Google has been struggling to catch up with Apple’s iTunes service. Since it’s debut in January of 2001 iTunes has turned the music industry on it’s head and they’ve responded giving iTunes the advantage of being the goto music service for most American’s with a computer.
Other music services have tried to catch up with iTunes. Services like Pandora, Slacker, Sportify, Rdio and others have been able to garner users and keep them coming back but iTunes is the method of choice for people to manage their libraries on their computers and then on their mobile devices. When a consumer doesn’t have a song they want Apple has made it amazingly easy to just get it and download it, or download it and forget it.
Google has tried their hand at comparable music service twice so far. Their first try was in 2011 when they introduced their original Google Music service that allowed users to use a separate interface and then sync songs over to their Android device. While it caught on with Android loyalists and early adopters it was hard for people to convert from managing their music with iTunes and then using Google Music for their phone. It was much easier to create folders and sync them over directly out of iTunes.
Google tried again last year with a new iteration which included a radio like player similar to Spotify. They also forged more relationships with major record labels but couldn’t secure a catalog nearly as vast as the one with iTunes.
Then they realized that record labels were already using a Google product. That product is YouTube. YouTube is the most popular website in the world for people to go to listen to their favorite music. Walking down a busy street in Los Angeles or New York you’ll find people that have YouTube open, earbuds on and a video playing, yet they aren’t watching the video they just went to YouTube for the ease of searching for their favorite songs.
Now according to multiple reports, Google is looking to create another tier in their YouTube service for music enthusiasts. YouTube is planning to offer a subscription service specifically for music videos that will allow users to enjoy videos without ads and even download videos locally to their devices. Sources familiar with the plan say that you’ll still be able to search through the billions of hours of video on YouTube to find your favorite songs.
According to Billboard magazine the new music subscription service would cost around $10 per month putting it on par with competing services like Spotify. It would also offer the ability to listen without video which means that users could stream full albums regardless of whether the artist created videos for the songs or not.
YouTube allows publishers of songs to have videos taken down that illegally use their music in videos. Over the past couple of years the publishers have become a little more lax with take-down’s if the integrity of the song still exists. In some cases rather than a take down notice the publisher adds an official link to the artists site or download. YouTube already has relationships with the music publishers in place which is a step further then Google proper had when they first started rolling out music services.
User numbers aren’t available for Google’s Music service that is available through the Google Play store however, the service hasn’t had much traction since launch.
