YouTube Music comes to India

Having completed 11 years of service in India, YouTube has over 225 million subscriptions in the country alone. The Google-owned video platform, which has penetrated 80 percent of India’s internet universe, is all set to launch for Indians its ad-supported version of YouTube Music for free and YouTube Music Premium, which offers background listening, offline downloads and an ad-free experience for a subscription rate of Rs 99 per month.

The announcement was made by Google India through its official blog recently. According to the blog post, more than one billion music fans come to YouTube each month to be part of music culture and discover new music while over two million artists come to share their voices and art with the world.

“We are introducing YouTube Music, our made-for-music app with the magic of YouTube: making the world of music easier to explore and more personalised than ever to users in India. The days of jumping back and forth between multiple music apps and YouTube are over. Whether you want to listen, watch or discover, it’s all here,” the post reads.

YouTube Music is a new streaming service made for music lovers with a host of features: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus You Tube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos – all the ways music moves in one place.

Already, Apple and Amazon operate their music services in the region in addition to local players like Gaana, Saavn and others. Spotify also made an India launch a strategic focus this year. However, unlike Spotify, YouTube Music is fully licensed as it enters the region — a potential competitive advantage for the time being. It also has a deal with Samsung where Galaxy S10 owners can gain four months of YouTube Premium/YouTube Music Premium for free. Google Play Music subscribers can get a YouTube Music Premium membership as part of their monthly subscription.