Google has so many products and apps that it is hard to keep track of them all. Many of them overlap with each other creating confusion amongst users. Google Play Music and YouTube Red are two such apps and today YouTube’s head of music confirmed they will be merging in the future.
At a conference in New York YouTube’s head of music, Lyor Cohen, stated that the company needed to merge the two services to continue to attract new users:
The important thing is combining YouTube Red and Google Play Music, and having one offering
YouTube Red offers an ad-free experience of YouTube while also giving the user an opportunity to save videos for use offline. Part of the YouTube Red subscription is also a different YouTube Music experience. A YouTube Red subscription gives the users free access to Google Play Music and vice versa for Google Play Music subscribers.
Google later sort-of confirmed that the two offerings will merge in the statement:
Music is very important to Google and we’re evaluating how to bring together our music offerings to deliver the best possible product for our users, music partners and artists. Nothing will change for users today and we’ll provide plenty of notice before any changes are made.
At this stage there is no word on whether the two apps will also be merged although it is thought unlikely. YouTube music is great, although it can be difficult to find music you like so merging the apps could be a definite improvement.
We have expected this merger to happen for a while now, ever since Google merged the two teams for each service and I for one cannot wait for it to happen.
Are you a subscriber to Google Play Music or YouTube Red? Will you use YouTube Music more? If you are not a subscriber will this convince you to subscribe as Google hopes it will?
This is bad news for Optus customers who like streaming Google Play Music unmetered.
They’d have to switch to spotify, and the 2 services do have differences in the music on offer.
That’s great! Sounds like Google is getting the message. Hopefully next they’ll merge the half dozen of their messaging apps into the one app.
I’m not sure I’d be holding my breath for anything sensible from Google on messaging!
Just what I’d want, a giant bloated app full of features I don’t have any interest in.
So I guess you could call it “Youtube Orange” now.