YouTube has worked it’s way into our hearts and it is if not anything else, a staple of the internet. With YouTube growing to be such a big hit over the years, the time came where Google wanted to offer up a YouTube based music service. The service was first talked about in March of last year, with rumors stating then that we could look to the summertime for a release window. Those were all rumors of course, and as we continued to move forward towards the end of the year there wasn’t so much as a whisper of detail about the service from YouTube.
A new report over at androidhdblog states the YouTube music service is slated for release sometime early this year, and that we could see it sometime within the first quarter. It might seem odd that YouTube would offer such a service when Google already has Google Play Music All Access, but once you know more about the service and what it offers you soon realize that both services are very different beasts. The YouTube music service is reported to actually have a feel similar to Spotify, where no matter what genre of music you love the most, you’ll be able to search for it and get recommendations and such based off of your search query’s, and music tracks will play in succession like a radio station. Also, since this is YouTube after all, the visual side of things will materialize in the form of a feature that is being called “Art Tracks”, where images of the artist that you’re listening to will form into a collage for viewing while the music plays.
Free and paid versions of the app are still both on track to be part of the service once it launches. So expect the free version to be ad-supported with perhaps a limited number of track skips(if you can even skip tracks in the first place). With the service you’ll be able to access a large database of music and music videos, free and paid. While it sounds like the free service will offer something worth looking forward to, the paid version seems to be much more feature rich. Paying the monthly sub fee will earn you features like playing music in offline mode, and listening to music in the background while you use the Youtube app. While there are no pricing details on the service as of yet or an official date as to when we can expect this to go live, the service is rumored to hit in the first quarter of the year, so it won’t be too long before we know more. What do you think about YouTube having a music service available for users? Would you rather YouTube stick to videos? Let us know in the comments.