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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.

30 of 59 comments (clear)

  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

  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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?

  6. 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.
  7. 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 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.

  8. 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 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.

  9. 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
  10. 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

  11. 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.

  12. 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!”
  13. Re:Service called "Cat, please get back into the b by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    All the 3 minute songs have already been written anyways.

  14. 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 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.

  15. 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 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.

    4. 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.

  16. Awesome by JThundley · · Score: 1

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

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

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

  18. 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/