Beginning today, May 22, YouTube is rolling out its YouTube Music platform, the site’s new streaming music service. The announcement, this is a Premium ad-free version that’ll cost $9.99 per month and include background listening and downloads.
If you’re going with the free version of YouTube Music, you’ll have TrueView skippable ads as well as non-skippable ads running in-stream. According to Google, there aren’t any 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.” There is a new mobile app and desktop player that comes along with the new service, which is designed specifically for the music-listening experience. The new home screen “dynamically adapts” to a user’s listening history, location and activity to provide recommendations.
Youtube Red is also getting a rebrand — the subscription service that offers ad-free access to YouTube content and originals — to YouTube Premium. 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 though YouTube Red along with YouTube Music Premium’s streaming music service.