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In what appears to be a clone of Spotify’s streaming music model, Google-owned only video power player, YouTube, will make a play for eardrums.
Operating on a ad-supported or paid subscription model, the streaming music product has been in the works and rumors have been swirling.
Spotify has been engaged in an ongoing knife fight in the streaming music space, parrying with a handful of other hungry competitors, including Pandora, Rdio and Samsung’s Music Hub, released last year, which has just been slated to cross over to non Samsung devices with its streaming product.
Now that Apple's iTunes, Amazon.com and Google’s YouTube are all in the streaming game, recording and entertainment companies could secure higher prices for their content than they have with Spotify, according to GigaOM reporter Jeff John Roberts. (NASDAQ:AAPL , NASDAQ:AMZN)
It will be interesting to see how Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) brands this new play. The new YouTube product will require development of a mobile app, complete with a new aesthetic (yes, that’s my opinion). If the online streaming service will be an integrated feature of the YouTube site already in place – and you know it probably will – it may require the company to slightly revamp the entire online product. If they decide not to, it may not matter, as long as its mobile app is killer.
