According to multiple sources, YouTube is looking to announce a fancy new subscription service, allowing users to check out on-demand music videos on both desktop and mobile platforms. As you should already know, Google recently launched a music subscription service earlier this year at Google I/O, named All Access. YouTube stated earlier this year that they did have a product to unveil later this year, so it is starting to look like a subscription service could be it.
Spoken from those briefed on the plans, YouTube will have two tiers for the service; a free tier and a paid tier. The free tier should be on-demand access to full songs, but will come coupled with advertisements, which is kind of like what YouTube already is. The paid tier will be the same on-demand access across all platforms, but you can finally kiss ads goodbye.
Billboard, who broke the news, summed up the paid version like this:
Having a paid tier, with all the required licenses for a premium on-demand product, gives YouTube more flexibility in packaging and selling music with fewer restrictions on what it can do with the music.
On a personal note, I remember the days when random users would just upload homemade videos onto the web, and it was a great source of entertainment. YouTube has evolved quite a bit since then, and it is now a money-generating supermachine. Partnered with Vevo and other services, it seems that a monthly subscription service would be the next logical step for the content provider.
There is no word on pricing yet, but you can expect it to be around $10 a month according to sources.
Thoughts on paying a premium for music videos?
Via: Billboard
This post was last modified on October 24, 2013 10:08 am