YouTube
According to YouTube, four of the most-watched videos on the streaming service last year were ads. On Wednesday, the company introduced YouTube Red, the feature it hopes to turn YouTube from a platform to a service, taking on Netflix, Spotify, and everyone else — all at once. All without a single ad.
YouTube Red is YouTube's subscription service. It's going to cost $9.99 a month — the going rate for streaming services — and the big news is it's going to make all YouTube content ad-free. However, it also turns YouTube in a more robust way to watch things, by allowing people to save content offline, and including content from YouTube gaming and YouTube Music. It launches next week.
In addition, YouTube Music will become a standalone app, which launches "later this year," according to a YouTube spokesperson. YouTube plans to use what the company learned from the YouTube Music Key beta last year and bring it to consumers in a widespread release. While YouTube is the primary platform for music videos and has an enormous, unique catalog, it's never been easy to take YouTube on the go, or make easy-to-listen-to playlists. YouTube Music is, essentially, a streaming service in line with the Spotifiy and Apple Musics of the world.
From the demonstration YouTube presented on Wednesday, it features a more visual layout — very big thumbnails — and knows to include the live versions of songs, covers, remixes, and other rarities that makes YouTube's content stand out from its competitors. When you click play on a song in the app, the music video starts playing, but when the music video is stopped or minimized, the music itself keeps playing.
YouTube Red also includes a subscription to Google Play Music, which means it is, essentially, two music streaming services for the price of one. (Likewise, if you have a Google Play Music subscription, you also get YouTube Red.)
YouTube Red will also include exclusive original content starting this January. YouTube is planning on leveraging its sizable stable of self-created celebrities to compete with the original streaming content pioneered by Netflix and Amazon. It will launch with a feature film with YouTube star Lily Singh, a ten-episode singing competition show hosted by the Fine Brothers, and a horror reality series starring PewDiePie. If you know who they all are, congratulations, you are YouTube's target subscriber.
While YouTube Red is priced at $9.99 per month, that doesn't apply to anyone who purchases it directly on an iPhone: iOS subscribers who buy YouTube Red through Apple will be charged an additional $3, so it costs $12.99 instead. According to a YouTube spokesperson, "As everyone knows, Apple charges an additional fee, so we’re passing that fee on." Basically, because Apple charges a 30% fee for content to be sold via its App Store or as an in-app purchase, YouTube is charging 30% more for Red when its sold there.
Of course, because it's a subscription service that works across platforms, you could just pay for YouTube Red on the web and use it on your iPhone for the original $9.99 price. Which makes this a bit more of a dig at Apple, than a real iOS tax.
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