Google’s latest foray into online music is YouTube Music, a new offering designed to let you stream music videos like a never-ending session of RAGE! The service, like their recent add-free YouTube service Red is US only at this stage, so while Google works out all the rights issues, we’ll have to wait a little while longer before we see it launch here.
YouTube Music offers a 14-day ad-free trial to start you off, and Google is pairing it with YouTube Red in the US, so you can in theory pay the one fee to get access to ad-free YouTube as well as YouTube Music and Google Play Music All Access – a very good deal. Google has access to a massive library of artists on YouTube and there’s new artists uploading their songs to YouTube all the time, and it’s the discovery aspect that Google is focusing on.
Google has also released a new YouTube Music app on Google Play which has a range of features:
• Any video, album, or artist starts a non-Âstop station
• Personalized stations learn your tastes
• A home tab with recommended tracks just for you
• A trending tab to stay up on the newest releases
• New songs and artists in ‘On the rise’
• The latest hits in ‘The Daily 40’
We’ve played around and it looks like if you do want to get a taste of YouTube Music you’ll have to jump through some hoops and those hoops involve changing your Google Account to a US-based account and you’ll need the services of a VPN as well.
There’s no time-frame for bringing YouTube Music or YouTube Red to Australia, but we do hope it will come soon.
So is this going to compete with Music on Google Play?
Companion service. Get YouTube Red and you get ad free access to YouTube Music and Google Play Music for the one price.
I signed up early to Play Music and have the discounted rate. Will I just have access automatically to Youtube Red when it is released and not have to subscribe to Red then Cancel Music?
Correct.. It automatically adds your subscription to YouTube red (I nearly typed red tube lol) from gpm once you sign up. The interface of the app is great and I can see it being extremely successful. Easy switch from music to video and you can change the quality of the video easily too. My only concern is the library on YouTube. Will they have the entire gpm library and just not have video option for the songs that do not t have videos? I really don’t want to be switching from one service/app to another continuously.
I think it would be great if they just merged them. If there is a song in my playlist with no video, it still plays the audio. If it does have a video, it automatically plays the video. I’m no developer but surely this is just a simple bit of code?