YouTube, the most popular online destination for
music, is launching a revamped free music listening experience and a
paid music service that will compete directly with Spotify and the
Apple-owned Beats Music.
For its free offering, Google-owned YouTube will on Wednesday begin
offering full albums and even complete discographies for many artists
through a new Music tab on its website and mobile apps. The company has
signed licensing agreements with major U.S. labels and hundreds of
independent labels to offer audio-only tracks for millions of songs that
don’t already have official music videos on YouTube. YouTube spokesman
Matt McLernon said the size of the library would be on par with Google’s
other streaming music service, Google Play Music, which has more than
30 million songs.
YouTube’s new paid service, meanwhile, will be called YouTube Music
Key, a $9.99-per-month service that functions similarly to Spotify or
Beats Music, letting users listen to songs without ads, play songs on
their devices while using other apps and download videos to their phones
for offline viewing.
A YouTube Music Key subscription will include access to Google Play
Music, and the two services will track users’ listening habits together
to offer up better recommendations on both platforms. An invite-only
beta version of YouTube Music Key will be available to some of YouTube’s
top music listeners on Monday, Nov. 17. Beta users will get the service
free for six months, then pay a lifetime promotional price of $7.99 per
month. The service will see a full launch sometime in 2015.
McLernon would not disclose the bitrate of YouTube’s new streaming
services, but said it would be the same for the paid and free options.
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