I’d imagine that the only reason why YouTube isn’t blocked at my day job is because a bunch of people use YouTube to listen to music during the day. Based on the popularity of Psy, Justin Bieber and all those official Vevo channels, I’d hazard that there are millions of people around the world who use YouTube for the same purpose.

A leaked YouTube subscription service appears to be targeting just that group of people. The YouTube Music Key service will give users ad-free playback of YouTube music videos with the ability for offline and audio only playback.

The YouTube Music Key subscription will cost users $9.99 per month. For that, users will have access to a library that’s nearly 20 million songs large that includes “concerts, covers and remixes” in addition to the standard original tracks. That apparently puts them on par with Spotify and Rdio.

The real selling points for YouTube Music Key is everything beyond the music library. This is going to allow you to go ad-free on which ever platform you listen in. There will be an audio-only mode that lets you listen without burning as much bandwidth as you would from streaming music videos. On top of that, there’s an offline listening mode. I don’t know how that would work but I’d imagine someone without a large data plan would appreciate it.

As of writing, Google and YouTube haven’t officially announced Music Key so we’re a little short on details. I’m not a Spotify user (go Canada go) so I don’t know how Music Key can differentiate itself from Spotify or if it’ll be a straight clone. Without a differentiation, I can’t see how Music Key will succeed unless it’s just shoved down everyone’s throats on YouTube and Google until it succeeds.

Source: Ars Technica