YouTube's Ad-Free, 'Music Key' Subscription Service Coming In Next Few Months

by Joshua Gulick — Thursday, February 19, 2015, 01:37 PM EDT

Despite increasing competition from Facebook and Google’s own expectation that growth would decelerate, YouTube is growing steadily and launching new features. Many of the features are geared toward helping its content creators monetize their work, but one in particular is getting most of the attention. Within a few months, Google plans to launch a subscription option known as Music Key. Music Key is currently in beta, but Google is “fine tuning the experience" for a wide public launch.

Google's YouTube is growing and trying out a new subscription service, Music Key.

(Image Source: Google)

What makes Music Key stand out is that it’s an ad-free section of YouTube, which has heretofore relied heavily on ad sales to bring in revenue. That’s not to say YouTube hasn’t ever given subscription services a shot – it started subscription channels a little over a year ago – but the bulk of YouTube’s content remains ad-based.

With Facebook’s own video sharing features drawing users, Google might be looking at Music Key as a way to improve viewer loyalty – if you’re paying for the service, it’s harder to move platforms. And, obviously, the service will appeal to music lovers who want to ditch the ads.

At the same time, Google’s Robert Kyncl recently talked up Google Preferred at a Code/Media conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Where most ads can be skipped after several seconds, content creators who take part in Google Preferred can include ads that users can’t skip, which drives up revenue. Content creators are seeing good results from this, and the feature is catching on. So, if things keep moving in this direction for YouTube, you may find yourself paying more to watch movies – either with your time or with cash.

Tags: Google, Facebook, (nasdaq:goog), nasdaqfb, music key, google preferred, re/code

Joshua Gulick

Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.