14 DAY TRIAL // More details on the rumored YouTube music streaming have surfaced. The site is known to be working on an on-demand music streaming service, akin to Spotify but with videos, though nothing has been officially confirmed so far.
Billboard reports that the service is said to be ready to go and may launch this year. It will offer full albums from artists associated with the major labels and presumably indie labels as well.
Essentially, what's available in Play Music All Access, Google's existing music streaming service, will be available in YouTube’s too.
What's interesting though is that the basic service will be free. Users will get access to all the songs with no restrictions, for free, but with ads, of course. This includes mobile usage as well. Incidentally, the YouTube app is getting the ability to play videos in the background, to act as a standard music player.
There will be a paid tier, which will remove the ads and possibly come with a few more perks. But you get all the music even if you don't pay. In fact, YouTube, like with the rest of its offerings, is banking on ads and not paid content.
Quite a lot of people already use YouTube for all their music needs. There's plenty of legally licensed music on the site and there are still numerous infringing copies as well.
That said, the experience of listening to music on YouTube could be significantly better. It's a situation similar to Facebook photos in the early days. The photo features were very poor, but the fact that people were already on Facebook helped the section become the largest photo repository in the world.
This created a positive feedback loop, where people added more pictures to Facebook because of all the other photos already there.
The same is true, to a degree, with YouTube music. People listen to it because it's there, it's free, and it's easy to find, even if the experience is basic. And because a lot of people listen to music on the site, artists can't miss out on the exposure.
The big question though is whether ad money will be enough to pay for all the music. Spotify and others operate with minimal profits or at a loss, even if they charge for all the music. Google can certainly afford to run the music service at a loss, but that's not a long term solution.
There is one other variable. The new music service will likely be available in the US and possibly a few other countries, where Google has secured licensing, but it's highly unlikely that it will be available everywhere around the world.