Your Key to Great Music – How YouTube is Battling Piracy

Google is making great strides in their battle against piracy this year with their two updates Pirate 2.0 and their YouTube Music Key release. While piracy has long been a standing issue on the internet, it is good to see one of the major internet moguls taking a keen interest in preserving the security of privatised and copyrighted data.

YouTube Music Key – A Subscription Service

For too long have YouTubers eluded the music industry by posting copyrighted music and videos en-masse. While YouTube has continued to be an industry leader in helping people discover new music personas, they have also been a huge pain to the music industry’s bottom line.

The landing of YouTube Music key subscription service on November 12th, 2014 will be a big step in preventing piracy and will make connecting musicians and labels with aficionados much easier. Similar to what Netflix did for the movie industry, the YouTube music key will provide streamed music to paid subscribers. The November promotional fee is just $7.99 and subscribers after the initial beta phase will need to pay $9.99 per month, but this is good news.

Look Ma, Ads-Free

Music key will offer many perks over Pandora and Spotify and regular YouTube channels, the biggest of these is being free of annoying ads and the ability to watch and play music offline. (Make sure to sign up for the beta invite for more possible perks, including a free beta version trial).

Additional Perks Granted

Google will also be making major changes to YouTube, these include more visibility to music channels, Android Apps, iOS apps, and more. They will also be including top-level navigation, suggestions, trends, and discographies and biographies.

Although these moves are a bit late in the streaming music industry, Google may challenge other music streaming sites to provide better perks for their customers.

Tying Music Key Into Pirate 2.0

Music Key is a bold move in the fight against media piracy on the interweb. This YouTube program ties in nicely with Pirate 2.0 in October of 2014, which set new parameters in online piracy and seeks to de-list sites with multiple DMCAs and bootlegged content.

Music key is also likely in response to charges against Google by the media for allowing easy access to illegal copies of digital media like TV programs, music and movies. With the changes made to their media handling in August, October, and now November of this year, we can expect a thorough deep cleaning of the search results and program content Google has control over.

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