Youtube Announces Potential World Wide Launch of Streaming Service

Youtube is set to launch their ad free service, Youtube Red, to the rest of the world in an attempt to challenge the most popular music streaming services. As of now, Youtube Red is available to the in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Mexico but reports say that Youtube plans to expand the service to, “‘a hundred’ more countries in 2018, and the UK is almost certain to be among them,”’ according to The Sun. This is big news and a bold move considering Spotify and Apple Music have such a commanding lead on the music streaming industry. It’s unclear if this service is really going to take off but musicians, both aspiring and established should keep close tabs on this and should highly consider getting their content on Youtube.

There are reports saying Youtube Red is having a bit of an identity crisis, with some ‘higher-ups’ saying it’s a service designed to rival Netflix and Hulu, while others say it’s a supposed to be a music streaming service. That’s irrelevant here. Whatever it may wind up becoming, putting content on Youtube is a crucial step in towards gaining recognition.

A quick overview of what Youtube Red has to offer.

The service has a number of attractive features: ad free video, uninterrupted music with the Youtube Music App and original and exclusive shows for paying members. And although it’s a small feature, one of the most appealing parts of this service is the ability to close ones phone app and continue to listen to a video or music. Users in America may pay $9.99 a month, but it is still absolutely free for people to upload music and videos to Youtube for, reportedly, 1 billion people to see. Being this is a service that was made just over 5 years ago, there are some kinks and quirks that might turn people away from the service, but it’s still free to use and requires minimal effort to get content out there.

What people don’t know is that along with the perks offered in the Youtube app, users can also use the Youtube Music app to listen to their music, create and save playlists with just audio or high and low quality. This is what musicians should be advocating.

What is their service like? We used it for a week and found it to be very user friendly with no bugs or crashes in the program. Although this is a very good service and is completely unparalleled by any other service, it’s just not as good as Spotify… yet. Youtube might be 13-years-old, but they still have a lot of work to do if their going to out match Spotify and Apple Music. Youtube is owned by Google and there is reason to believe that they will go to great lengths to compete with the big guys, so it will be well worth putting content on there as soon as possible.

The importance of putting a video on Youtube and how to do it:

Youtube Red has a fighting chance to gain some momentum so it will be time well spent putting content up there. These other countries that Youtube Red is reaching out to are undoubtedly hubs for musical discovery, but the UK is arguably one of the hottest places in the world terms of a contemporary music scene. But the obvious reason to start pushing Youtube content in light of this release is because there are simply more english speaking people there compared to the other countries Youtube Red is available in, which means more people to enjoy and find your music - over 66 million people and counting.

It’s so simple to put music on Youtube. There’s no need for actual video footage in this scenario, unless that’s something you would really like to do - it can’t hurt. But in this instance, having just the album cover to replace the video footage will suffice. And with the way Youtube Red and Youtube music is set up, the audience won’t even watch it. Besides, there hasn’t been a widely popular music video put out there in a few years, anyway - people have lost interest.

All that needs to be done is to use a basic video editor, put music in and an album cover, maybe a series of pictures of band mates but there’s no need for anything spectacular. And in a matter of minutes, the track in available to millions and millions of people at absolutely no additional cost.

Suggested video editors:

If you’re using a mac, iMovie will suffice. But for those on Windows, look into a few of these options that Tech Radar suggested as the best free video editors of 2018.

Taking the time to put content on Youtube is a great investment of time. There are still plenty of people out there not using Spotify or Apple Music. Granted, there are still people out there who buy CD’s but there are plenty of people who have no problem discovering music on Youtube. Yes, there are no royalties involved at first but that will come with time. Although this service does not offer royalties, they offer a highly advanced algorithm that could help surfice new music to the top.