YouTube wants to ‘frustrate’ music listeners by playing more ads

As per reports, online video-streaming platform YouTube apparently wants to frustrate its users by playing more advertisements right in the middle of a music video. The reports regarding this matter appeared online after the Alphabet Inc-led company’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen made the said shocking statement.

He led the keynote at the recent South by Southwest music festival, wherein he said that they plan on expanding their target towards users who make use of the website as a form of free music service. He is believed to have made the statement as a result of YouTube’s effort to push a music service of their own forward. The upcoming music streaming platform is expected to compete with other significant giants, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime Service.

“You’re not going to be happy after you are jamming ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and you get an ad right after that,” Mr. Cohen reportedly said in an interview. The idea behind frustrating and seduce users through the new change is done with an objective to push them toward paying for their new subscription service. YouTube’s upcoming paid music subscription will function just like Spotify does.

The advertisements will target explicitly toward those users who listen to music for longs hours in a day. As noted by Bloomberg, the company also wishes to silence all those critics who have shamed the YouTube service for harming the recording industry. YouTube, on many occasions, has been criticised for hosting music for free. As can be recalled, YouTube signed a second global, multi-year agreement with a major music label in 2017. This move came after rumors of YouTube considering expanding their subscription business began emerging online.

“We do not seek to increase ad loads on YouTube specifically. For a specific subset of users who use YouTube like a paid music service today – and would benefit most from additional features – we may show more ads or promotional prompts to upsell to our paid service,” Mr. Cohen further added.