YouTube to launch ad-free subscription service, still optimistic about imminent music service
Susan Wojcicki CEO of YouTube
Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, discussed a variety of topics in her interview with Re/code’s Peter Kafka and Liz Gannes at the Code/Mobile conference, held yesterday.
The most important information to come out of the interview was the fact that Google Inc’s YouTube are currently working on paid-subscription services, which could involve an ad-free service; however, Wojcicki wouldn’t offer any specifics.
“YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is great because it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; but there’s going to be a point where people don’t want to see the ads”, Wojcicki said in her interview.
Consumers want a choice, they will sit through the ads, or they will pay a fee so they don’t have to. A variety of apps allow the choice, so why not YouTube?
She noted in the interview, “We’ve been thinking about other ways it might make sense for us [at YouTube]. We’re early in that process, but if you look at media over time, most of them have both ads and subscription services,” she said.
Wojcicki is a veteran Google executive who took over as CEO in February. Prior to YouTube, she oversaw products like AdSense, AdWords and DoubleClick as part of her role as leader of Google’s advertising and analytics team.
In addition to the possible ad-free service, there is also a streaming music service that YouTube has been working on since last year. Google have reportedly been close to launching the service several times, but nothing has been announced yet.
All that Wojcicki would say about the music service is that she remains “optimistic about seeing it soon”, no word; however, whether or not it will still be in 2014.
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