YouTube Debuts Its "Music" App

Don't look now but YouTube just launched another music app. This one is fittingly titled YouTube Music and is an audio-only version of its recently launched YouTube Red service.

YouTube Music is free to download, and there's a free, ad-supported tier, but you unleash its power if you become a YouTube Red subscriber for $9.99 per month.

The experience is optimized for music and allows you to search for a particular song from its 30 million licensed tracks. The key here is that when you search in the app, you'll only get music-related results.

It should be noted that the app doesn't replicate Google Play Music (which is included if you sign up for Red) as it doesn't allow you to create a playlist. What it does instead is create a playlist for you based on what you've listened to before as well as some songs that it thinks you'll like.

Of course, its ad-free if you've signed up for Red, but it's yet to be seen if that will be enough to attract new users.

If you're using either YouTube Red or YouTube Music, let us know what you think. Is it worth the money?

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Keeping The Cannibal Away: The 3 Biggest Issues Facing The Upcoming YouTube Streaming Service

There’s been a lot of rumblings from Googleland again about the new YouTube streaming service that it’s preparing to introduce, with most of more recent ones being about how Google is struggling with getting everything just right before it launches. There’s good reason for the company to be so cautious as there’s a lot riding on the decisions that are being made right now, at least in the music sphere.

The launch of the new YouTube streaming service has actually been speculated for months, and if I didn’t actually know people who have seen it for themselves, it might be easy to think of the launch whispers as a just a diversion to throw off the competition, a nice rumor to scare the pants off of Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music. That said, all indications are that the service is being crafted to be a serious contender in the music streaming space, but the fact of the matter is that there are three major issues facing Google here, and none of them trivial.

The biggest question is how to top something that’s doing so well already under its own momentum. YouTube is already the largest music discovery engine online, beating all competitors by a large margin, according to Nielson’s Music 360 Report. You don’t hear a lot of complaints or “if only it did” comments from its users, as most are quite content with the on-demand access that they have now. Oh, and it’s free too. How do you surpass that without becoming just another service groveling for some of Pandora or Spotify’s marketshare?

By delivering picture along with the audio, that’s how, which raises the second question of how Google gets around delivering that picture without it resembling a late night at a Karaoke bar. Word has it that the company is looking into licensing different types of artwork to play behind the music; some static and some dynamic. Ideally the graphics would have at least something to do with the artist, but many videos today get by just fine with abstract graphic designs. Read more on Forbes.

15 Under-Appreciated Events That Affected The Music Business In 2013

We’re coming to the end of 2013, so now is a good time to look back at the music business happenings of the year to see the trends and events that affected it. The following 15 events may have been taken lightly at the time, but at least some of them will have a lasting effect on the industry.

The events are broken into three major areas: music distribution, artists and record labels, which all include tech and marketing related events to some degree. Here we go, in no particular order of importance.

Music Distribution

1. Spotify sets its mobile service partially free and expands into 55 countries, then licenses the Led Zeppelin catalog to help with the promotion. Time to get all the market share possible before the deep pocket competitors like Apple and Google hone in on the sector. 

2. Crying poverty despite 72 million monthly active users, Pandora tries to lower its licensing royalties by buying a terrestrial radio station. Royalty collection organizations, artists and songwriters decry the move as suits fly back and forth. Bottom line, Pandora still loses money.

3. iTunes Radio is unveiled amid much fanfare in September, reaches 20 million users in a month, then disappears from the public consciousness. Is the service a sleeping giant or just sleepy?

4. Beats Music and YouTube Music both postponed their launches until 2014. The streaming music services competition is stiff; they have to get it right out of the gate.

5. Twitter’s #Music lies dormant after few adoptions, which proves the point - just because you have a large user base doesn’t necessarily mean that users want to get their music from you.

6. Pirating decreases as users find that streaming is more convenient and efficient. Pirates are also found to be some of the most prolific music consumers, so is the decrease good or bad?

7. The first YouTube Music Awards show proves that it’s what seems like a good idea isn’t always so, as it draws shockingly few viewers. You can be the largest online music portal, but that doesn’t mean that users want to watch your event. Read more on Forbes.

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How Music Management Rollups Could Affect Music Tech’s Future

We’re living in a very interesting time in the music business. Unlike when the industry was caught off-guard by the MP3 revolution, the powers that be are totally on top of the one that’s happening now - streaming music - and they’re being proactive about dealing with it. Interestingly enough, they’re way ahead of the curve this time, even before the majority of the public. Let’s look at how this is playing out.

The first step in trying to take control of the situation came when the major labels pushed Spotify for an equity stake as part of the licensing deal that let it enter the US market. The labels weren’t about to lose control again like they did with iTunes a decade earlier, so this was a condition for the deal. Now with Spotify’s biggest competitor Deezer about to enter the US, you wonder whether the labels are asking for the same agreement. My guess is that they won’t get it this time, since they’re not in the same position of strength that they were even a year ago, as more deep pocketed competitors are already in the marketplace where there was no way the labels could get equity (like with the recently introduced iTunes Radio) and new ones are about to be introduced (like YouTube Music which had it’s deal in place before Spotify’s). 

A bigger problem for the record labels is that they’re no longer the pinnacle of power in the music business - managers are. Modern music management now includes many of the former duties of a record label, like marketing and promotion, as part of its core offering to an artist. And with artists now capable of ably recording their own masters without a huge financial outlay, the banking services of a label are no longer needed either.

That’s why some of the recent deals involving managers are interesting, because it can put them and their artists into a more leveraged position with the various music tech services. There are three very recent examples. Read more on Forbes.

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The Real Reason Behind YouTube’s New Music Streaming Service

By now you’ve heard the reports that YouTube is preparing its own music streaming service, and although the company hasn’t officially confirmed it, accounts of numerous recent private showings of the service to select partners have appeared. On the surface you can look at the prospect of a YouTube music streaming service and ask why it’s necessary, since parent company Google already has one of its own in Google Play Music All Access (this name has to be at least four syllables too long). Then you might wonder what YouTube has to offer that’s not being offered by numerous other services already. I’m glad you asked.

Let me say up front that I have very little insider information on the subject and haven’t seen the service myself, but you can figure a number of things out by just looking at the current landscape of the streaming music business and Google and YouTube’s place in it already.

First of all is that terribly long name for Google’s existing music service (Google Play Music All Access). I don’t care how big a company Google is, that’s not a brand that a user can get behind. Imagine a kid trying to explain this cool new service she just found and then tries to spit out that tongue twister of a brand name. About the only thing you can count on her getting right is “Google.” 

YouTube, on the other hand, is a brand that everyone knows, and most kids already use  it to discover their music. It has a built-in hard-core audience that contains precisely the prime demographic for consuming music (14 to 24 years old), plus another billion (with a “b”) or so active users. Adding a streaming music function becomes only just a new YouTube feature, not a new service. Read more on Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.