YouTube Introduces a Paid Service Called Music Key

To me, the re-introduction of the $8/month fee for Google Play Music All Access (mercifully rechristened as Google Play Music) is the most important part of this announcement. Apple is reportedly wooing publishers to allow them to sell Beats subscriptions for $5/month, which matches the average spending for top iTunes customers.

If iTunes' best customers spend $60/year, asking $120/year from EVERYONE seems ridiculous. Spotify recently tried to address this flaw with family plans that drop the cost to $6/month for a family of five -- but that's still too much hassle in what should be a dead-simple transaction. Steam demonstrated the revenue potential of irresistibly priced digital goods a decade ago... I don't know why music has been so slow to catch up.

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The Youtube Key portion of the announcement is great, I guess, but not for me personally. I don't watch many music videos and have been able to download them forever through third-party extensions anyway.

However, in the audience that DOES watch music videos -- young, female, often tech-illiterate -- there's quite a bit of money waiting to be tapped. Years ago, iTunes scored big by offering that demographic hassle-free music downloads rather than piracy or CD ripping.

I doubt ad-free YouTube is as compelling an offer, but it's probably worth something to regular visitors; and if Spotify/Beats/Play/Rdio are fungible, then maybe YouTube Key will be the unmatchable add-in that sells Google music subscriptions. Lower prices are probably more valuable to customers than ad skipping is, though.

> As part of the introduction of Music Key, YouTube’s music catalog is getting a makeover for all users, paying or not. The site will now offer complete albums, adding static video files with high-quality audio where no official videos are available.

This is great news for for the huge audience that builds massive music playlists on YouTube and uses them as their primary music consumption mechanism.

> For paying subscribers, YouTube will add two features that will be especially attractive to users on mobile devices: the ability to play songs in the background while using other apps and to save songs for offline listening.

Really? Both of these features are implemented in plenty of third-party apps. I guess it makes more sense to view the service as a Google Play Music subscription with some added goodies, but still...