14 DAY TRIAL // For the past year, there have been rumors left and right about YouTube working on a music streaming service to accompany the world’s largest video streaming. After getting a release date in spring and then in the fall, it seems like the service is still not ready.
During a conference, Susan Wojcicki, YouTube’s CEO, admitted that the company was still working on the subscription music service. Since word has it that the company has been fighting with music labels to get better deals, it seems like this may be one big issue that YouTube is working on. After all, if it wants to compete with the likes of Spotify and Pandora, it has to bring in more artists, more albums, more tracks, or people aren’t going to pay.
There’s also the argument that, given the close tie to YouTube, the new service is already notorious enough to get off a good start, even though there’s no guarantee.
The service will reportedly be called YouTube Music Key and it will tie in with the Play Music service Google already has at its disposal.
Wojcicki says that they’re still working to iron out the details, but they’re optimistic about a launch in the near future. No timeline has been provided, though, so it could be anywhere from the holiday season to next spring.
The tool has already been in the works since 2013, so it’s high time that the service gets released. Google and YouTube implicitly are known for their desire to get things perfect, so that may be yet another reason for the delay.
YouTube subscriptions also on the way
It seems like YouTube is also looking at new ways to make money, namely by introducing a subscription-based version of the site, where users will get to enjoy the show without any ads.
This will, quite likely, lead to an increase in the number of ads we get on “regular” YouTube as it is, since there are bigger chances that you’ll want to pay up if you’re exasperated by the ads you see. Wojcicki didn’t exactly share when this move would take place, but it may not be too long before this happens.
“YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is great because it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; but there’s going to be a point where people don’t want to see the ads,” Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, told Re/code during the Code/Mobile conference.