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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.
Are they going to call it Google Play Music?
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.
Because that's essentially what they're trying to do in getting people to pay for something they're accustomed to getting for free.
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.
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.
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
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.
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