YouTube Music Apps Get 15 Million Paid Users, Chases Apple Music
The music-streaming business is waiting for people to pay for services, which is not happening in bulk right now.
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YouTube has reportedly managed to get over 15 million users who are paying to use its music-streaming platform. This was mentioned in a Bloomberg report, which has quoted few people with the information that its yet to go public.
This puts YouTube Music apps far behind its competition Apple Music and Spotify that have 50 million and 100 million paid users respectively.
YouTube has finally decided that the music streaming business is worth diving into, and for this it has started merging all of its platform into one app called YouTube Music. And before it does that globally, users on Google Play Music as well as YouTube Music, who’re keen on paying for the streaming service, can play tracks from either of the platforms.
Interestingly, the sources quoted in the report say that YouTube’s subscription numbers includes people on promotional trials, which none of the streaming companies usually talk or even mention about when announcing their user figures.
YouTube Music is gradually making its way to all the countries, and only this year Google decided to launch it in India, where it is priced at Rs 99 for one month. Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google claimed recently that India is YouTube’s fastest-growing market, and more than 15 million users have downloaded the Music app since its launch.
It’s strange that YouTube, with more than 1 billion active users hasn’t read the trends of people wanting to consume music. Theirs is one of the biggest repositories of content, and converting them into music would have been easier than getting hold of music rights for certain labels.
Apple Music and Spotify have reaped the benefits of this delay, which shows the gulf that YouTube Music has to cover, before it can be recognised as a force in the segment.
Getting people to pay for music doesn’t come easy, ask Gaana from India, which claims to have notched over 100 million users, but can’t share the numbers for those paying for its service.
Even YouTube Music has a free tier in markets like India, which is stuffed with annoying ads, but people don’t mind them, as long as the content of their choice is available.
YouTube Music faces big fight against the established players, and with more platforms coming up (offering better deals), Music surely has its work cut out to add millions of users from now.
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