YouTube plans to annoy music listeners into subscribing by playing more ads

YouTube is going to start serving heavy music listeners more ads in the hopes of annoying them into becoming paid subscribers to the company’s upcoming new music service, according to YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen in an interview at SXSW, via Bloomberg.

While that no doubt will be frustrating to users who treat the site like a free streaming alternative, it’s a move that makes a lot of sense for YouTube. After all, Spotify has more or less been using the same business model to convert free users to its paid premium tiers for years, and it currently leads the streaming industry in overall subscribers. “There’s a lot more people in our funnel that we can frustrate and seduce to become subscribers,” says Cohen.

In a statement to The Verge, a YouTube spokesperson clarified Cohen’s remarks, commenting that “Our top priority at YouTube is to deliver a great user experience and that includes ensuring users do not encounter excessive ad loads. We do not seek to specifically increase ad loads across YouTube. 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.”

The strategy of shoving more ads at users is a win for YouTube, no matter how you look at it. Either more users are annoyed into subscribing or YouTube makes even more money from increased ad revenue. And there’s the added benefit that bringing on paying customers to a music service could help smooth over bridges between YouTube and the music industry, which is often frustrated by the fact that YouTube hosts millions of videos that violate musical copyrights — videos that make YouTube money but not the artists and labels.

YouTube’s new service is still expected to launch sometime this year and combine aspects of the existing YouTube Red and Google Play Music services into a single package.

Update March 21st, 7:00pm: Updated story to include statement from YouTube.