YouTube Unveils New Streaming Service 'YouTube Music,' Rebrands YouTube Red (gizmodo.com) 107
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: YouTube Music, a streaming music platform designed to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, officially has a launch date: May 22nd. Its existence will also shift around YouTube and Google's overall media strategy, which has thus far been quite the mess. YouTube Music will borrow the Spotify model and offer a free, ad-supported tier as well as a premium version. The paid tier, which will be called YouTube Music Premium, will be available for $9.99 per month. It will debut in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea before expanding to 14 other countries.
One of the selling points for YouTube Music will be the ability to harness the endless amount of information Google knows about you, which it will use to try to create customized listening experiences. Pitchfork reported that the app, with the help of Google Assistant, will make listening recommendations based on the time of day, location, and listening patterns. It will also apparently offer "an audio experience and a video experience," suggesting perhaps an emphasis on music videos and other visual content. From here, Google seems to be focused on making its streaming strategy a little less wacky. Google Play Music, the company's previous music streaming service that is still inexplicably up and running despite teetering on the brink of extinction for years, will slowly be phased out according to USA Today. Meanwhile, the paid streaming subscription service, known as YouTube Red, is being rebranded to YouTube Premium and will cost $11.99 per month instead of $9.99. (Pitchfork notes that existing YouTube Red subscribers will be able to keep their $9.99 rate.) YouTube Premium will include access to YouTube Music Premium. Here's a handy-dandy chart that helps show what is/isn't included in the two plans.
One of the selling points for YouTube Music will be the ability to harness the endless amount of information Google knows about you, which it will use to try to create customized listening experiences. Pitchfork reported that the app, with the help of Google Assistant, will make listening recommendations based on the time of day, location, and listening patterns. It will also apparently offer "an audio experience and a video experience," suggesting perhaps an emphasis on music videos and other visual content. From here, Google seems to be focused on making its streaming strategy a little less wacky. Google Play Music, the company's previous music streaming service that is still inexplicably up and running despite teetering on the brink of extinction for years, will slowly be phased out according to USA Today. Meanwhile, the paid streaming subscription service, known as YouTube Red, is being rebranded to YouTube Premium and will cost $11.99 per month instead of $9.99. (Pitchfork notes that existing YouTube Red subscribers will be able to keep their $9.99 rate.) YouTube Premium will include access to YouTube Music Premium. Here's a handy-dandy chart that helps show what is/isn't included in the two plans.
Demonetization of content (Score:3)
Re: Demonetization of content (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of YouTube users flag videos so they get demonetized. They do this so their music playlist is uninterrupted.
Re: Demonetization of content (Score:2)
Rebranding and price increase. Nothing to see here (Score:1)
Just a rebranding and price increase of existing products. Nothing to see here.
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Plus two tiers, the $9.99 and the $11.99 ones.
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And expanded avalability, I've watetd for Youtube red to becom avalable in norway evere since it was launched in the US
Weird Timing (Score:4, Informative)
It's odd that Google decided to rebrand YouTube Red now, considering that they just spent a small fortune promoting it recently.
Their new YouTube exclusive shows like Cobra Kai (the amusing Karate Kid reboot with the original actors) are filled with YouTube Red logos.
Re: Weird Timing (Score:1)
Yes, I'm perfectly fine with that.
Red Light District (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't know how it got launched with that name. From the very beginning, it didn't make sense.
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The Plan (Score:2)
Phase 1: Create a monopoly on non-porn video by getting everyone to join their platform by promoting freedom of expression and free hosting.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit
No matter what Phase 2 turns out to be, it won't allow Phase 1 to continue as such, IMHO.
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Even if phase 2 is simply removing ads and adding access to Google-produced content?
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MEME: Boardroom, old dudes laughing.
TEXT: And then we said, "We're gonna remove all the ads!"
Red? Why not literally any other colour (Score:2, Funny)
YouTube Red? RedTube? What's the difference?
(Maybe RedTube isn't a thing anymore, but I won't verify its existence from work, and you shouldn't either.)
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As of last night, RedTube is still going strong...
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Or "red band" [wikipedia.org] movie trailers. Or red light district. There are so many reasons why red is not the color of your paid video service.
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Netflix is Red, but they don't actually mention the word red anywhere in their branding.
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Rtings.com is red, and they don't mention it anywhere.
They do indirectly address how certain content can damage your expensive OLED display. Content like their own logo.
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That story died a quick death once it couldn't be pinned on a crazy white guy. Of course the real story was much more interesting, but we can't have alternatives to The Narrative.
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Spotify's model? (Score:1)
AKA not workinh anywhere other than the USA? Bigly world internet company.
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Sadly, the comments are about the same quality on the two platforms...
Google wants me to *stop* paying them? (Score:3)
Because the only reason I have YT:Red is because of the Play Music sub I have. That's it. I wouldn't pay for it otherwise. There's plenty on YT I watch but I wasn't bothered by ads before because I have my adblockers active. The best I can hope for is that the new service lets me keep my uploaded music and stuff I bought from Play Music otherwise I have one less reason to use Google's universe.
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This.
I've looked at Youtube Red once or twice but don't see it as valuable. It's not worth $0.01, let alone $2.00. I've been using Google Music since pre-launch and it works great. If it dies, I'll take my pennies elsewhere. My daily listening habits will never include the need for video. I guess I should finally start looking at other streaming services.
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I wouldn't pay for it otherwise. There's plenty on YT I watch but I wasn't bothered by ads before because I have my adblockers active.
Why not pay for the content to remove the ads (you can still keep your ad blocker)? That's how the videos are funded.
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I wouldn't pay for it otherwise. There's plenty on YT I watch but I wasn't bothered by ads before because I have my adblockers active.
Why not pay for the content to remove the ads (you can still keep your ad blocker)? That's how the videos are funded.
Because with an ad blocker, he doesn't have to.
Bah Humbug... (Score:3)
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It used to be free... (Score:1)
Until youtube basically declared war on mobile browsing of their platform. The only way you can now turn the screen off on your phone and listen to a video is to select "request desktop site" and that just makes the webpage incredibly annoying to use. But no amount of annoyance will ever make me pay for something that was literally free a few years ago.
I already have too many montly fees. (Score:3, Interesting)
$12.00 a month isn't a bad price.
But it isn't the only service that I would want to have so all of them added up I am paying hundreds of dollars a month. If I wan't to save some money, then I will need to actively cancel my account. vs Passively just not buy an other copy.
Adobe Creative Suite is the biggest offender. It is a lot per month, where before If I paid a grand for the software, I could keep it years past its supported version until I can justify getting a new version. If money is tight, I can live with the older version. Because I refuse to pay the monthly fee, I have switched to open source variants, which are Good enough.
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If you're using Adobe Creative Suite then you are most likely making some money off of it. You can pay as little as $10 a month if you just want photoshop and lightroom (photography pack) which isn't a lot of money at all. The all apps package is $53 a month, but personally I don't see that as that bad for a professional level tool. That will easily pay for itself in time saved trying to use other tools that don't have the features you need. If you aren't generating income from your work, then open sourc
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But you did not own the software before either, you owned a license that granted you the right to use it, but if you did not need it any more you could not re sell it to someone else. But tes, your right to use it did not expire as soon as you stopped paying
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Free replacement for Animate (Score:2)
Because I refuse to pay the monthly fee [for Adobe Creative Cloud], I have switched to open source variants, which are Good enough.
What's an "open source variant" of Adobe Animate that is worth using? Is, say, Synfig Studio good enough to replace it? Someone making a music video for a song to be posted on YouTube might be interested.
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Its a bad price if you listen to music less than the average subscriber, or listen to cheaper music. Half the subscribers are subsidizing the other half.
Or do unlimited subscriptions cause some weird economics and it ends up cheaper for a large majority of subscribers?
Youtube annoying. (Score:1)
it will use to try to create customized listening experiences.
Google's algorithms are pathetic. Listened to a couple of songs by a particular artist and now I can't them out of my feed. I'm constantly saying that I'm not interested but they keep showing up.
It's listen a few times and the feedback mechanism doesn't work.
AND THEN there are the idiotic lists of "mixes" that I have absolutely no interest in and there's no way to flag it as such.
And I watched a couple videos of Jordan Stevens and Bill Mahr and my feed has been forever filled with shit things like "Jordan
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What about the family plan? (Score:2)
Uncertainty (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google and Microsoft seem to be consistently creating and re-creating the same services due to internal politics and killing the earlier versions. Eventually this lack of a consistency starts to not only harm the adoption of the product iteration it spills over into the brand and harms the adoption of future products because the potential users aren't interested in becoming invested as it may be killed in X-months.
This is what happens when a company has too much money and too many employees.
As a manger, you can't have your people just sitting around doing nothing. They have to be working. They have to be productive!! They have to be doing things. Big things. Because doing big things is how you get raises and promotions.
And so you have thousands of people doing things and constantly trying to think of new things to do, with no thought given to "does this make sense?"
It's "New Coke" syndrome. Repeated, over and o
Google's approach to music is why I use Power Amp. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early days of Android the built in music player sucked. There were some reasonable third party ones, and even some of the carriers and phone manufacturers came through with some reasonable ones, but the built in one sucked.
Then when the early version of the Play Music app (maybe it was called something else) came out it was awesome! It would take the music on my phone and make virtual stations out of them. It would catalog and categorize and make intelligent playlist, I loved it.
Then they introduced their stream service, they whored it out a little, but I ignored that and kept using it as is.
Then it started whoring a little stronger - to the point of making the app harder to use.
THEN it started streaming music over my metered mobile connection, I could manually set it back to local only, but it kept finding ways to stream. Any excuse it could make up it would stream instead of play local, even if the files were local to the device.
I tried to play nice with it. I uploaded all my OGG/Vorbis files to their cloud so it could be in both places. It would convert them to MP3s if I pulled them in on another device. Music I bought straight from the play store started to get truncated file names and double/tripple downloads, especially when using the Google created Linux music sync utility. I even opened tickets, they had me jump through hoops that went nowhere, they just scratched their head. Let me re-emphasize this for you :If I bought it from them it was much more likely to be hosed up than if I did it myself.
Yep, Power Amp it is.
Based on a history of unreliable bandwidth, metered connections, and lots of driving - especially in rural areas with no coverage I never could get on-board with streaming.
So - now that I have Power Amp, used to I could say "Okay Google Play Thunderstruck" and it would open PowerAmp my default player and play Thunderstruck for me. Now it demands I select a streaming service. [minds.com]
FUCK YOU AND YOUR STREAMING
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I tried it. Having your music in the cloud is really slick, when it works. I live in the country, though, so it usually doesn't. Eventually I got tired of that bug where it would drain the phone battery while trying to download a playlist. Wiped my music from the service and manually load things myself.
I still have it installed, but I've completely disabled network access (mobile or wifi). I'd remove it entirely but it seems to be the only music player that works sanely with Android Auto.
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You've basically done what I've done. I've got about 20 GB's of OGG/Vorbis files from my own CDs, and yes I put audio books on there as well.
Pressing play isn't hard. Finding the right album, song, artist, whatever while driving on a Houston freeway is. Unfortunately public transit isn't a reasonable option where I live. If you work downtown it's fine, if you work in another area plan on six to eight hours a day on a bus.
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I did have to buy the subscription ($120 for a lifetime license) but considering I'll be getting rid of Go
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and if Plex isn't your thing, Ampache works really well.
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I've been using Kodi since it was XBMC. I don't really want Internet streaming - that was the whole point of my post. In the household other devices can stream from the Kodi server over the LAN, (movies, music, photos, TV shows, and from the same device but not in that software ebooks) but I don't really want Internet streaming. If I'm out somewhere with WiFi and a low storage device and I want to keep my kid entertained my Ultraviolet/Movies Anywhere accounts take care of that. Sort of - I found that p
Re: Google's approach to music is why I use Power (Score:2)
I just tested - Google pulled their head out of their ass on this one. I asked Google to play Everybody Knows - momentarily I heard Concrete Blonde singing it.
Still - don't be Google.
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If I want music, I will buy a CD and copy it to my computer/iPod/whatever.
Google, Spotify and all the rest can fuck off and die.
Isn't is a news from the past? (Score:1)
Why not google music? (Score:1)
Will they FINALLY stop nagging me to join? (Score:2)
Why isn't there a third choice to stop the excessive and constant nagging you to try out YouTube Red ?
( ) Yes, I'd like a free trial,
( ) No, not now,
(x) Stop fucking nagging me AND remember that I said NO before
Will this finally stop it?
Google Music (Score:2)
Not-another streaming service (Score:2)
Questions (Score:2)
#2, will YouTube Music include a podcast section the way Google Play Music currently does? It's certainly not the only way to get podcasts, but it's the easie
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For Android I use BeyondPod (paid ad-free version) where I can setup a random smart list. So every podcast I have subscribed to it will download and keep at least one episode. Then when I finish one episode then it'll pick a random one to play next. I've been using it for about 6 years. When I've tried something else it seemed lacking.
Google still cannot predict what I like ... (Score:2)
Stop copyright overreach... (Score:2)
https://act.eff.org/action/sto... [eff.org]
Farwell to bldy ads on youtube (Score:1)
Yes finnaly avalable in norway later this year, good bye youtube ads you will not be missed