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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.
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.
A lot of YouTube users flag videos so they get demonetized. They do this so their music playlist is uninterrupted.
$12.00 a month isn't a bad price.
But it isn't the only service that I would want to have so all of them added up I am paying hundreds of dollars a month. If I wan't to save some money, then I will need to actively cancel my account. vs Passively just not buy an other copy.
Adobe Creative Suite is the biggest offender. It is a lot per month, where before If I paid a grand for the software, I could keep it years past its supported version until I can justify getting a new version. If money is tight, I can live with the older version. Because I refuse to pay the monthly fee, I have switched to open source variants, which are Good enough.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In the early days of Android the built in music player sucked. There were some reasonable third party ones, and even some of the carriers and phone manufacturers came through with some reasonable ones, but the built in one sucked.
Then when the early version of the Play Music app (maybe it was called something else) came out it was awesome! It would take the music on my phone and make virtual stations out of them. It would catalog and categorize and make intelligent playlist, I loved it.
Then they introduced their stream service, they whored it out a little, but I ignored that and kept using it as is.
Then it started whoring a little stronger - to the point of making the app harder to use.
THEN it started streaming music over my metered mobile connection, I could manually set it back to local only, but it kept finding ways to stream. Any excuse it could make up it would stream instead of play local, even if the files were local to the device.
I tried to play nice with it. I uploaded all my OGG/Vorbis files to their cloud so it could be in both places. It would convert them to MP3s if I pulled them in on another device. Music I bought straight from the play store started to get truncated file names and double/tripple downloads, especially when using the Google created Linux music sync utility. I even opened tickets, they had me jump through hoops that went nowhere, they just scratched their head. Let me re-emphasize this for you :If I bought it from them it was much more likely to be hosed up than if I did it myself.
Yep, Power Amp it is.
Based on a history of unreliable bandwidth, metered connections, and lots of driving - especially in rural areas with no coverage I never could get on-board with streaming.
So - now that I have Power Amp, used to I could say "Okay Google Play Thunderstruck" and it would open PowerAmp my default player and play Thunderstruck for me. Now it demands I select a streaming service.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR STREAMING
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