YouTube's Rumored New Music Service Gets a Name Google's YouTube appears set to take on Spotify and Pandora.
By Nina Zipkin
Following months of speculation, YouTube is reportedly getting into the music-subscription game with a new service called YouTube Music Key.
Android Police has leaked images of the new service and reports that YouTube Music Key will allow users to listen to more than 20 million tracks without ad interruptions, store their playlists offline and has an audio-only playback feature for music videos for when other tabs are open on a mobile device.
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It is being reported that the same time YouTube Music Key makes its debut, Google will rename Google Play All Access to Google Play Music Key to provide a more cohesive branding strategy. YouTube Music Key will offer a 30-day free trial and cost $9.99 a month, the same fee Google Play subscribers currently pay.
Music Key subscribers will reportedly get access to content exclusive to YouTube like concert footage, covers and remixes. While there is no word on when the service will go live, Google has purchased the domain name youtubemusickey.com.
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How will Music Key stack up to its competitors? It has the potential to have a leg up thanks to the existing Google Play customer base, but YouTube will be entering a crowded field that has seen a great deal of activity of late -- from Apple's buy of Beats Music and podcasting-app Swell to YouTube owner Google's acquisition of Songza.
Meanwhile, it's not just the tech giants that have entered the fray. Famed musician Neil Young has taken to Kickstarter to fund his digital music service PonoMusic and T-Mobile has teamed up with Rhapsody to create unRadio, for which subscribers can pay $4 a month. And that still leaves stalwarts like Pandora and Spotify, with valuations of $5.6 billion and $4 billion respectively.
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