YouTube rebrands streaming services
Google is reshuffling and renaming its YouTube streaming music and video services to better compete against Apple and Spotify.
Google next week will introduce YouTube Music, a free music streaming service supported by advertising, with the ability to create playlists and discover new songs, the company said in a blog post. But the company is also starting YouTube Music Premium, a $9.99-amonth ad-free service.
This might be confusing for subscribers of Google Play Music, which also starts at the same price. Those subscribers will also get a YouTube Music Premium membership, although at some point, it will replace Google Play Music.
And the new services will subsume the $9.99-a-month YouTube Red, the company’s movie and original TV series service that started in 2015. That service’s new name will be YouTube Premium, which will still include access to popular original shows like “Youth & Consequences,” “Step Up: High Water” and the popular “Karate Kid” spinoff “Cobra Kai.”
However, YouTube Premium will cost $11.99
per month, $2 more per month than YouTube Red, “because it includes our brand new YouTube Music service,” which is free, product manager Elias Roman wrote on YouTube’s corporate blog.
“If you’re already a YouTube Red (soon to be YouTube Premium) member, don’t worry, you’ll still enjoy your current price,” Roman wrote.
The shuffling is Google’s attempt to clarify what it offers while trying to “overcome the momentum of Spotify and Apple,” said Russ Crupnick, managing partner of the industry research and analysis firm MusicWatch.
Counting the number of people who go to YouTube to listen to or watch music videos, Google has about 130 million users annually, Crupnick said.
“More say that they use YouTube ‘most often’ for music streaming than any other service, and far more than Apple Music,” he said in an email. However, “there’s been a lot of confusion over the premium tiered Google offerings like Play and Red, so it’s important to make that much clearer to the consumer.”
One commenter on YouTube’s blog said the change might help end unintended confusion with a completely different site.
“YouTube Red is now YouTube Premium ... and sounds less like porn site RedTube,” Derek Ross wrote. “Congrats on finally making the change!”
Though YouTube is part of Google, the internet giant has struggled to rationalize its online consumer services, variously offered under the Google, YouTube and Android brands. YouTube Red itself was a rebranding of a service launched in 2014 called YouTube Music Key.
YouTube also has a separate live-TV subscription service, YouTube TV, which costs $40 a month. YouTube TV does not include a YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) subscription, but both services currently offer access to YouTube Red original shows.
YouTube Music head Lyor Cohen said last year that Google Play Music and YouTube Red would eventually merge.
YouTube Music starts Tuesday with a soft launch in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico. South Korea will only get YouTube Premium.
The services will expand to Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom “in the coming weeks,” Roman said.