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YouTube Red and Google Play Music to Merge in New Subscription Service

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Google Play Music and the ad-free YouTube Red service are set to merge in a new streaming package, according to YouTube's head of music (via The Verge).

Lyor Cohen revealed the coming change during a panel session at the New Music Seminar conference in New York on Wednesday, saying the two services needed to be combined to educate consumers and attract new subscribers.

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The important thing is combining YouTube Red and Google Play Music, and having one offering,” Cohen said when asked about why YouTube Red isn’t more popular with music users. He didn’t address whether or not the two apps would merge — but it seems very unlikely.

By consolidating the offerings into a unified package, Google hopes the benefits of its subscriptions will be clearer to customers. Currently the company offers YouTube Red, which removes ads and lets users save videos for offline viewing, in addition to an ad-supported YouTube Music app (with additional benefits for Red subscribers), while YouTube TV is provided as a separate subscription service.

Google said it would notify users of the changes beforehand, but the timeframe for the rebranding remains unclear. Still, existing subscribers to YouTube Red or Google Play Music shouldn't see a hugely significant change, as the two services are essentially already combined.

Tags: Google Play Music, YouTube, YouTube Red

Top Rated Comments

F
farewelwilliams
117 months ago
what they should have done in the first place...
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RamGuy Avatar
RamGuy
117 months ago
How about making the service available in more countries? How YouTube RED is not available in more countries is beyond me.. It's a service giving you access to a few YouTube RED shows, ad-free YouTube and some additional features in their mobile apps like Picture-in-Picture, background playback and offline videos. How hard can it be for YouTube to make this available outside the US?

The fact that Google is crippling the YouTube experience on iOS by not offering picture-in-picture, background playback and offline capabilities without having YouTube RED when it's limited to so few countries is just plain stupid.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
X
X--X
117 months ago
They only do this because YouTube Red is a complete flop.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T
thesheleys
117 months ago
How is this different? I have Google Music and already get Youtube Red as part of it.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
A
anthorumor
117 months ago
In Australia we already get YouTube red with Google music. Didn't realise it's not like this in other countries. I hope they improve the iOS apps since music doesn't do proper split screen on my iPad, and there's no pip despite a workaround by copying the YouTube URL into another website.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
B
bartvk
117 months ago
Apparently some countries
That's putting it mildly. YouTube Red is only available in five! countries ('https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365'): United States, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and South Korea. Geographically speaking, it might be the most limited Google service ever, and has been so since the beginning. No effort was made after introducing it, as far as I can find.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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