YouTube Introduces New Music App; Prominent Media Analyst Responds

By most measures, the world's largest music service isn't Spotify, Apple Music, or Pandora Media Inc (NYSE: P), rather it is YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet.

In fact, YouTube also happens to be the world's largest free music service, as users can explore any artist, group, band or musician from virtually every country.

Psy's "Gangnam Style" YouTube video was played nearly 2.5 billion times. In fact, BuzzFeed reported that all five of YouTube's top viewing videos of all times are music videos.

Related Link: Citi Reveals Strong YouTube Growth Numbers

The New App

According to Re/code, YouTube is rolling out a new free dedicated music app (that will likely be ad supported) with the option for users to pay for paid subscription. The publication also noted that YouTube's new app differentiates from the competition, as it offers video.

Rich Tullo, a media analyst for Albert Fried isn't fully convinced this is the right move for YouTube. Speaking to Benzinga, the analyst said that unless YouTube is able to disable video, it may not "take much share," as data usage and battery life are "considerations out of home." In addition, he suggested that what YouTube plans on offering its customers "sounds an awful lot like the Music Genome Project and we wonder if Pandora will let that stand."

Is It Disruptive?

On the other hand, Tullo noted that some of the biggest names in music today, such as Justin Bieber and Adele, were initially discovered on YouTube.

"Moreover, YouTube distribution of music is truly disruptive – a term we reserve for very few technologies," Tullo also told Benzinga. "If artists recording can be discovered, promoted and monetized on YouTube (at better economics than record labels offer), then we argue the recording industry is disruptive."

Bottom line, Tullo suggested that YouTube "would have been better off using the Songza [note: Songza was acquired by Google in 2014] curation stack."

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