Everyone knows that YouTube is the go to for music, strange fact, movies, and, of course, cat videos. A few years ago, 3 to be exact, YouTube introduced a service called YouTube Red which allowed people to download videos to watch offline, watch YouTube originals and enjoy ad-free music and videos. It was later turned into YouTube Premium which had a small monthly subscription fee and provided much of the same services are Red but better. That is what got this ball rolling and on May of this year the release of YouTube Music, a separate music streaming app for YouTube, was announced which has been designed for an app as well as a desktop player.
There is an obvious question that arises from this and that is what is YouTube Music and why would people want to use. So according to the official YouTube blog this new service offered by the name of YouTube Music will make it easier to use YouTube for listening to music. It is well known by all that YouTube is made for watching and not listening to music so if a user wants to do that they would previously have to jump between music apps and YouTube. However, as the name suggests this will no longer be a problem with YouTube Music.
This new music streaming service will be more personalized and will make it much easier to explore and find the right kind of new music based on your personal preference. According to the blog entry explaining what the service will provide there will be “official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos” which the user cannot find elsewhere.
Now that we have covered what it is exactly, let’s look at why would anyone want to use this instead of the dozen other music apps and the normal YouTube app.
Well for one and perhaps what really makes this one different is the feature that allows the user to search for music even if they do not exactly know what they want. For example, according to the blog, the new search option can find the song a user wants based on phrases like “that hipster song with the whistling.” Like almost all other Google owned apps YouTube Music will also be able to personalized to provide each user new music, playlists, videos etc based on their history. Along with that there will be more playlists available for every kind of situation so that anyone who uses the app can find the right music for any given moment, be it at the gym or at a romantic getaway with their sweetheart. While this service is available for all users, the users who pay for this service will also be able to download the music to listen to even when offline.
It has also been announced that YouTube Music will be offered as YouTube Music Premium,
”a paid membership which will allow the user to enjoy background listening, downloads and an ad-free experience for $9.99 per month.” Along with this YouTube Premium will offer all of its old services, such as ad-free videos, background and offline access, as well as YouTube Music. For this reason the subscription price for all new users will be $11.99 while the old ones will pay the old subscription fee.
YouTube Music is going to take some time to be released all over the world as according to T. Jay Fowler, who is the project manager of YouTube Red, according to a local news source. It is releasing first in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico. The reason stated by him is that they are trying to make sure that the app is authentic and fits the requirements for all users all over the world which means that there will music, videos and other material available that is local. They want to make sure that the service reflects the cultural situation in each country.
If this service is really as great as it sounds and is culturally inclusive when it is released it should be a great success.
