YouTube Unveils New Streaming Service 'YouTube Music,' Rebrands YouTube Red (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: YouTube Music, a streaming music platform designed to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, officially has a launch date: May 22nd. Its existence will also shift around YouTube and Google's overall media strategy, which has thus far been quite the mess. YouTube Music will borrow the Spotify model and offer a free, ad-supported tier as well as a premium version. The paid tier, which will be called YouTube Music Premium, will be available for $9.99 per month. It will debut in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea before expanding to 14 other countries.

One of the selling points for YouTube Music will be the ability to harness the endless amount of information Google knows about you, which it will use to try to create customized listening experiences. Pitchfork reported that the app, with the help of Google Assistant, will make listening recommendations based on the time of day, location, and listening patterns. It will also apparently offer "an audio experience and a video experience," suggesting perhaps an emphasis on music videos and other visual content. From here, Google seems to be focused on making its streaming strategy a little less wacky. Google Play Music, the company's previous music streaming service that is still inexplicably up and running despite teetering on the brink of extinction for years, will slowly be phased out according to USA Today. Meanwhile, the paid streaming subscription service, known as YouTube Red, is being rebranded to YouTube Premium and will cost $11.99 per month instead of $9.99. (Pitchfork notes that existing YouTube Red subscribers will be able to keep their $9.99 rate.) YouTube Premium will include access to YouTube Music Premium. Here's a handy-dandy chart that helps show what is/isn't included in the two plans.

Comments

Red Light District

[Dorianny]

Guess someone at Google finally realized "YouTube Red " can be very easily confused for a adult entertainment service

Uncertainty

[Luthair]

Google and Microsoft seem to be consistently creating and re-creating the same services due to internal politics and killing the earlier versions. Eventually this lack of a consistency starts to not only harm the adoption of the product iteration it spills over into the brand and harms the adoption of future products because the potential users aren't interested in becoming invested as it may be killed in X-months.

Re:Uncertainty

[Anonymous Coward]

Google and Microsoft seem to be consistently creating and re-creating the same services due to internal politics and killing the earlier versions. Eventually this lack of a consistency starts to not only harm the adoption of the product iteration it spills over into the brand and harms the adoption of future products because the potential users aren't interested in becoming invested as it may be killed in X-months.

This is what happens when a company has too much money and too many employees.

As a manger, you can't have your people just sitting around doing nothing. They have to be working. They have to be productive!! They have to be doing things. Big things. Because doing big things is how you get raises and promotions.

And so you have thousands of people doing things and constantly trying to think of new things to do, with no thought given to "does this make sense?"

It's "New Coke" syndrome. Repeated, over and over.