YouTube finally announced its new subscription service today, and although the new Red service is somewhat different than last year’s beta test of Music Key, the basic concept still holds true - you now have the option to pay for something that’s widely available for free.
YouTube Red is slated to launch on October 28th, and will bring ad-free viewing at a cost of $9.99 with a free one month trial period. Red will only be available in the US at first, with a world-wide rollout to come in early 2016.
Getting people to pay for something that they’ve been trained to get for free may not be easy though, if my small sampling is any indication.
During a presentation I gave to a class of about 40 college students yesterday, I asked them how they consumed their music. Just about all of them said via YouTube and Soundcloud (Spotify and Apple Music had only one student subscriber each).
When asked how many would pay if it were ad-free, the group erupted into laughter and indicated with a no-doubt-about-it “no” that they wouldn’t consider paying for the privilege anytime soon (to be fair, one student did say that she might consider it).
If that’s any indication of the widespread feeling of the age group, then Red may not be much of a player with the exact demographic that it’s aimed at, at least when it comes to music. Read more on Forbes.
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