YouTube Music Key to Downing Spotify?

The Newest Music Streaming Service

As if you needed another website on the Internet that allowed you the stream music. We already have: Pandora, Spotify, Deezer, Slacker, and Rhapsody just to name a few. The new YouTube Music Key will work straight from the already existing YouTube app, or if you're on your laptop from the same URL that is currently live. Normally when people are listening to music through YouTube they get to listen to maybe one song or two songs without hearing an advertisement, but there will be an advertisement unless you're using an ad blocking software. The new Music Key will allow users to stream music without having to listen to ads and stop the party from going. And before you ask the question, yes, Taylor Swift's singles will be on this platform so you can take a sigh of relief and shake it off. 

The main reason that it might take users away from services from Spotify, is the price point; and the fact that Taylor Swift is not on Spotify anymore. Currently, Spotify offers two levels of service. Spotify uses a freemium pricing model which offers users either a free or a premium version of their core product which is being able to stream your favorite songs. Often with freemium websites the ratio of free to paid users is as low as 1% and the cost to serve the other 99% users using the free product is often negligible. In May of 2014, Spotify had announced that of its 40 million users, 10 million of them were paying to use the premium product at a cost of $9.99 per month. 

It'll be interesting to see whether or not YouTube decides to offer a freemium model the way that Spotify and Pandora already do, or if they'll just offer their product in its premium form. I could easily see the free version of this product being the way that it is now. You try and listen to your favorite Justin Timberlake song and before you can, you have to listen to a quick thirty second advertisement for Turbo Tax or Progressive Insurance. Personally, I have a Spotify account that I'm currently paying $9.99 a month for. If this new music streaming turns out to be better than Spotify is then I might consider the switch seeing as though the price is listed at only $7.99 per month. It's important to note that the app also works even after locking your phone. Currently on the iPhone, if you try to listen to a song on YouTube and lock your phone, then the song will stop playing which is very inconvenient. Since the product is still in beta it's hard to say how the final version of the product will look; right now it doesn't have a button for going backwards in your playlists.

Sources used:
http://pando.com/2014/05/21/as-spotify-hits-10m-paid-subscribers-heres-why-paying-customers-not-ads-will-save-the-music-industry/