YouTube Introduces Paid Music Service ‘Music Key’

Earlier today (Nov. 12), YouTube announced their paid music service, YouTube Music Key. It's an upgrade that offers more features, music-wise, like better quality audio and the option of paying a monthly fee of $7.99 for bonus features, like getting rid of those pesky ads.

According to the New York Times, this is something YouTube has been working toward for more than a year now. Because YouTube has become an unsuspecting -- yet vital -- tool used in the music industry, it seems only to make sense to have a feature that will garner higher royalty payouts to record labels. Seeing as how YouTube views now count toward chart positions it seems like the natural progression of things to offer perks to viewers who pay a small fee.

Music Key will be available to users in the US, Britian and other parts of Europe within the next few days, but -- in a move traditional to the ways of Google testing -- only to those who have an invitation to join. The first six months of service will be free, until the monthly fee of $7.99 is put into place. Users who sign up when it is open to the general public next year will be charged $9.99 per month.

YouTube is also planning on a complete overhaul of their music section, even for users who opt out of the paid service. They'll soon be offering complete albums on the site, but only paid subscribers will have the added bonus of being able to keep the videos running in the background on mobile devices or saving songs to listen to when not connected to the Internet.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and which artists will opt in for the paid streaming site -- particularly Taylor Swift, considering that whole Spotify debacle.