New news on Youtube is good and bad
There are two YouTube related stories happening at the moment. First up, the YouTube arm of Google will be launching a paid music streaming service by the end of this summer. Supposedly, YouTube partnered with “hundreds of major and independent” music labels for the new service. YouTube reps supposedly said,
“We’re adding subscription-based features for music on YouTube with this in mind – to bring our music partners new revenue streams in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars YouTube already generates for them each year,”
As you can expect, not all the music labels are too happy about this though as there is a darker side to this idea. Supposedly, Google plans to block the YouTube content of record labels who don’t get on board with Google’s new program. Here’s a quote with a few more details,
The news comes as some music trade groups have criticized YouTube’s plans to potentially block the content of certain labels from appearing on YouTube’s free, ad-supported Website unless they sign deals to participate in the new, subscription streaming music service. The deals that YouTube is offering are on “highly unfavorable, and non-negotiable terms,” according to a news release issued by the Worldwide Independent Music Industry Network last month. Reuters
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. It doesn’t seem very Googley of Google to be strong-arming the music industry just to get their way, but they have done it before. Of course, it’s also possible this report’s sources are inaccurate, so we will keep an eye out.
Speaking of keeping an eye out, the second big YouTube story of the day regards the use of YouTube live streaming on the Chromecast. Previously, being able to live stream content to your Chromecast only worked from your computer. Google has added some new functionality to the device though. Google updated the Chromecast so now you can push live events from YouTube straight to the TV screen via Chromecast on your mobile device. Handy!
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