YouTube Music Launches in 12 Countries Including Canada
A new streaming competitor has officially entered the arena.
YouTube Music, as well as YouTube Premium, has launched in Canada as well as 11 other countries. The subscription based service allows users to access millions of streaming songs and videos.
The new platform will eventually replace Google Play Music (Google owns YouTube) as the flagship streaming service for both companies. As is typical when comparing all of the different music streaming services, there are a few subtle features that may draw someone to subscribe to one over another.
For example, YouTube Music offers essentially everything that YouTube has to offer, including hard-to-find remixes and covers that other services just cannot license and pick up themselves. Perhaps the best feature of YouTube Music is the Google-aided search engine—search fragments of song lyrics, names, and even descriptions of songs and there’s a good chance the right tune will pop up.
For example, “That 90s song with woohoo in it” brings up Song 2 by Blur, and “That White Stripes song everyone sings in stadiums” brings up Seven Nation Army. That kind of intuitiveness gives YouTube Music an immediate leg up against other competitors. Custom playlists and radio stations guided by Google’s machine learning engines will also ensure users have tailored options to discover new music.
The service will launch with a free, ad-supported version, as well as a premium option. The premium option runs for $9.99 a month.
YouTube Premium (formerly called Red) also launched today. If subscribers add an extra two dollars onto the music subscription price (for a total of $11.99 a month) they will remove all ads from videos, enable background listening, and download any video they want. There is also a family plan for $17.99 per month.
The other countries YouTube Music launched in today include the U.K., Germany, Spain, Russia and Italy.
YouTube first announced the premium streaming service this past May. They celebrated the launch of the event in Canada by featuring a fireside interview with Director X as well as performances by Johnny Orlando and other Canadian singers.
