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YouTube’s new music video policy will be super annoying

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

  • Updated:

YouTube is a treat for music fans. The breadth of music available on the social video platform is staggering, and with so much of the stuff, you can find on YouTube unavailable on streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal it offers music fans something they can’t find elsewhere. The fly in the ointment, however, is the same fly that has been upsetting the online music situation since Napster first burst onto the scene, artist royalties.

Whether or not you believe that digital music files belong to the public domain is inconsequential here, what matters is that the music creators can cause problems, for the platforms that share their work, if they don’t feel they’re sufficiently compensated for their work. YouTube has been on the receiving end of this treatment for a while, and they’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to make users sign up to a subscription-based service that’d give them more room to compensate artists for their work.

YouTube’s new music video policy will be super annoying

YouTube monetizes its content using ads, which can be annoying but are a price worth paying for most YouTube users. For people who use YouTube mainly to listen to music, this is all about to change.

In a recent interview the head of YouTube’s music service, Lyor Cohen, said that users will start to see more ads in between music videos. This means that YouTube will no longer be a reliable music provider as the flow will go as listeners will constantly be bombarded with ads in between their favorite songs. The plan, according to Cohen, is to “frustrate and seduce” YouTube’s music listeners into signing up for a premium subscription model.

YouTube has a lot of catching up to do if it is going to start competing with the like of Spotify or Apple Music, and this frustrate and seduce method is an attempt to use its clout to try and claw back at them. The bottom line here, however, is that if you’re a casual music listener and you don’t use YouTube for much else, but you don’t think your music listening warrants a $10 a month subscription, YouTube is about to get a lot more annoying.

Tell us what you think about YouTube’s new music video policy in the comments below.

Follow me on Twitter: @PatrickDevaney_

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney is a news reporter for Softonic, keeping readers up to date on everything affecting their favorite apps and programs. His beat includes social media apps and sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. Patrick also covers antivirus and security issues, web browsers, the full Google suite of apps and programs, and operating systems like Windows, iOS, and Android.

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