First Impressions Of YouTube’s New Music App.
Following today’s launch of the anticipated YouTube Music application, music video streaming app Vevo, which distributes videos to YouTube and counts Google as an investor, is also introducing a new experience of its own.If you like turning on Pandora and letting the personalized music play, with mostly stuff you’re probably going to like, the YouTube twist is better.In a feature it hopes will be a key selling point, YouTube Music will create non-stop stations tailored to users, who can fine-tune how much variety they want.
The company today is rolling out a completely revamped mobile app, initially on iOS, which reimagines the Vevo application as one that’s focused more heavily on personalization and curation. The latest is YouTube Music, which seeks to capitalize on the video site’s massive music catalogue and convince more subscribers to jump on board YouTube Red.
YouTube, the world’s third most popular website after its parent company Google and Facebook, aims to take advantage of its quirky possibilities by offering artists’ original tracks alongside cover versions, live footage and user-generated content. Personalization is a feature that’s becoming increasingly important to streaming services today, whether music, movies, or otherwise, as consumers struggle with the vast array of on-demand content we now have at our fingertips. YouTube Music is a stand-alone app designed to showcase YouTube’s massive music collection, which has far more music than Spotify, Apple Music or other rivals.
This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, considering the popularity of music videos on the site, which boasts access to a potential audience of over 1 billion people around the globe. Music fans are no longer dependent on things like terrestrial radio or linear TV – as in MTV’s golden era where it showcased new music videos – in order to be exposed to emerging artists or listen to music from popular bands.
Jay Fowler, the director of product development who was involved in earlier services Beats Music and MOG, said he hoped to draw more people to streaming instead of simply competing with other companies. YouTube’s new app aims to create a lean-back listening experience, make navigating YouTube’s library easier, and simple to switch between video and audio-only play.
YouTube Music – which was announced alongside YouTube Red without full details or a launch date – is compatible both with Google’s Android system and Apple and will initially be available only in the United States. ‘Usher discovers Bieber. In Vevo’s case, it needs to quickly build up its knowledge of a user’s interests, as it can’t really lean on prior data – even the company admits its mobile app had not been a priority until now. I like jazz, blues, classical, r&b, classic rock and some Top 40, with a special emphasis on guitar players, so it’s hard to fit me into a neat category.
Along with the sections dedicated to watching or listening to previous music selections, there’s a “mixtape” option that lets you pick 20 audio tracks to save to your device. I got the hits (Adele, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande), classic rock (Steely Dan, Michael McDonald), and a whole lot of guitar players–jazz and classical, including a rare video clip of jazz lion Wes Montgomery from the 1950s, a vintage cut of Django Reinhardt (the visual was the album cover) and a whole lot of home guitarists showing how to play songs, an incredibly popular category on YouTube. During beta testing, Vevo users were so heavily engaged in this part of the app that some were spending 10 minutes swiping on various musicians, says Aaron Burcell, Vevo’s VP of Products.
For example, a Spotlight feature will display the latest content from favorite artists, and Vevo will now automatically create a playlist for you containing your favorite artists, as indicated by your onboarding selection. Meanwhile, as I kept going in YouTube Music, I stumbled onto a rare performance I’d never seen of guitar gods Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton playing together. That global exposure has allowed YouTube and Google to pay out over $3 billion to the record industry to date. ‘But we want to do even more to support artists and all the fans who turn to YouTube to discover music, so we’re making the experience even better with a brand new YouTube Music app.’ Streaming, which allows unlimited online music on-demand, has been rapidly growing. In addition, while you’re watching videos, a “recommended” section will point you to other videos you may also like, based on factors like the current genre as well as your location. Universal Music Group, the largest label conglomerate, said Tuesday that for the first time more than half its digital revenue came from streaming in the latest quarter.
If you wake up in the morning and want to play your favorite Adele songs without searching for each one individually, or better yet, the music playlists you created on YouTube, you’re out of luck. But it has faced growing competition from new entrants Apple Music and rap mogul Jay Z’s Tidal, which have both tried to distinguish themselves through original content and video. The company is hoping its algorithm is smart enough to figure out what you want to hear, and create that endless playlist, or that you’ll explore and find lots of stuff it thinks you’ll like.
Even before its entry into streaming, YouTube has been a frequent target of music industry representatives alarmed by users’ ability to post nearly anything online. You can use Google’s Chromecast streaming video stick to play the music via the TV, which hopefully is connected to speakers or a soundbar for maximum sound. Under the hood, the app has been improved, too, as Vevo has abandoned its old technology stack in favor of something more modern, more performant, and iOS 9-ready.
Vevo, a joint venture controlled by Universal and Sony, has had a symbiotic but tense relationship with YouTube over the years, and Vevo’s decision to announce its app’s debut on the same day that YouTube also rolled out its own dedicated music app is yet another example of that. But with the free version of YouTube Music, ads are enabled, you lose portability and there’s no playing music in the background, checking texts or accessibility to mixtapes offline. Another big difference between YouTube Music and Vevo is that the latter is fully ad-supported, while YouTube (through YouTube Red subscriptions) now offers a way for users to opt out of ads entirely.
You can download YouTube Music for free starting today on Google Play or the App Store, which includes a two-week trial of YouTube’s premium Red service, which you are sure to miss when the trial ends. The updated app’s rollout is one of the first steps Vevo is taking under its new CEO Erik Huggers, who previously built and launched BBC’s iPlayer and Intel’s OnCue, that later was acquired by [TechCrunch parent] Verizon and launched as Go90. “[The new app] is media-forward.
It’s very much focused on getting to the content they want right away and personalizing their music experience,” explains Burcell. “The app is indicative of the direction we’re going in, in terms of putting the user in front,” hea adds. “We’re helping them share with us what kind of music tastes they have, so we can can deliver the content they want.