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

Posted by msmash on from the next-up dept.

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.

2 of 59 comments (clear)

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

    Are they going to call it Google Play Music?

  2. 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.