YouTube will launch a subscription music service later this year to compete with the likes of Spotify and Slacker. The service has its own negotiating team and operating unit, but will likely have some overlap with new features also rumored to be coming to Google’s Android music platform, Google Play.
According to Fortune, The two new services are defined by their respective places in the Google empire: Google Play for Android is a digital locker for music—users buy, store, and sort a collection of tracks; but on YouTube’s coming service, anyone can listen to tracks for free. Both services are said to be adding a subscription fee that will unlock additional features. For the YouTube-based service, this will likely mean ad-free access.
YouTube will compete against a host of other streaming music sites, like for example, Spotify that recently hit 20 million users and 5 million paying customers and Slacker with 4 million monthly users and 500,000 paid subscribers.
YouTube will beat the competition simply by using its channels to advertise to more than 800 million users for the new upcoming service.