Enjoy music on YouTube without ads interrupting
VIDEO-SHARING platform YouTube has finally brought YouTube Music and YouTube Premium to the Philippines. Both are paid subscription services for ad-free streaming alongside other features and original content.
“YouTube Music is a reimagined, made-for-music app and web player with official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers, and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else — all simply organized and personalized,” a company release said.
YouTube Premium meanwhile is a service that allows users to play songs and videos in the background while they toggle between apps. It also gives users access to exclusive content from YouTube Originals.
While YouTube Music’s app is free-to-download, the free version is ad-supported so one will still have ads interrupting the music listening experience, but for those who want to go ad-free, YouTube is offering the YouTube Music Premium version which also allows for offline downloads.
“Filipinos love music. Every day people use YouTube to access their favorite songs and music videos to accompany them in their day-to-day activities. The launch of YouTube Music here in the Philippines gives them a whole new way to enjoy music they love,” Gabby Roxas, head of marketing at Google Philippines said in the release.
Launched in 2018, YouTube Premium was originally called Music Key in 2014 and offered ad-free streaming of music videos from participating labels on YouTube and Google Play Music. The following year, the service was re-branded into YouTube Red and offered ad-free access to all videos on YouTube and included original content from its content creators including Pewdiepie, the platform’s biggest content creator at 102 million subscribers at the time of this writing.
The premium service underwent another rebranding in 2018 as YouTube Premium and developed an offshoot music service, YouTube Music. Alongside the rebranding, the service was introduced in Canada and several European countries. On Nov. 6, the service entered Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.
“At the heart of YouTube, we want to make sure that it’s an experience that consumers like, so for the past few months, we’ve been really doing a lot of research: looking at the interface, ensuring that the playlist is there,” Mr. Roxas said during the launch event.
YouTube Premium is offered at P159 a month from the Google Play Store and P169 from the Apple App Store. It includes membership to YouTube Music Premium. A YouTube Family Plan where a household of a maximum of five family members (plus the account holder) is also available at P239 a month from the Google Play Store and P309 at the Apple App Store.
Premium access to only the YouTube Music Premium app costs P129 at the Google Play Store and P169 from the Apple App Store. YouTube Music Premium Family plan is priced at P199 from the Google Play Store and P259 from the Apple App Store
Student rates are also available for students of select schools. YouTube Music Student is P65 for both Google Play Store and Apple App Store and YouTube Premium Student is P95 for both app stores.
“The pricing for the App Store is different because Apple takes a cut from the transaction,” a note on the release said.
For more information on the premium services, visit youtube.com/premium. — Zsarlene B. Chua