YouTube Music Key takes on Spotify as streaming music battle heats up

Video site launches six-month free trial of its long-rumoured music subscription service

YouTube is taking on Spotify with a new streaming music service called YouTube Music Key, which will launch this week.

The service will offer a mixture of audio and video streams, including full albums from artists signed to all three major labels, and hundreds of independent labels.

It will be available in free and paid versions, with the former funded by advertising. The latter will cost £9.99 a month, although early adopters will get their first six months for free, and then a discounted rate of £7.99 a month.

YouTube Music Key will sit alongside parent company Google’s existing subscription music service, Google Play Music All Access. Anyone paying for Music Key will also get an All Access subscription, and vice versa.

Google is describing the six-month trial as a “beta”, which for now will be restricted to seven countries: the UK, US, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland and Ireland. The beta will be invitation-only, focusing at first on people who are already heavy music-video viewers on YouTube.

“YouTube today is the biggest music service on the planet, thanks to our artists, our fans, our partners and the millions of official music videos, remixes, covers, mashups … you name it,” YouTube’s music content partnerships boss, Anjali Southward, told the Guardian.

“We want YouTube to continue to be the best place for fans and artists to connect. We want fans to be able to connect with more of the music that they enjoy, and artists to have more opportunities to connect, as well as more revenue.”

The new service will initially be available through YouTube’s apps for Androidand iOS devices, as well as on its website. The company is placing particular emphasis on mobile, however.

Paying subscribers will be able to download songs and videos to their smartphones and tablets, and listen to them in the background while using other apps. “It’s definitely a mobile proposition, the subscription,” said YouTube’s partner technology manager, Eddie Boyd.