‘YouTube will roll out paid music streaming service within a few weeks’

The video platform YouTube would roll out a paid music streaming service within a few weeks. The rumor follows an agreement the Google company has reached with thousands of independent record labels.

The new service offers the possibility to watch music videos without being interrupted by advertisements, according to the Financial Times. Users could also save content for offline use. A paid subscription is required to use the new service.

The Financial Times suggests that YouTube wants to change its relationship with the music industry. At the moment, the video platform would serve for promotional purposes, rather than musicians actually earning from YouTube. The streaming service is said to have more than a billion unique visitors per month, but Midia Research claims that only seven percent of that number are willing to actually take out a paid subscription. On a billion unique users, that is still considerably more than, for example, Spotify with 12.5 million subscribers.

The possible introduction of the music service follows a deal that Google has concluded with so-called indie labels. A few months ago, the company threatened to block the music from those labels. That allegation followed the breakdown of negotiations related to money matters regarding the new subscription service.