You ask [people] how they consume music, and often they'll say other apps. It could be SiriusXM, it could be Spotify, it could be Apple, it could be SoundCloud. But there's always an ampersand—'and YouTube'—at the end of that. | | | | Celebrities Listening to Music on Headphones: Royals.
(Dominic Lipinski/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | | | “You ask [people] how they consume music, and often they'll say other apps. It could be SiriusXM, it could be Spotify, it could be Apple, it could be SoundCloud. But there's always an ampersand—'and YouTube'—at the end of that.”
| - | T. Jay Fowler, YouTube head of music products |
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| | rantnrave:// The idea behind YOUTUBE MUSIC, which began rolling out Tuesday, is to make listening to music really, really easy. Not that it's hard to listen now. SPOTIFY's 160 million monthly users, APPLE's 50 million paid subs and the 1.5 billion-ish people who use YOUTUBE itself every month are testament to that. But YouTube Music wants to make it easier, with extreme personalization and, perhaps counterintuitively, a limited number of options at any given moment. The service is basically suggesting that in a universe of nearly unlimited choices, the very notion of choice may be overrated. There's a homepage full of modules (YouTube calls them shelves, like the place where you used to put your vinyl and CDs; nice) filled with album and playlist suggestions based on what you've already listened to—including replaying what you've recently played. When you launch a playlist, it will automatically shuffle so tracks you're familiar with play first. There's a downloadable "mixtape" basically populated not with what YouTube thinks you might like but with what it already knows you like. Think comfort, reassurance. In his USA TODAY review, JEFFERSON GRAHAM notes that his mixtapes were oversaturated with too many tracks by the same artist. He sees that as a bug, but it may be a feature. If you're at the gym, the service knows you're there and will suggest workout playlists, without you asking. Walk out of a museum, and the service will suggest playlists for that, too. The target audience, YTM execs told me during a demo last week, is people who are already regular YouTube users and/or aren't using Spotify or other existing services. "There are a number of people on our platform who love music, they love to discover music, but they actually find it a little bit daunting to use what's in the market today," product lead T. JAY FOWLER said. "So we really, really pushed for the simplicity." For YTM, features like "add to end of queue," "add to playlist" and "clear queue" are "power-user features," and though they're there, they've been de-emphasized. YouTube music head LYOR COHEN said "there's a huge capacity" of untapped potential music subscribers, and the industry is still "at the beginning stages"... More YTM details: Cohen told me the service won't do direct deals with artists and isn't seeking exclusive content ("We're not interested, and it's a bad consumer experience"). He said there's been "a lot of internal discussion" about whether to follow Spotify, Apple and Pandora in banning bad actors from playlists and other promotions, but nothing may ever be formally announced. On launch day, neither R. KELLY nor XXXTENTACION appeared to be on any playlists. But there were three songs by BRAND NEW on an official playlist called—I am not making this up, and this is awful—True Teenage Romance. Playlists are short on personality, with perfunctory text and clip-art-quality artwork. The name of the artist of the track you're currently playing isn't clickable (why???). My SKY FERREIRA artist radio station included QUEEN's "BRIGHTON ROCK," which made me smile. My "new releases" shelf has 10 good suggestions, but I wanted more and there seemed to be no way to get more. But I may not be the target user of any of this, not yet. YouTube has tried this before, and Fowler says YTM is an extension of those previous efforts, not a third try. "We learned a lot," he said. The learning, no doubt, will continue. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Since my daughter was born, I’ve had two very clear objectives: 1) Raise a good human being who goes to Spelman College, and 2) Turn my daughter (and the rest of my kids) into music heads. I want my kids to be the ones who go to school talking about that new Marvin Gaye "Here, My Dear" album. | | |
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