Group, one of the world's three major record labels, has already signed on, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private talks. YouTube is also in talks with the two others, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, and Merlin, a consortium of independent labels, the people said.

59 comments

  1. I already use this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's called converting the mp4 video of whatever song I want to mp3 and not paying a cent biiiiiiiiiitches

    1. Re: I already use this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or just use mps-youtube

  2. Give money to google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ha! Thatâ(TM)ll be the day.

    1. Re:Give money to google? by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How Well did You-Tube Red do?

      Being that You-Tube has a tenancy to de-monetize videos on a whim. I don't feel Google would be trusted to actually fairly pay royalties of users of the service.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Give money to google? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      Is there a way to tell "YouTube Red" the 1st choice?

      * (x) Stop fucking pestering me. I didn't sign up for your free trial last month, and I don't want to EVER sign up for it.
      * ( ) No Thanks
      * ( ) 1 month Free Trial

    3. Re:Give money to google? by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      Demonetized video don't get ad revenue but they still get YouTube Red money.

    4. Re:Give money to google? by victor+raju · · Score: 1

      Some of them used to have a price tag until Google came along and gave them away for free (e.g. Google Maps). Indeed, you can bet a lot of company’s business models were disrupted by Google’s ‘generosity’. Link: https://socialprachar.com/

  3. Google Play Music? by J-1000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Are they going to call it Google Play Music?

    1. Re:Google Play Music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      IKR, I already pay for the Youtube Red/Google Play Music bundle. Does this new service mean, they are separating the two?

  4. lyrical interlusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    sing along https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WZZjXgJ4W8 .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmmPFrkuPq0 ..

  5. Blah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    People need to understand that it's the giant major labels that are pushing for this. They're the ones raking in the money while the artists are making 1/100 1/1000 of a cent per stream. For independent unsigned artists that release albums on their own are screwed even more because the revenue go to these record companies even though the independent artists have absolutely nothing to do with these labels.

  6. Service called "Cat, please get back into the bag" by JoeyRox · · Score: 2

    Because that's essentially what they're trying to do in getting people to pay for something they're accustomed to getting for free.

  7. YouTube has too many directives to be effective by H3lldr0p · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It wants to be the everything to online video. It is a destination for the casual viewer because anyone can upload anything and is therefore useful of viral stuff or breaking news. It's a destination for the new media crowd because it allow them a place to create and grow an audience. It mostly missed the boat on game voyeurism but is trying to catch up there.

    It's also important for music because MTV et al shit the bed and moved into more profitable arena of reality television. It's a place for new musicians to debut and a place for existing musicians to expand their audience and to interact with their current one.

    However, and this is the tricky part, it requires YouTube to be really good at getting those videos in front of people. This is where having all of those directives comes to mess things up. You have advertisers who have ideas of who they want to be put in front of. You have the aforementioned audience who want more of the same sorts of things they're already watching. And you have the new people wanting an audience. What Alphabet/Google/YouTube has learned in the past few years is that you can't please everyone at the same time and please anyone in the process.

    Discovery is a mess and hasn't got any better that it was five years ago when the algorithm took over their front page. It's arguably worse.

    So moving music away from YouTube prime might be a good answer for the record labels, but that pretty much guarantees it's not good for anyone else.

    1. Re:YouTube has too many directives to be effective by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Seems like the CEO is rudderless with no clue of understanding the site, and has no understanding of why people went to youtube in the first place. On top of that it seems like they want to crash the entire site with no survivors. Look at the bullshit over PDP and the adpocalypse which was actually nothing. But people were making complaints and flagging actual pro-terrorism videos, weird videos of preteen kids doing various things with entire comment sections full of pedo-comments, and they did nothing. Not until advertisers again started pulling ads out did they take any form of action against them. The whole elsa/spiderman/weird shit, people have been flagging that shit since last year. There were dedicated campaigns on multiple chan boards and reddit to boot, nothing happened.

      The entire company seems to be rudderless with an incompetent CEO that's listening to what someone is telling her and "what the site is really about." There seems to be 2 things they're focusing on: Making it like TV, and trying to cash in on vinetards. The video she put up on youtube, followed a couple of months later with a blog post seem to reinforce that she really has *no* idea what youtube actually does, why it's popular, or why the content creators that actually drive youtubes numbers are pissed off. I expect that this entire thing will simply fail and fall flat on it's face like all the other experiments. Then they'll push out a UI update that nobody wants and buries the features everyone uses under 6 button clicks from one.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:YouTube has too many directives to be effective by Kjella · · Score: 1

      What Alphabet/Google/YouTube has learned in the past few years is that you can't please everyone at the same time and please anyone in the process.

      Boy, they're failing hard. Alexa lists 21 sites in the category "Video Sharing". On the global list YouTube is #2 worldwide, next is Vimeo and DailyMotion at #132 and #133, both trending down from a year ago. The fourth place is held by vidmax.com, a site I've never heard of ranked #38,260. Is this another /.-ism where Microsoft and Intel are failing because Linux/ARM netbooks? I'm sure that at any time there are many creators, users and advertisers leaving YouTube because they got their panties in a bunch about something. But like so many other services it's converging on a small handful of winners, not a broad selection of niche sites. See Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram etc. if the top 50 sites fell off the net it'd be an Internet apocalypse for most people.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:YouTube has too many directives to be effective by Botnet-of-People · · Score: 1

      It mostly missed the boat on game voyeurism but is trying to catch up there.

      ? So what's the most popular site ATM to get your video game walkthrus/demos?

  8. What will this do to independent musicians? by Noishkel · · Score: 1

    As pretty much everyone already knows many people use YouTube to play music in the background while doing various things. But at the same time I don't listen one single mail stream artist out there. Not at all. I listen exclusively to small independent musicians and people that do remixes of other works. Not to mention 'Chillstep' mixes that are great for my anxiety condition. Will there be a place for these people, are we to be subjected to the same old garbage corporate music that infests Spotify? Because I quit that service specially because I got sick and damn tired of the crap from major labels that I never liked to begin with.

    1. Re:What will this do to independent musicians? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spotify doesn't let you play whatever you want? Wow, sounds fucking retarded. Apple Music has all the independent artists and labels, and also countless curated playlists including many for "relaxation", "focus" etc. I listen to some DJ mixes on Youtube, but I'm not buying a subscription to Youtube just to listen to the occasional Boilerroom set.

    2. Re:What will this do to independent musicians? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      /Oblg. in B4 YT music apocalypse ...

      > As pretty much everyone already knows many people use YouTube to play music in the background while doing various things.
      Yup, everyone knows that except these schmucks (suits) trying to monetize every last nickel and dime from every music video which is going to end up destroying what made it great in the first place.

      People freely share music is a cornerstone of society. Hell, that's part of the reason YT exists -- convenience of free music. There is literally no where else to go that has the same breadth and depth of music -- copyright be damned as it holds culture hostage.

      If we actually had a secure, viable micro-transaction currency system where the over-head was a few dollars per YEAR instead of the overhead of every transaction cost, I'm willing to bet more people would chip in $0.0001 to their favorite artists.

      > to small independent musicians
      As long as we have custom playlists I don't think this will kill the music indie scene ... yet.

      > and people that do remixes of other works.
      Now _that_ might -- as blatant DMCA trolling will probably increase.

      The only real, long term, solution is to stop listening to main-stream crap who sues the fuck out of everyone and support the indie musicians who don't treat their fans likes thieves -- because they understand free music is one of the best forms of advertising.

  9. Re:I hate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mexicans majority Catholic, do not have problems with pork.
    As well there is a diverse set of religions that African descendants follow, many do not have such a restriction on pork either.

  10. Google loves stealing everyone's music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Google loves stealing everyone's music, and then charging you listen to it, all while Google profits billions from the stolen music

    1. Re:Google loves stealing everyone's music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i would expect that a 'subscription' service would *only* use "official" tracks provided by record companies or the artists themselves... and would only include music *from those entities* (and payout would only be distributed to them)

      and of course, be DRM-ed up the ass so you can't use a youtube-to-mp3 addon in your browser.

    2. Re:Google loves stealing everyone's music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good. This will drive people back to torrenting. More seeders, please!

    3. Re:Google loves stealing everyone's music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then the RIAA will start giving $BIGNUM fines again by logging IP addresses of people in a torrent and going after them one by one. Do we really want to go back to the early/mid 2000s and the cat/mouse game?

    4. Re:Google loves stealing everyone's music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Existing case law says that the RIAA and their hired copyright trolls cannot force ISPs to hand over information tying an IP address to a specific household. The only way to lose money after getting a copyright scare letter is to respond to the troll, thereby providing them with your identity.

      Even if the ISP voluntarily gives you up, precedent states that an IPs are not sufficient to conclusively identify a person for legal purposes. Torrent as much as you want without fear. Experienced torrenters in the US have racked up enough copyright troll letters to paper their walls.

    5. Re:Google loves stealing everyone's music by Shogun37 · · Score: 1

      There are numerous mp4 to mp3 programs to download. For free, even. If DRM exists, there will be a way to defeat it.

  11. sure thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am very brand loyal to google, I will support their paid offering once the axe freetube...

  12. Don't they have problems already? by FilmedInNoir · · Score: 1

    e.g. The issue with child content videos having adult/sexual content. De-monetizing/banning science/technology channels.
    Shouldn't they fix those problems before adding to the pile? Said no one at the board meeting apparently.

    --
    Sig. Sig. Sputnik
  13. I don't use Apple, because I'm not an idoit. by Noishkel · · Score: 0, Troll

    Why the fuck would I lock myself into an computing eco-system that keeps forces me to buy over priced crappy hardware and over prices services that I will never want to use to begin with? So towards that, yeah. I don't know exactly what Apple music has it it's catalog and I never will. Because Apple as a company can get fucked and die in a fire.

    But beyond that I fucking hated Spotify for the same reason I hate Apple in general. A closed Ecosystem that required me to use an app to listen to music. And I'm not going to use that. Full fucking stop. The artist that I listen to are found from better services like Band Camp, where I don't have to go through some POS third party corporation to access my music constantly through my devices. There's also the issue where that I don't use my own phone like a fucking toy, so I don't waste my battery life on entertainment. So my Phone never gets used for streaming.

    1. Re:I don't use Apple, because I'm not an idoit. by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      What you call a "closed Ecosystem" others might call "All Inclusive". Many people don't want to have to deal with third party add ons.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  14. Coming From by eclectro · · Score: 1

    The let's find more ways we can undermine the platform department. If they want to charge more for the "red" service I have now, I'll simply unsubscribe and throw my money towards Amazon.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    1. Re:Coming From by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

      I'm already paying for YouTube Red. Do I need to pay another $10/month for a service I'm paying for right now? If this is the case, I'll keep YT Red, but I may just toss cash at Amazon so I can have it scan my music library and have it available on all my devices.

    2. Re:Coming From by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll simply unsubscribe and throw my money towards Amazon.

      Nooooo! Give your money to the EFF and bittorrent, and other people that are trying to keep the internet open and accessible and free of censorship. Amazon is Satan's (Washington Post, CIA) little helper.

    3. Re:Coming From by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're paying a subscription to an organization that grew into an information distorting organization with a political agenda. They've become an evil force in the world, please reconsider your subscription before making them even stronger!

  15. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WOW! That's what a 600$ camera gets you these days?? Should have gone for a 500$ camera and a fucking monopod and a "using a camera for dummies" book!

    EIGHT views! Wow! That's like 75$ per view. The universe will be made entirely of iron by the time you've made that back.

    Your customers will be impressed by your portfolio, I'm sure.

    I also like the closing credits where we can see the other attendees: wait, I was told that YOU were the skinny one here?

  16. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    EIGHT views! Wow! That's like 75$ per view. The universe will be made entirely of iron by the time you've made that back.

    Next week: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi is an EPIC FAILURE for not making $1B in the first two hours!"

  17. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the ticket sales weren't ever going to even be able to re-coup the cost of the camera, then yeah it would be a failure. "Random shitty videos of places I go to" is never going to be a money winner.

  18. Re:Service called "Cat, please get back into the b by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    All the 3 minute songs have already been written anyways.

  19. More Confusing product lineups from Google by farble1670 · · Score: 2

    So we have Google Play Music. We have YouTube Red. And they are creating ANOTHER subscription music service?

    The new service, internally referred to as Remix, would include Spotify-like on-demand streaming and would incorporate elements from YouTube, such as video clips, the people said. YouTube has reached out to artists to seek their help in promoting the new service, one of the people said.

    Both of their existing services have on-demand streaming and video clips. One thing that's a pretty rule rule of the internet: people aren't going to suddenly pay for something that they've been getting for free for a decade. Regardless of how snazzy you might make it.

    1. Re:More Confusing product lineups from Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google Play kicks Spotify's ass. Maybe they aren't marketing or advertising Google Play Music properly.

    2. Re:More Confusing product lineups from Google by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      Google Play kicks Spotify's ass.

      I agree. I have a family subscription.

      At the end of the day, there's just the music. If I can get that reliably with a decent interface there's not a whole lot more to can do to make it better. The issue here is marketing, and possibly price. It's not the quality of the service.

  20. Might be bad news for music revenue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Youtube's free service has been a great shopping-research service, simply because they're one of the most reliable check-out-if-this-album-is-any-good sites. Pretty much everything I've been buying for the last 5 years, I either heard the band play right before I bought their CD at the bar, or else I heard 'em on youtube first, before I placed my Amazon order. If this announcement means Youtube is going to stop being useful for shopping research, then the music vendors better brace for a reduction in sales. And if it's happening because they pressured Youtube to help them reduce their over sales and their employers' profitability, they better hope the stockholders never find out.

    Media companies, I don't know why this needs to be repeated so often, but I'll do it one more time: don't shout "fuck you, we don't want your fucking money" at paying customers. Ever. It's always wrong for any business to do that. There are zero exceptions, and if you think you have a story about an exception, you're wrong.

    If someone keeps shoving money down your throat and it's got you gagging, you need to relax and swallow; don't spit. I'm sorry if you're having a hard time handling this money load, but if you give it a chance, before long you might realize that you like it. And if you don't.. then maybe you're not cut out for business.

  21. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The IPhone 6s is probably not the best camera for a darkened room with a light flood stage. The Apple video got washed out because there was too much light. Live and learn.

  22. Re: That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would have been a boring shitty video even if you shot it with a RED camera.

  23. Between a rock and a hard place by nightfire-unique · · Score: 2

    I think Google should really take a firm stance on advertising, lest they die of a thousand cuts:

    If you submit ads to YouTube, they will universally be shown on all YouTube videos. You can't choose countries, ethics, subject matter, or complain about being "inappropriately" shown. All or nothing - your ads show up everywhere, or nowhere.

    Google's big enough to implement that policy, and it'll shut up the whiney marketing departments that complain that they don't want their vegan mean substitute ad played during a hunting video (or whatever).

    If they keep kowtowing to advertisers, the entire platform could fall apart, or at least expose itself to serious competition.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
    1. Re:Between a rock and a hard place by umafuckit · · Score: 1

      Google's big enough to implement that policy, and it'll shut up the whiney marketing departments that complain that they don't want their vegan mean substitute ad played during a hunting video (or whatever).

      If they keep kowtowing to advertisers, the entire platform could fall apart, or at least expose itself to serious competition.

      I don't understand. Google makes its money by serving up targeting advertisements. How is that "kowtowing"? It's their business model.

    2. Re:Between a rock and a hard place by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      If you submit ads to YouTube, they will universally be shown on all YouTube videos. You can't choose countries, ethics, subject matter, or complain about being "inappropriately" shown.

      I think you have quite a lot of customization possible when you post an ad, including "content exclusion". In fact, Google and others are having issues because they give a little to much control (ex: exclude black people).

    3. Re:Between a rock and a hard place by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Countries" should perhaps still be allowed, though; perhaps by IP (imprecise as that is), since that can be done with no tracking.

      Otherwise you're basically destroying the ad market for anyone but the most international companies or the largest markets (so mostly the US). Imagine you're a Norwegian company selling to Norwegians - why would you ever buy a youtube ad if most of the views will be to people it's utterly irrelevant for? Or, comparably, imagine you're a Norwegian viewer. Most of the ads would be for companies and services you couldn't buy if you wanted to, interspersed with some international online companies that do sell to everyone. How's that good for anyone?

    4. Re:Between a rock and a hard place by drsquare · · Score: 1

      Then advertisers will just stop advertising there. There is more content on the Internet than ads to be served with said content.

    5. Re:Between a rock and a hard place by Riceballsan · · Score: 1

      The issue is the adpocolypse was created when the walstreet journal messed with public opinion.. They basically showed a coke ad on a racist video and said "this makes it look like coke supports racists". Of which of course nobody thought, but you know the WSJ was able to sell the article in a way that made cokes shareholders think "ooh it is possible someone might think that, therefore we must not advertise with youtube". and of course same thing happened simultaniously with starbucks, and most of the guys pouring big money into youtube advertisements.

  24. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The people watching the kind of videos you're making couldn't give a rip.
    Also there is already a budding stink about people like you monetizing these sorts of videos. Advertisers are pressuring youtube to figure out how to stop people from monetizing videos of dubious advertising value.

    A better star wars analogy would be if Disney released a new star wars movie every week and fans decided they liked the trailers and didn't want to buy tickets to the movie.
    So then Disney decided to let everyone watch them for free a year later.

    Don't take my word for it. Guys who pioneered spamming youtube with a million low effort videos like DarkSydePhil are reporting that it's getting harder and harder to make money that way. This is a guy who had the added benefits of having no other job and being somewhat famous outside of youtube.

    But let's say I'm wrong, lets say that youtube can't find a way to stop you, or videos like yours eventually find advertisers who make sales off them. For the sake of argument.

    A. The youtube catalog is ever expanding. New users and new videos are constantly getting created. This means that every day there will be more and more competitors for views. Meaning less and less views for you. So much for your long tail.
    B. As access to youtube expands into poorer and poorer economies where a dollar goes a little farther. There will be more and more people with incentive to make shovel content like your own. As I said google is already entertaining schemes to discourage this sort of behavior so good luck.

    Finally check this out:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ

    This video is of historic value, it rougly represents the moment that Anonymous dipped it's toes into political activism. The result 10 years later: SJWs. the alt-right & /pol/ , Occupy wall street, russian trolls for hire, and a trump presidency. How much money would this video have generated over the past 10 years on average?

    80 dollars a month. I'd be happy to have 80 dollars a month but this is a video of historical value that was posted and this is where it stands. You're delusional if you think that you'll make that much even if you spam youtube with thousands of videos.

    Have you ever considered that the youtube personalities trump up youtube in order to maintain their relevance? As you have said yourself, you have to have a multi pronged approach to making money this way, many streams that add up. You are just part of one of their streams and even though the odds are slim for most people. You're particularly ill suited for this sort of work. You have a face for radio and a voice for print. By your own admission you're unable to understand normal people either so there's an additional handicap.

  25. Awesome by JThundley · · Score: 1

    I can't wait to decline this over and over in my phone's Youtube app!

  26. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There you are again, spamming youtube affiliate links with yet another fake account, you revenue stream hogging disgusting fat sexist tube of lard, Christopher Dale Reimer!

    You can be sure I will be watching this fake account too. I know this is you because you told me you were working on your freepass 11 file server and you are so dumb that you can't even masquerade yourself properly.

    Now, I told you I was out of meds last week and you didn't even care to contact me you lazy fucker.

    How many times do I have to express the emergency of the situation??????

    The python click script you wrote for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work!!!!!!

    You fucking incompetent python script writer!!!

    When it works, I get 4000+ clicks a day on my pheromone revenue stream web site but only 5 or 6 without it!!!!

    Now, it seems like you dont care and that you have abandoned me you heartless fucking pig!

    Bonus:
    Here is a story that creimer told me when convincing me what a hard life he had:

    The tree was him and the tree knot was his butt hole!

    So, his uncle packed his fat ass with lard and with his cock! Not that it makes much of a difference but anyway, there it is!

    Signed:
    The girl that used to love you and now hates you, burn in hell where you belong you sexist pig!

  27. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jesus Christ, the iPhone can handle that great. When you are taking a video of a subject on an iPhone, press your fat finger on the subject you are filming. The iPhone will adjust focus and light balance to match. There was enough light, the iPhone is perfectly capable of handling the video you took. iPhones are awesome, the processor and selection method on an iPhone is probably better than on whatever sort of video camera you bought.

    The problem was, it's a really boring fucking thing to take a video of. Plus, you took it hand-held, which is amateurish. Can you return the camera and get your $600 back? No camera you use would have helped as much as getting a tripod and knowing how your iPhone's video recording works.

  28. Re:That's ironic for YouTube content creators... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not an expert, but I think that if you bring a tripod to this kind of event they consider you a professional and charge you a lot more for entrance. I suggested a monopod for the big dummy. They're lighter and shouldn't trigger the "professional" entrance fee.
    At least it's like that in museums.