It seemed like it was only a matter of time before YouTube officially put stakes into the music streaming business. After releasing YouTube TV back in April, a service that lets viewers order streaming bundles for specific channels, YouTube is now getting ready to launch a service that is audio-centered.
YouTube’s announcement on their blog read, “The days of jumping back and forth between multiple music apps and YouTube are over. Whether you want to listen, watch or discover, it’s all here. YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else – all simply organized and personalized.”
The company is planning for YouTube Music to be an eventual replacement of Google Play Music, as it will allow listeners to personalize their music choices and provide an alternative music streaming service. YouTube Music can be accessed for free, however, just like regular YouTube, there are ways that customers can improve their streaming experience. Similar to other music streaming services like Spotify, an extra payment allows for a more premium experience.
Along with these launches and changes, YouTube is also planning to discontinue YouTube Red — which was a paid service for YouTube where viewers could get ad-free content. Now, the replacement will be YouTube Premium which provides the same ad-free services along with a choice to add on YouTube Music for $2 — which allows background listening, downloading offline as well as well as ad-free streaming.
“If you are a subscriber to Google Play Music, good news, you get a YouTube Music Premium membership as part of your subscription each month. And if you use Google Play Music, nothing will change — you’ll still be able to access all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always,” YouTube announcement read.
YouTube Music is set to launch May 22, while the company explained that the full services of YouTube Music Premium, which will be $9.99 a month is set to launch soon as well.
