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Following Taylor Swift’s decision to pull her music from Spotify, all eyes have been on streaming services. Now, YouTube has decided to enter the market with its own new streaming service, Music Key, an ad-free, mobile-focused service that will be integrated with both YouTube and Google products, including the Google Play store.
The introduction of the service has been a long time coming, with a few bumps in the road along the way, including disagreements with independent record labels over licensing rates that have since been resolved.
“We’ve signed deals with every major label and hundreds of indie labels worldwide to make these features available,” YouTube Global Head of Music Partnerships Christophe Muller told Rolling Stone. “We didn’t expect this to happen overnight.”
For now, Music Key is only available to a small number of beta testers. The full service will be available to the public in early 2015 for $10/month. YouTube’s existing video platform will remain unchanged following the launch of Music Key.
More information can be found here.
