YouTube Launches New YouTube Music Service and iOS App

Thanks but no thanks.

How many versions of a streaming service are Google going to release?

Google Music - Free music storage locker and player

Google Music All Access - music locker plus subscription streaming service like Apple Music

YouTube Key - Comes with GMAA, listen to music videos on YouTube

YouTube Music - Listen to music on YouTube in a separate app that behaves like Apple Music/Google Music/Spotify?

YouTube Red - Comes with GMAA, listen to YouTube videos in background, ad free, save for offline viewing

YouTube Gaming - Separate YouTube app that stream games and watch game streams like Twitch

YouTube Kids - Separate YouTube app that shows kid only shows

What the hell is going on over there at Google.

$12.99 if you buy it in the App Store, and $9.99 directly from Google? I thought Apple didn't allow this. Looks like Google is challenging this policy.

Spotify and Netflix do the same thing, if I'm not mistaken. The only rule that Apple has regarding this is that you can't have a link that goes from your app to your website from which you can buy the service.

No reason for a new app they shoulda just added audio mode to the other one but I still won't use it for music

One of the "rumors" I heard when Apple was working on Apple Music is that they were concerned that a lot of people used youtube as their music streaming service. I checked around and indeed I found a lot of the younger crowd simply play the videos in the background in order to listen to music at work. My understanding is that there is a very large group of people that are streaming this way at work where things like spotify is disabled. I don't know if the google "ad-free" services would go through the corporate services or if they would get blocked as another streaming service. I am still in the camp of owning my own music, but my wife loves spotify (the free with commercial version). I think the industry is all over the place on this. Giving away the videos on youtube (with some ad support) undermines their desire to make a profit it seems to me. They are all over the place with streaming where it looks like they support various models that are not very compatible. Hopefully they can rationalize this all and get to a set of distribution approaches that both fit with the listeners and provides adequate profits to the artists. Right now the 10000000 versions of google play (call it what you will) and all the competing approaches by other companies including Apple really makes no sense IMHO.

My humble advice: if you tire of a lot of music quickly, be more discerning with what you listen to.

I generally only buy what I really like. How do you know what you will like? By cultivating your ear. There is a kernel to a piece of music that can tell you if it is inspired. Buy that and nothing else.

The problem with renting music is that it is not economical if you listen to a lot of the same excellent music repeatedly. You need to think of the big picture. Do you really want to pay $10 a month when you're 75 and know exactly what you want to listen to?

LOL. Your "advice" is neither humble, nor wise. Seems like you're living in a world of binary decisions, and are making the (incorrect) assumption that your particular tastes and circumstances match everyone else's. I assure you, they do not.

I'm good with my musical tastes and my exposure to new material; I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I go to tons of live music shows and enjoy the tremendous library I now constantly have at my fingertips. And I'm spending less money on music now, than I did when my only option was to buy. Not that the difference matters to me, I don't consider $120/year a lot of money. I'm blessed to be in a position to be able to happily pay for things I appreciate.

My tremendous music library also isn't taking up tons of local storage space on my devices. It's easily accessible and shareable and I love the convenience and curation all of it provides.

Not to mention, it's a monthly decision that I can change at any time. I'm not signing a decades-long contract. So maybe I'll even buy an album I want to "keep..." if I feel like it. I assure you further, the landscape of the music industry will be a lot different when I'm 75 years old. I'm not concerned with that future right now. If I know "exactly what I want to listen to" and the cost-value proposition of a streaming music subscription no longer makes a lot of sense, well, at that point I'll cancel the subscription and buy the albums I wanted to listen to. Why not?

For the sake of reference, I'm subscribing to Apple Music now, after a few years with Spotify, and a few months sampling both Google and Amazon Music. But all of Google's bundling (specifically, YouTube Red) has me considering Google Music again... but I digress.

Here's some actual advice: don't assume your tastes and socioeconomic status are the standards to which others should base such decisions. We're all consumers and the fact that we have such choice, and competition, is a good thing. As to whether or not these plans are good for the artists, is another discussion entirely.

Carry on.