Why YouTube's Music Key service is a big deal

Sorry, Taylor Swift, but streaming music is not going away.

Just ask YouTube.

The world's No. 1 home for discovering new music is set to launch a paid subscription service Tuesday. For $10 monthly, you can listen to virtually any music you can think of — just not Swift's complete 1989 album. More on that in a minute.

The notion is similar to other services like Spotify, Rhapsody and Beats Music, but I think YouTube will find the largest audience and bring streaming music to the mass market.

To kick off the service, YouTube opens with a private invite-only beta, offered just to the heaviest music consumers on the site. But if you're really in a rush to give it a try, I've got a cool workaround for you. Sign up for Google's other music series, Google Play Music, commit to $10 monthly, and you get to be a YouTube Music Key subscriber as well. (It gets even better: the first two months are free.)

YouTube is the No. 1 place for folks to discover new music. Think about it. Music videos don't air on MTV anymore, but all of the latest pop acts release their videos on the No. 1 video site. So even if kids don't want to watch the video when they come home from school, they can listen to the latest hits on demand.

And YouTube has way more than just the hits, which is why I love it. I'm constantly getting lost in rarities for hours. I find rare concert tracks, TV show appearances and the like that don't exist anywhere else. And with the pay service, we'll not only be able to watch videos (and hear the music in the background on smartphones) ad-free, we'll also be able to make playlists of our favorites and download them to our phones. (YouTube says some songs may not make the cut, depending upon rights. We'll see how deep the selection will be Tuesday when it launches.)

I think the new YouTube service will trump Spotify and other rivals because of its sheer size.

There is so much music available, and to launch the service YouTube signed deals with the major labels, which added millions of additional songs.

Now you probably heard that Swift, the No. 1 pop star today, recently yanked 1989 off Spotify, because she felt the service didn't pay enough royalties. (The full album isn't on YouTube Music Key either.) Other artists (Jimmy Buffet, Radiohead's Thom Yorke) have offered similar sentiments, but come on guys, streaming isn't going away.

Do artists have to be better compensated? No question about it. Spotify has reeled in 12.5 million paying subscribers, which is a start in the right direction. The company has paid out $2 billion in royalties so far and with a larger audience will pay out even more. Maybe YouTube can turn streaming music into a mass-market business with tens of millions of subscribers, and musicians can start making money again.

Music downloads on iTunes are not selling as well as they used to, CDs have become almost non-existent in stores, and streaming music sales keep rising. It's the future. The celestial jukebox at our fingertips.

And, ahem,YouTube is the No. 2 most used app, after Facebook, according to comScore Media Metrix, while streaming personalized radio service Pandora is No. 5.

Folks love streaming and aren't going back to CDs.


USA today