Rumors have been swirling around about a new YouTube Music streaming service for quite some time, and we've been hearing that Google would officially announce the service in March, probably at SXSW. Now it turns out that might not have been completely accurate.
YouTube's head of music, Lyor Cohen, will definitely still be speaking at a keynote at the annual music festival, but a spokesman clarified that YouTube never anticipated unveiling the new streaming service at that keynote. Google already has the groundwork laid for the service with deals with major record labels, so it's odd to put the announcement off even further.
We've seen several hints in Google products that point towards the new service, but it's still pretty fuzzy how Google actually wants to sell the service. Will they merge Google Play Music and YouTube Red, or have yet another streaming service/app tossed in on top of their current $10 monthly subscription? The YouTube Music application already does a pretty good job of acting as a solid music player with a GPM backend, so another app or service would be competing directly with that.
But hey, maybe it'll make a splash at Google I/O this year.
source: Variety
