YouTube has evolved a lot since its early days, where in addition to keeping to its core business, they have also expanded into offering music and also originals via YouTube Red. There are even rumors that YouTube could be planning a new music streaming service, but recent comments by YouTube’s CEO has cast some doubt on that.Speaking at the Code Media conference, YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki emphasized that YouTube Red is a music service. “YouTube Red is a service that is really a music service. We have an amazing collection of music. We have all these music videos. And then on top of that it has the ability to watch all of YouTube ads free, with the background and offline services. And on top of that we’ve actually been doing a number of YouTube Originals.”
If that’s really how YouTube sees its Red service, then launching a new and separate music streaming service doesn’t make much sense. Wojcicki also revealed that the company is planning on expanding Red’s availability to more countries this year following YouTube’s completion of music deals.
“This year you’ll also see Red expand into many more countries. We’re only in five countries right now. Now that we’ve finished all of our music deals we’re actually going to be expanding to a large number of countries.” Wojcicki did not mention specifically which countries they would be expanding into, but stated that it would be around a hundred, which should greatly expand YouTube Red’s availability.
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