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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.
I am curious how Google is going to handle demonetization of songs due to objectionable to advertisers content (e.g. rap and not-for-radio lyrics).
Just a rebranding and price increase of existing products. Nothing to see here.
It's odd that Google decided to rebrand YouTube Red now, considering that they just spent a small fortune promoting it recently.
Their new YouTube exclusive shows like Cobra Kai (the amusing Karate Kid reboot with the original actors) are filled with YouTube Red logos.
Guess someone at Google finally realized "YouTube Red " can be very easily confused for a adult entertainment service
Phase 1: Create a monopoly on non-porn video by getting everyone to join their platform by promoting freedom of expression and free hosting.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit
No matter what Phase 2 turns out to be, it won't allow Phase 1 to continue as such, IMHO.
Check your premises.
YouTube Red? RedTube? What's the difference?
(Maybe RedTube isn't a thing anymore, but I won't verify its existence from work, and you shouldn't either.)
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
AKA not workinh anywhere other than the USA? Bigly world internet company.
Because the only reason I have YT:Red is because of the Play Music sub I have. That's it. I wouldn't pay for it otherwise. There's plenty on YT I watch but I wasn't bothered by ads before because I have my adblockers active. The best I can hope for is that the new service lets me keep my uploaded music and stuff I bought from Play Music otherwise I have one less reason to use Google's universe.
As long the service formerly known as YouTube Red is only available in the United States, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea I quite frankly don't care since my country is probably not one of the other 14 they countries Google has planned to bless with their new service.
Until youtube basically declared war on mobile browsing of their platform. The only way you can now turn the screen off on your phone and listen to a video is to select "request desktop site" and that just makes the webpage incredibly annoying to use. But no amount of annoyance will ever make me pay for something that was literally free a few years ago.
$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.
it will use to try to create customized listening experiences.
Google's algorithms are pathetic. Listened to a couple of songs by a particular artist and now I can't them out of my feed. I'm constantly saying that I'm not interested but they keep showing up.
It's listen a few times and the feedback mechanism doesn't work.
AND THEN there are the idiotic lists of "mixes" that I have absolutely no interest in and there's no way to flag it as such.
And I watched a couple videos of Jordan Stevens and Bill Mahr and my feed has been forever filled with shit things like "Jordan Stevens spanks LIBERAL!" or a shit load of "when theists get spanked" videos of all the same clips.
In other words, you are stuck forever with something you've listened to or watched. And there's no way to turn it off.
I do not want YOUR suggestions because apparently my personality and viewing habits isn't normal.
Haven't read anything about a family option. I've been loving the $15/month family plan for Google Play Music All Access - the wife, kiddo, and I all have our own playlists and access to ad-free YouTube. I will not be a happy camper if I have to give that up.
Plus two tiers, the $9.99 and the $11.99 ones.
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.
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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Sadly, the comments are about the same quality on the two platforms...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I tried it. Having your music in the cloud is really slick, when it works. I live in the country, though, so it usually doesn't. Eventually I got tired of that bug where it would drain the phone battery while trying to download a playlist. Wiped my music from the service and manually load things myself.
I still have it installed, but I've completely disabled network access (mobile or wifi). I'd remove it entirely but it seems to be the only music player that works sanely with Android Auto.
Log in or piss off.
Isn't it YouTube Red that's becoming YouTube Premium?
Seems Google Music is the older ugly brother that didn't accomplish much in its maturity and has been forgotten. I don't know why they can't just make Google Music seamlessly play youtube videos on queue and then go to the next song, instead of opening links. Probably because google is well past its "cool rule breaking" stage and youtube is a different division from Google Music.
Why isn't there a third choice to stop the excessive and constant nagging you to try out YouTube Red ?
( ) Yes, I'd like a free trial,
( ) No, not now,
(x) Stop fucking nagging me AND remember that I said NO before
Will this finally stop it?
I've subscribed to Google Music (or Play Music, or whatever its called now). I like using it to listen to music at work as it isn't blocked by the firewall like some other services are, and it is handy to find and listen to new music I'd pass by if I had to buy it first. But, I'm not sure how interested I'll be if this convenience goes away and the price is raised. It seems everytime you find something useful within Google's universe, they decide to ax it for something worse. How many iterations of messenger and music services are we on from them?
GSM 06.10, hopefully.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
I've been a DJ for twenty years, both professionally and just for fun. I listen to music all day long. I have never used any sort of streaming service nor will I. I'm a firm believer that it takes more than an algorithm based on what you have listened to to determine what you will listen to. Sometimes, it takes someone else to give you a selection out of left field, something complementary rather than "more of the same", even an opposite. What it takes is a human to curate and present. For that, we've had disc jockeys for decades. Terrestrial radio pretty much died due to the firing of DJs and replacement by auto-dj machines, Tom Petty even wrote a great song about it called "The Last DJ". A DJs job is to play the songs you didn't know you needed to hear. So Spotify? Apple Music? now this Youtube thing? No. I present an alternative: Radio paradise (https://www.radioparadise.com). 100% listener suppored, music 100% selected and presented by a knowledgeable bunch of human beings who know what they are doing. There's others out there also. We lost something when we lost radio. Bring it back :)
So #1, Google Play Music is different from the Music section of Google Play, right? Meaning that I'll still have access to music I've purchased through the Google Play store? (I always download the music as soon as I've purchased so it wouldn't be a disaster for me if it suddenly disappeared from the store, but other people might not be as prepared.)
#2, will YouTube Music include a podcast section the way Google Play Music currently does? It's certainly not the only way to get podcasts, but it's the easiest alternative to iTunes that i know of to track multiple podcasts at once. (Alternative suggestions welcome?)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I just turned all my CDs into MP3 a few years ago and skipped the whole "streaming" situation.
I just put a shitload of songs on a micro-sd of 32GB. I could buy a 512 GB one. 32GB gives me enoughn music to listen to. And I even put in the odd audiobook to listen to.
I just use the standard player and I do not say anything as not to confront the other people on the train and pressing play is not that hard.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
with even 50% accuracy. Their recommendations on YouTube for music are sometimes makes excellent, but oftenthe recommendations just leave me scratching my head. Are they that bad or are they pushing certain music on me just because they are getting paid to do so - like the way the prioritize search results? If that's what they are doing than I can't see ever paying for their "service". For free it's occasionally worth it as I find some gems from time to time (which I then buy), but Google isn't better than any other streaming service I've tried (including a free trial of Apple Music). Come to think of it, none of these companies - Amazon, Google, Netflix, Spotify, Apple, etc. are very accurate with their recommendations. Amazon seems to be somewhat better than the others, but only marginally so.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
You've basically done what I've done. I've got about 20 GB's of OGG/Vorbis files from my own CDs, and yes I put audio books on there as well.
Pressing play isn't hard. Finding the right album, song, artist, whatever while driving on a Houston freeway is. Unfortunately public transit isn't a reasonable option where I live. If you work downtown it's fine, if you work in another area plan on six to eight hours a day on a bus.
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Because I refuse to pay the monthly fee [for Adobe Creative Cloud], I have switched to open source variants, which are Good enough.
What's an "open source variant" of Adobe Animate that is worth using? Is, say, Synfig Studio good enough to replace it? Someone making a music video for a song to be posted on YouTube might be interested.
https://act.eff.org/action/sto...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Yes finnaly avalable in norway later this year, good bye youtube ads you will not be missed
If you want streaming of your own audio files (in your preferred format) I would suggest Plex (https://www.plex.tv/). I've recently decided to move as far away from Google as I can (iOS is probably just as bad in tracking) so I bought a personal cloud device and installed the Plex server on it. I then ripped all my DVDs and CDs onto the device and now I basically have Google Play Movies/Music/Photos.
I did have to buy the subscription ($120 for a lifetime license) but considering I'll be getting rid of Google Play Music at $10/mo I'll be turning a profit soon enough.
and if Plex isn't your thing, Ampache works really well.
I've been using Kodi since it was XBMC. I don't really want Internet streaming - that was the whole point of my post. In the household other devices can stream from the Kodi server over the LAN, (movies, music, photos, TV shows, and from the same device but not in that software ebooks) but I don't really want Internet streaming. If I'm out somewhere with WiFi and a low storage device and I want to keep my kid entertained my Ultraviolet/Movies Anywhere accounts take care of that. Sort of - I found that pretty much all tire shops that have WiFi in their waiting areas have really crappy slow WiFi, seriously, I'm not even sure they're in ISDN speed ranges. Part of why I'm bias against streaming. My phone and my laptop each have all of my music. I do listen to podcasts, but I download those at once while on WiFi and listen to the downloaded files while driving, so I don't even stream those. (Thanks to mcgett for recommending a good downloader/player)
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And expanded avalability, I've watetd for Youtube red to becom avalable in norway evere since it was launched in the US
I just tested - Google pulled their head out of their ass on this one. I asked Google to play Everybody Knows - momentarily I heard Concrete Blonde singing it.
Still - don't be Google.
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