The new YouTube Music service has started rolling out today – at least according to their latest blog, with early access to the service rolling out to users in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
The YouTube Music service will be available in a free, ad-supported tier, as well as a paid service which will cost AU$11.99 per month which will include ad-free access to Music including official albums, singles, remixes, live performances, covers and hard-to-find music. It will also include the option to listen to music in the background and download tracks.
YouTube has also said that for Google Play Music users, nothing will be chaning. According to YouTube ‘you’ll still be able to access and add to all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always’.
Of course if you sign up for YouTube Music Premium you won’t be getting the YouTube Premium service – no, that will cost AU$14.99 per month and is also supposed to be launching today.
Our recommendation though is to simply sign up for YouTube Red for $11.99 per month ($17.99 if you want a family plan with up to 6 users) which gives you access to Google Play Music Unlimited, YouTube Originals, Ad-Free YouTube, YouTube Music Premium – so…YouTube Premium but for $3 per month less.
If you want to be notified for when YouTube Music launches you can head over to music.youtube.com/coming-soon to register your details.
I’ve got the new UI and recommendations within the app, but none of my playlists or music have come over yet. Aesthetically it’s quite nice and the recommendations are better than GPM so far.
So, will I still have access to YouTube Red (Premium) with my Play Music subscription? Its a little unclear…Not overly interested in YouTube Music Premium, but would rather keep regular YouTube Premium with my Play Music subscription.
The wording is confusing buy my interpretation is both Google Play Music and YouTube Red subscribers (they’re effectively the same thing) will be grandfathered into the full YouTube Premium plan at the current pricing plan.
I’m in the same boat, I’m a Play Music subscriber but use the YouTube Red features more.
Google was ridiculously unclear that today is in fact a launch for “early access”, not an actual launch of the service. On top of all of the other confusion… are they doing everything they can to alienate users?