YouTube To Overwhelm Heavy Music Users With Ads

Heavy music users on YouTube are about to be deluged with ads in an effort to encourage them to switch to Google’s new paid music streaming service, according to YouTube Global Head Of Music Lyor Cohen.

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YouTube knows it needs to change its image as a service that underpays musicians; and the best way to do that is getting users to pay for subscriptions. A new music streaming service, already being tested by thousands of Google employees, is designed to encourage just that. 

Starting at launch, the new YouTube streaming service will “frustrate and seduce” heavy music users of YouTube’s current free service, YouTube Global Head Of Music Lyor Cohen said at SXSW.  Strategies include exclusive videos, playlists and other offerings that will appeal to music fans, along with a lot more ads. 

“You’re not going to be happy after you are jamming ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and you get an ad right after that,” said Cohen. 

It’s a major cultural shift for YouTube parent Google – a company built on FREE.

“There’s a lot more people in our funnel that we can frustrate and seduce to become subscribers,” Cohen said. “Once we do that, trust me, all that noise will be gone and articles people write about that noise [of YouTube underpaying] will be gone.”