Listen to Lots of Music on YouTube? Expect Way More Ads
YouTube plans to increase the number of ads seen by people who use the service to listen to a lot of music, in order to encourage them to buy paid subscriptions, according to Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music. Bloomberg reports that in an interview at SXSW, where he was also a keynote speaker, Cohen said that YouTube plans to “frustrate and seduce” people who, in Bloomberg's words, “treat YouTube like a music service, passively listening for long periods of time.”
“You’re not going to be happy after you are jamming ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and you get an ad right after that,” Cohen said.
According to Bloomberg, a new YouTube music subscription service is in the works that will feature “exclusive videos, playlists, and other offerings that will appeal to die-hard music fans.” It's part of an effort to “be good partners” with the music industry, Cohen said.
Pitchfork has reached out to YouTube representatives for comment.
YouTube has long faced criticism that it does not pay enough to artists and labels. Among YouTube’s vocal critics are Trent Reznor, who said that “it is built on the backs of free, stolen content,” and Thom Yorke, who once compared YouTube and Google to Nazi Germany. In 2016, over 1,000 artists signed a letter to European officials, contending that services like YouTube were “unfairly siphoning value away from the music community.”
In response, YouTube has suggested that it has paid billions of dollars to the music industry. YouTube has also attempted multiple subscription services in the past. Back in 2015, the platform launched YouTube Red, a paid service that includes original content, as well as ad-free listening and viewing. Last year, the live television service YouTube TV was launched.
Read Pitchfork’s feature “How to Be a Responsible Music Fan in the Age of Streaming.”
