There are few aspects of online life that Google hasn’t managed to smash its way into over the years, buying up competitors, covering everything in a healthy slathering of doodles, and happily setting up its omnipresent shop. It’s a familiar enough story at this point that it’s almost more remarkable to be reminded that there are a few avenues—social media and music streaming, most notably—where the mega-giant hasn’t managed to get people to bite.
But it’s like they say: If at first you don’t succeed, try to use YouTube to launch yourself again. Bloomberg reports that Google has just announced the planned successor to its much-shrugged-at Google Play Music today, revealing that it’ll be a subscription-based service under the company’s YouTube brand. The company has already lured Warner in for licensing deals for the service—internally known as Remix—and is still working through negotiations with Universal and Sony.
The question, as always, will be what this new offering has that other services don’t; brands like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and more are constantly fighting for share in the streaming market, offering free subscription plans, exclusive albums, and fancy streaming bells and whistles to help lure customers in. It remains to be seen what Google can offer to combat that, beyond the ubiquity of the YouTube brand.