YouTube is rumored to be working on a streaming music service, but its release has been pushed back to later this year. Even though it is owned by Google, which has its own streaming music service, Google Music, YouTube has all the necessary agreements with record labels to allow it to run a paid service like Spotify.
YouTube is already a hugely important source of music for young people, but in creating a dedicated music service, the company hopes to offer a more complete catalog. There have been plenty of unofficial attempts at using YouTube’s extensive music videos as a streaming music player. One problem has been the variability of sound quality, which often relies on what users have uploaded. As YouTube has so much user created content, sorting out what is the best, or correct, version of a song could be a challenge.
This year has already seen one streaming music service launched. Beats Music arrived in January, but so far the company has not released figures showing how many users they have. French service Deezer is supposed to launch in the US this year, while Apple is also rumored to be planning a product to compete with Spotify. Any YouTube music service is entering a busy market.
Source: Billboard
