YouTube is already a popular destination for music lovers. Every day millions of people across the globe turn on YouTube rather than the radio when they want to hear music, playing music videos or other videos that contain the music they know and love. The company is looking to address the needs of these music lovers with their new service, YouTube Music.
The new app is looking to stand apart from the crowd by offering smarter music suggestions. The app will run using the same complex algorithms that drive Google and YouTube searches, helping people to find the content that matches their needs. YouTube Music won’t just look at the songs you’ve played before; it will also consider things like where you are and what time it is in your location.
The music it suggests for a Tuesday morning at the library won’t be the same as those you get on Friday night while you’re downtown. Google and YouTube have an incredible amount of information about their users, and they could theoretically use any piece of info they have to try and craft better playlists and recommendations.
This decision can be seen by the latest move by Google in a long-running attempt to crack the digital music world. The internet giant Google has a stranglehold on the search engine market, but that doesn’t mean that everything they touch turns to gold. They dove into the digital music game with Google Play Music, but the service never caught on the way that iTunes or Spotify have.
It seems that Google is combining the things they learned with Google Play Music with the brand power of YouTube among music lovers. The companies are already working together, offering a YouTube Music subscription to anyone who already has a Google Play Music subscription.
YouTube Music is the latest in a series of services that offer unlimited music streaming for a monthly fee. They’ll be competing with Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Spotify Premium, and others. It will be interesting to see if YouTube’s branding and brains will allow YouTube Music to rise above the crowd.
The service is already available in many countries across the world, and with time it will roll out in even more. A free version is available, but songs will be broken up by ads that pay for the service. Anyone who wants an ad-free experience can pay $9.99 a month for music or $11.99 for music and YouTube’s original video content.