Search engine giant Google on Monday announced new YouTube Music service, which will go head on with Apple Music and the fan favourite, Spotify.
YouTube Music offers both videos and audio formats ranging from official songs, remixes, live concert and more. Subscribers will have access to unlimited content with background listening feature as well as downloads, all without pop-ups and ads.
Existing Google Play Music subscribers get direct access to YouTube Music Premium with $9.99 monthly subscription. Users can also opt for a free subscription, though it will come with ads.
"YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube's tremendous catalogue of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can't find anywhere else - all simply organized and personalized. For the first time, all the ways music moves you can be found in one place," Elias Roman, product manager, YouTube Music said in a statement.
Salient features of YouTube Music:
- YouTube Music offers remixes, cover albums, live versions from the biggest international artists to freshest voices breaking through.
- The music search is intelligent enough to come up with correct songs, even if users don't know exactly what they're looking for. According to Google, users can just describe the song. For instance, users can try typing 'that hipster song with the whistling' or type a part of the lyrics, it will come up with near accurate results.
- It also offers personalized home screen, which dynamically adapts to provide recommendations based on people's listening history, where they are and what they're doing. If the subscriber is at the airport, it'll recommend something relaxing before the flight. Or if it gets to know the user is entering the gym, YouTube Music will churn out some beats to get the fitness mood going.
The company confirmed that YouTube Music will go live on May 22 initially in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea. It will later expand to Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in the weeks that follow.
Apart from YouTube Music, Google also announced that it will rename the company's video content streaming service YouTube Red, as YouTube Premium. It offers background and offline service across all of YouTube content, as well as access to all YouTube Originals including Cobra Kai, Step Up: High Water and Youth & Consequences, and YouTube Music. It can be availed for $11.99 monthly subscription.
Currently, users go to Netflix or Amazon Prime Video for TV series and movies, while they separately subscribe to Spotify and Apple Music. Though YouTube Red is nowhere close to competing with services offered by the likes of Netflix, looks like Google intends to build the momentum by regrouping all media services under YouTube.
