Monday, March 18, 2013

YouTube to Launch Music Service


YouTube is reportedly working on developing a music subscription, according to Fortune and Evolver FM. Despite the fact that the service is currently devoted to videos of all kinds, they are already the top source for on-demand music in the world—so launching a subscription music service makes sense.

YouTube’s music catalogue is farther reaching than many companies’ catalogues, and they pay a lower per-song royalty than Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, and others. In its current form, it’s already a formidable source of competition. The launch of a new service devoted solely to music will make it even more so.

If YouTube chooses not to launch a paid subscription service, it may end up costing them valuable contracts with publishers and labels. And because YouTube is owned by Google, it’ll end up costing both of the companies money in the end.

“While we don’t comment on rumor or speculation, there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we’re looking at that,” reads YouTube’s official statement on the matter.

One positive for everyone will be the removal of so many ads if YouTube does move forward with a music subscription service. For YouTube, they won’t have to split so much revenue with ad companies, and for users, they won’t have to deal with annoying ads for every single song they want to listen to.

So will YouTube put Spotify, Pandora, and all the others out of business? Only time will tell. 

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