Merger Of Google Play Music And YouTube Red Confirmed

Music lovers using the services of Google Play Music or YouTube Red have a reason to rejoice. Now they would not need to waste their time to choose their service as a merger is on the way. Google has confirmed its plans to merge its Google Play Music service and YouTube Red service to create a unified music app. Enjoying online music streaming is set to be different now.

Earlier this year, Google had merged the teams behind these services and now the merger of services is official.

At a panel session for the New Music Seminar conference in New York, Lyor Cohen, YouTube‘s head of music, confirmed the merger. Cohen said that Google was planning to create a new music streaming offering.

Why did Google decide to merge these two services?

One of the key reasons that this decision was taken because of complicated ecosystem of YouTube Red since its inception in 2015. YouTube Red is subscription service, offering offline saving, ad-free videos and access to Google Play Music.

Same year, YouTube launched YouTube Music that offered songs with or without video (and a separate audio-only mode) for free. However, it required a Red subscription to use its ad-free services. Compared to daily users of YouTube, these services received poor response from users. Limited availability of these services was a reason for poor response.

What can be the possible impact of merger users and music rights holders?

Google also issued a statement assuring advance notification on changes to the users:

“Music is very important to Google and we’re evaluating how to bring together our music offerings to deliver the best possible product for our users, music partners and artists. Nothing will change for users today and we’ll provide plenty of notice before any changes are made.”

Announcing his plan to collaborate more directly with music labels and rights holders, Cohen said:

“In my mind, the missing piece on building these businesses is collaborating with the [music] industry, and not just making deals and going away and seeing how it works.”

It remains to be seen how much success Google will achieve with this move over its competitor Apple Music which has 27 million subscribers so far.

How has been your experience of using the music services of Google? What are your thoughts about this merger? Post your comments.

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