YouTube Plans to Launch Paid Music Service to Boost Revenue For Content Partners

Google-owned YouTube, the No. 1 video website in the world, plans to launch a paid streaming music service in the future, working with “hundreds” of independent and major music companies.

The new paid service will launch before the end of the summer and subscribers can listen to streaming music that doesn’t have advertisements.  In addition to streaming music, subscribers can listen to entire albums and will be able to listen to music offline.  Expected pricing was not released.

Here is what Google said in a statement:

“We’re adding subscription-based features for music on YouTube with this in mind – to bring our music partners new revenue streams in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars YouTube already generates for them each year.”

Providing content on YouTube is beneficial for record labels that can post official music videos and songs, and it’s popular for YouTube users to post songs on the site themselves.  Digital downloads sales are dropping, but membership of Pandora, Spotify, and other streaming music services has seen a surge in popularity.

It’s an important strategy for YouTube, as the popular video site continues to fight for advertising dollars – a difficult battle that Google has struggled with, due to advertisers unimpressed with return-on-investment, even with such a large viewer base.

Thank you to Reuters UK for providing us with this information