The music industry is abuzz these days with talk about the future of music streaming. While the Internet has been fixating on the recent war of words between Spotify and Taylor Swift, YouTube announced details of its long awaited music-streaming service – YouTube Music Key.
Apple's very own service is also said to be coming in 2015, so you can expect a serious battle between the two companies and already-established streamer Spotify to become the market leader.
While services like Spotify have grown big streaming audiences, they are nowhere near the size that they will grow to be. To quote Robb McDaniels, president of a digital music distributor who spoke to The New York Times: “We’ve got the high-volume users, the uber users. But we need the soccer moms.”
What are YouTube offering?
There is still free music for regular YouTube users. Before the likes of Spotify and Deezer were even toying with the idea of music streaming, people were already playing music on YouTube. It is the world’s biggest music-streaming and music-discovery platform.
Most of YouTube Music Key’s features are similar to what is already out there.
For €9.99 a month you can stream music with no advertising. At the moment if you are using YouTube to stream audio on a mobile device you need to be in the YouTube app to hear it, and once you minimise it the streaming stops. With a subscription to the new service you can close the app, or lock your devise, the music will keep playing. Premium users will also be able to save music and listen to it offline.
So what is different were? Well first, there is the added video content that it is offering. The promo video for the new service features PSY’s video for ’Gangnam Style,’ Ok Go’s ‘Here it Goes Again,’ and some footage of a young Justin Bieber - all artists who broke-through with popular videos on the site.
YouTube has a massive user base of more than 1bn people. While early - and some late - adopters are already streaming, there is still a massive audience that is not yet tied to a paid-for streaming service already using YouTube. The company will be trying to convert them into paying subscribers.
Don't forgot Apple
Apple is also going to join the party at some point, and will be vying for the same audience that Google is trying to reach with the YouTube music service.
Throughout its existence Apple has a history of holding back on entering new markets, then unveiling a more polished version of what is already out there and stealing their competitors' consumers. Think about how many mp3 players were around before the iPod, but it was the one that cracked the mainstream.
When Apple snapped up Dre's Beats earlier this year it bought more than the high-end headphone line, it was also buying Beats Music’s streaming platform. It is rumoured that service will be integrated into iTunes next year.
Apple has one massive advantage over Spotify and YouTube – it was millions of users’ credit card details. Apple customers already gave them to the company whenever they registered with the company.
If a €10 streaming service went live, then at the click of a button Apple's users could start streaming. The ease at which it could reach out to, and sign-up new streamers could help it draw in less tech-savvy music fans.
Spotify is also still expanding into new regions, and refining its service. It has an early lead in the market, and a really good product. It will be interesting to see how it performs when the bigger companies unveil their offerings.
Will YouTube Music Key register? It’s hard to know. What is for certain is that there is still a massive streaming market to be fought for and there will be a lot of powerful companies looking for a piece of the action.
