YouTube has announced its new music streaming service—a revamped version of YouTube Music that will compete with subscription platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal. It’s out Tuesday, May 22. There’s a free, ad-supported tier as well as YouTube Music Premium, which will be available at $9.99 per month. It launches initially in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea. The service will eventually be rolled out in 14 additional countries.
Existing Google Play Music subscribers will instantly get access to the new service. However, Google Play Music is being phased out, USA Today reports. There’s no set date for when Google Play Music goes away for good.
It’s also been revealed that YouTube Red, the ad-free paid alternative to YouTube that featured exclusive video content, is being rebranded as YouTube Premium. The new service will include access to YouTube Music. The price for new subscribers is going up from $9.99 per month to $11.99. (Existing subscribers get to stay at the current rate.)
T. Jay Fowler, an executive at YouTube, told Pitchfork that the revamped YouTube Music is a “deeply personalized experience.” The Google Assistant will make home screen listening recommendations based on time of day, location, and listening patterns.
It should be noted that you can use a pre-existing YouTube account with the new service, meaning that “if you have any history in the YouTube main app, we’ll pull that signal over,” according to Fowler. In addition, Fowler confirmed to Pitchfork that the YouTube recommendation algorithm is the foundation of YouTube Music’s recommendation engine, meaning your YouTube history will continue to inform what’s suggested in the new app. The company is also enlisting the help of “local music experts in local territories” to help shape discovery. Youtube Music will also feature something called the Offline Mixtape, an offline playlist that you can set to automatically refresh daily with a collection of “songs you’ve been listening to frequently” as well as new songs the algorithm thinks you’ll enjoy.
For artists, there will be analytics tools to keep track of play counts and assess fan demographics. (When asked about how much artists will get paid compared to other services, Fowler declined to answer, saying, “We don’t comment, generally, on our financial terms.”)
Pitchfork asked Fowler about Spotify’s recently launched “Hate Content and Hateful Conduct” policy, under which artists accused of sexual misconduct such as R. Kelly and XXXTentacion were removed from editorial playlists. When asked if YouTube Music would have any similar policies, Fowler replied, “We’re having the same discussions. This is not a unique discussion to music, it’s happening across culture, in general. And certainly, we’re having that discussion across all different content types. But it is an internal discussion, and we take it very, very seriously and are being thoughtful about our approach.”
This is not YouTube’s first time unveiling a music subscription service. In 2014, it launched YouTube Music Key, which offered ad-free and offline streaming for $9.99 per month. The previous iteration of YouTube Music was an app that offered ad-supported music streaming, though a YouTube Red subscription allowed for ad-free streaming.
Originally published on PITCHFORK.COM
