YouTube’s new streaming music service to start rolling out this week

Starting Tuesday, YouTube will be rolling out its YouTube Music platform, the site’s new streaming music service. According to the announcement, there will be a Premium ad-free version that will cost $9.99 per month and include background listening and downloads.

The free version of YouTube Music will have TrueView skippable ads as well as non-skippable ads running in-stream. Google says there are no plans at the moment for any specialty ad products specific to the new streaming platform.

YouTube says its new streaming service will offer “… official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio, plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos… all simply organized and personalized.” It will also come with a new mobile app and new desktop player designed specifically for the music-listening experience. YouTube says the new home screen “dynamically adapts” to a user’s listening history, location and activity to provide recommendations.

In addition to launching YouTube Music Premium, Google is also rebranding its YouTube Red — the subscription service that offers ad-free access to YouTube content and originals — to YouTube Premium, so now there will be a YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium will be $11.99 per month and will include both the subscription service content previously offered through YouTube Red along with YouTube Music Premium’s streaming music service.

The new YouTube Music experience is set to launch tomorrow, May 22, in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea and will roll out more broadly in the coming weeks.

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Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.