According to a report by The Verge, has merged its YouTube Music ay Music teams into a single unit, marking the first step toward a possible creation of a unified experience across a single app. ile a subscription to ay Music or YouTube Red already includes access to the other service ( both have a decent chunk of content that can be accessed for free), told the Verge that improvements to the way the two services interact could be coming: en asked about the rate of YouTube Red signups during phabet’s fourth-quarter conference call last month, CEO Sundar chai also alluded to some changes to ’s music streaming strategy. “ have YouTube Red, YouTube Music we do offer it across ay Music as well,” he said. “You will see us invest more, more countries, more original content. And we’ll bring together the experiences we have over the course of this year, so it’s even more compelling for users.” How it may play out: Streaming is rapidly becoming one of the music industry’s biggest business, but it’s unclear how much of the pie actually owns. Spotify is still far away the biggest music streaming service with some 40 million subscribers, but Apple Music is gaining fast, having crossed the 20 million threshold after just a year a half. However, while has yet to release any subscriber numbers for either ay Music or YouTube Red, which are bundled, it has a built-in advantage by pre-installing the app on most Android phones, much like Apple does with Apple Music. And a simple, single experience across YouTube ay Music could prove to be a serious threat to Spotify’s dominance.
