Why are Google’s Premium efforts moving so slowly?
One reason why Google is only now building momentum could be its new, more focused branding strategy. Since introducing the new YouTube Premium and YouTube Music dual-brand in 2018, the company has mostly stuck with it and steadily added improvements to both services, making them a more compelling package. Of course, stuffing the free version of YouTube with more and more ads andaggressive countermeasures against ad blockershave likely played a part, too.
The company hasn’t always been this focused with its entertainment efforts. It first introduced its streaming service Google Music in 2011, which was rebranded to Google Play Music just a year later. It was initially pitched as an online locker for music purchased elsewhere, with an All Access streaming subscription added later in 2013. The company then created YouTube Music Key, a subscription that included ad-free access to music videos on YouTubeandmusic on Play Music, breaking down the barriers between its two separate products a little.
The subscription was then rebranded to YouTube Red in 2015 to include ad-free access to all of YouTube along with the new YouTube Music service living alongside Play Music. Only when YouTube Red was renamed to YouTube Premium in 2018, Google announced that it planned to shut down Google Play Music in favor of YouTube Music. It then took two more years for Google to slowly bring YouTube Music up to par and fully sunset Google Play Music.
The history of Google’s entertainment efforts
YouTube launches
Google buys YouTube
Google Music launches
Google Music is rebranded to Google Play Music
Google Play Music All Access subscription launches
YouTube Music Key launches, adding ad-free music videos to the mix
YouTube Red launches for both music and ad-free YouTube videos; YouTube Music launches as video-focused app
Podcasts are added to Google Play Music
YouTube Red is rebranded to Premium, new YouTube Music version is announced that will replace Google Play Music; Google Podcasts launches as a standalone service
Google Play Music is shut down
YouTube Music gets podcasts support
Google Podcasts will shut down in April
In the meantime, Spotify has been Spotify since 2008. The company may have added more features over the years, like podcasts and audiobooks, and has its own fair share of controversies, but it never felt the need to completely upend its brand identity over and over again. In this time, Spotify has become synonymous with music streaming for big parts of the world, with the service also consistently available in more countries than Play Music and YouTube Music. It’s almost as if coherent branding and a reliable feature set pay off.
To be fair, Google only started offering a paid entertainment subscription in 2013, and only expanded it to include ad-free videos on YouTube in 2015. Spotify, and also Netflix, definitely both had a head start. It’s also clear that the entertainment landscape has changed a lot in the past decade. It’s still worth thinking about how things could have ended up differently if Google presented a more coherent strategy from the get-go.
Things are certainly looking up for YouTube right now, though. According to YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, the companyhas a lot more planned for the future. It wants to leverage more AI features to “enhance creative imagination,” improve artist exposure, and add both more short- and long-term content. Cohen also teased that YouTube Premium and YouTube Music will become available in more regions this year. This is a continuation of the efforts Google has put into YouTube Premium and YouTube Music over the past years. In particular, the latter has received many new good features in recent months.
