Google is set to ramp up the war with Spotify and Apple Music in Ireland with its new streaming service YouTube Music.
The service was unveiled in May, and initially launched in the United States, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. As of Monday, it is available in 17 countries, including Ireland and the UK.
The service offers an ad-supported free model and subscription-based YouTube Music Premium, which costs €9.99 per month. The paid-for version offers background listening and downloads in addition to removing the ads.
One of the strengths of YouTube Music is Google’s smart search; if you can’t remember the name of a song, you can still hunt it down by using a description or some of the lyrics.
YouTube is offering a three-month trial of YouTube Music Premium to its users. Subscribers to Google Play Music will automatically get access to the premium product.
The video-sharing site is also making YouTube Premium available to Irish customers, which combines YouTube Music Premium and access to ad-free, offline and downloads across the entire YouTube catalogue, plus the YouTube Originals content.
YouTube Premium is available for €11.99 per month.
