YouTube launching music streaming, rebranding YouTube Red

On Tuesday May 22 YouTube is launching a new music streaming service – YouTube Music. The new service will be available in Australia on launch at a cost of $11.99 a month.

YouTube has also revealed its is rebranding YouTube Red as YouTube Premium. The YouTube Music service will eventually replace Google Play Music.

Highlights from the YouTube media release:

Whether you want to listen, watch or discover, it’s all here.

YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else – all simply organised and personalised. For the first time, all the ways music moves you can be found in one place.

While fans can enjoy the new ad-supported version of YouTube Music for free, we’re also launching YouTube Music Premium, a paid membership that gives you background listening, downloads and an ad-free experience for $11.99 a month in Australia.

To extend the features of YouTube Music Premium beyond the music app, we’re soon introducing YouTube Premium, the new name for our YouTube Red subscription service. YouTube Premium includes ad-free, background and offline across all of YouTube, as well as access to all YouTube Originals including Cobra Kai, Step Up: High Water and Youth & Consequences. YouTube Premium will continue to provide an ad-free experience, background play, and downloads across the millions of videos on YouTube. But because it includes our brand new YouTube Music service, the price will be $11.99 for all new members.

Current YouTube Red and Google Play Music subscribers in the US, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and Mexico will continue to get the features they already enjoy at the same price they pay today. Google Play Music subscribers in all other countries will automatically have access to YouTube Music Premium as soon as it becomes available there. And if you use Google Play Music, nothing will change – you’ll still be able to access all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always.

Starting Tuesday, we’re rolling out early access to the new YouTube Music experience in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea.