Google today officially announced its highly rumored YouTube music subscription service and its calling it YouTube Music Key. YouTube’s Music Key service with be available for a monthly subscription of $9.99 and unlock ad-free music, offline playback and video viewing, and the ability to play music in the background when using other apps.
The service is rolling out as a beta next week with a promotional price of $7.99/month, and early adopters will be able to request access from YouTube.com/MusicKey. YouTube’s Music Key beta service will be available through the YouTube apps on Android and iOS and through YouTube.com.
Google says the YouTube Music Key subscription will also include access to Google Play Music, its existing subscription music service which features access to 30 million+ music tracks from the Google Play Store. Google first launched its subscription music service last year under the All-Access branding.
Thanks to your music videos, remixes, covers, and more, you’ve made YouTube the biggest music service on the planet. To turn YouTube into your perfect music service, we’re launching YouTube Music Key as a beta with our biggest music fans first, and then we’ll bring YouTube Music Key to the whole world together. So, if you see an invite in your app or email, try it out for six months for free.
YouTube Music Key will be available in beta in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Finland and Ireland. You can sign up to request access to the beta and receive more information about the service here.
[youtube http://youtu.be/pMQxeb5ERps]
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Why is every service $10 a month? Where do they get the idea that this is the market value?
If this service, and others like it, were $4.99 a month, they’d do much better.
Not necessarily. To offer it 5 dollars they would have to get double the subscribers to join just to break even. I would be surprised if a measly 5 bucks a month stood in the way of double subscribers. Offering it at only 5 bucks would increase subscribers but no way does it double them. The psychology of joining a subscription service isnt “if only it was 5 bucks cheaper I would join”….its either “I’ll join that” or “I’ll listen to iTunes Radio for free even it if isnt quite as convenient”
And.. Double suscribers does not mean double income, because operating cost would be higher for more suscribers while the same income.
In the other hand, it’s hard ot tell if $5 will not double them, Netflix said that a low montly price was a key succeed factor. You can’t predict that, even with simulations in selected groups you can’t tell what would habppen in real world.
You can’t guarantee a predicted outcome but a business must make projections based on price points. If subscriptions services could all double (or more than double) their members by cutting the price in half they would all do it. Profit is the name of the game, not conforming to price points.
YouTube is a big music service because people take copy written music, set it to a picture, and upload it as video in terrible quality, and it becomes the first result in a Google search.
I would only use this to listen to certain hour long talks/lectures offline. It would be great for listening to all TEDx talks offline. But $10/month…..nah. I agree with PMZanetti that it should be $5/month which is what Apple will do next year sometime I’m guessing.
Note that this service is a free addition to your Google Music subscription if you have already have one. The combination of YouTube and Google Music is a really good value that no one else comes close to yet IMHO, Look at it as $5/mo for each.
Your link doesn’t work. It’s http://youtube.com/musickey (note the lowercase m and k in that)
Taylor Swift going to boycott this too? “Haters Gonna Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate….”
No thank you…
This is a super beta service, but it is free! http://www.youdora.com/
I don’t have anything against streaming or digital distribution, but as a musician myself, $10 does not lead to a sustainable business model, at least not one that allows smaller artists to consider music a viable way to make a living. The royalties are already bad enough, and copying the pricing of a company like Spotify inly further helps to devalue musicians and their work.
You can already play YouTube music videos in the background… How is that a feature?