YouTube Music
music streaming website
YouTube Music is a music streaming service developed by the American video platform YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. The service is designed with an interface that allows users to simultaneously explore music audios and music videos from YouTube-based genres, playlists and recommendations. On December 1, 2020, YouTube Music replaced Google Play Music as Google's primary brand for music streaming. In April 2023, the service expanded its offerings to include support for podcasts shortly before Google Podcasts was shut down.
History
The YouTube Music app was unveiled in October 2015 and released the following month; its release came alongside the unveiling of YouTube Premium (originally called YouTube Red), a larger subscription service that covers the entirety of the YouTube platform, including the Music app. Although redundant to Google's existing Google Play Music All Access subscription service, the app was designed for users who primarily consume music through YouTube.
On May 17, 2018, YouTube announced a new version of the YouTube Music service, including a web-based desktop player and redesigned mobile app, more dynamic recommendations based on various factors, and Google artificial intelligence technology to search songs based on lyrics and descriptions. In addition, YouTube Music became a separate subscription service (positioned as a more direct competitor to Apple Music and Spotify), offering ad-free and background/audio-only streaming, and downloading for offline playback, for music content on YouTube. The service's benefits continued to be available as part of the existing YouTube Premium service and to Google Play Music All Access subscribers. The YouTube Music subscription was priced in line with its competitors at US$9.99 per month; the price of YouTube Premium was concurrently increased to $11.99 for new subscribers.
“YouTube Music” enters the record as music streaming website. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what YouTube, Music and music can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“YouTube Music” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, YouTube, Music and music provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28404534. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 2023, 2015 and 2018.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “YouTube Music”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow YouTube Music primary sources, YouTube Music archive and YouTube research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “YouTube Music” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.