Google announce YouTube Music Key subscription service to take on Spotify

Following months of speculation, Google has today confirmed they are entering the music-streaming service, with their new product, YouTube Music Key.

Set to being roll-out today via an invite-only beta, YouTube Music Key will see the site allow viewers to watch music videos on a paid-for subscription, minus any advertising, and similarly to Spotify, allow users to save the videos to watch offline at a later point.

Costing up to £9.99 in the UK (or £7.99 for beta users) when the service goes live, the subscription to YouTube Music Key will also give users access to Google Play Music, the company’s direct rival to Spotify.

The service will also offer users the ability to listen to songs that do not have an associated video (e.g. album tracks), instead the album’s cover-art will be used in-place of the visual.

As per the image above, YouTube Music Key will be added as an extra ‘tab’ to a YouTube user’s dashboard on desktop (in addition to ‘What To Watch’ and ‘My Subscriptions’), whilst Android users will have added functionality for a pull-down from inside any app (therefore negating the need to go directly into the service to shuffle/change songs).

Though the service is set to go fully-live at some point toward the middle of summer 2015, those with a Google Mail / Gmail address can sign-up now to request a beta invite (here).