A Pirate Goes Straight - YouTube’s Music Streaming Service Explored by Steven Watts.

Do you remember that scene in Jackie Brown where the bail bondsman asks her why she stuck with vinyl? She says she'd spent too long building up her collection to switch to CD's, which has served as something of a recurring theme in my life as technologies have progressed. I'm still fighting the good fight against e-books, but nowadays 80% of the music I listen to being a digital file on a tiny device. Thankfully, that remaining 20% is still a powerful soul collection on wax!

Initially going the painstaking route of copying CD's onto my laptop and then onto a digital device, with the advent of broadband came the temptation of piracy. I never bought into music piracy as being a crime though, so this has been the norm for the majority of my digital experience, most of my current collection being MP3's converted from YouTube links via a mobile app.

My issue with paying for digital music was the pricing model that the industry chose to adopt. It didn’t make sense to me that a digital album would cost anywhere near what a physical album cost me. CD's were over-priced to begin with, so how are you going to provide the same product (the music) at a fraction of the overheads (no physical product, no distribution network and physical store required etc) and charge damn-near the same? The music industry just got greedy, but we shouldn't be stuck paying because of this guilty legacy.

I'd never been tempted to use Spotify, but when I was recently offered a beta trial with YouTube's new Music Key service I figured it might be time to attempt music via a streamed subscription. At the right price, and offering a good enough service, I could imagine being tempted over from the dark side.

In a nutshell, played through Google's Play Music music player (!), I have access to their catalogue of licensed content. And here's the best part, it's all available to download to your phone or memory card so you can listen whilst offline (unlike BBC's annoyingly restrictive iPlayer app). The service also allows you to watch videos on YouTube without getting adverts, a gorgeous little extra that you maybe wouldn't think to expect but come to love!

I've been using Music Key daily for a few months now, and whilst there have been one or two albums or artists I wasn't able to find, for the most part the choice is mind-blowing! I’ve had a few minor issues navigating the app, but it's all relatively simple, and I've quickly built up over 10GB of music. Downloading was predictably better when using wifi (it took around a minute to grab a whole album), though it was just as functional across 3G (closer to six or so minutes), my only issue now being that my memory card is damn-near full - turns out 16GB wasn't enough for a phone. I see that the new Samsung S6 comes with up to 128GB of internal memory, as though brands are pre-empting offline's victory over cloud-based storage.

I've found myself listening to a much more diverse range of music than I usually would, no surprise having such a library at your disposal, and for the first time in probably a decade or so I felt that thrill of an impending album release! Due to the wide-reaching agreements struck by Google with the world’s record labels, you'll find most mainstream artists represented here, and even the under-the-radar acts you maybe wouldn't assume. For me, this meant things like brushing up on the Rolling Stones' back-catalogue, getting to hear the new Father John Misty album the day it was released and rediscovering gems from my past like The Swarm's fantastic Old Blue Eyes Is Dead 7".

I believe this service launches properly in July to a cost of around £9 a month, so will I be subscribing? The above glowing review might make it seem like this is what my life has always needed, but unfortunately, no, I won't be signing up.

Whilst paying for music via a service of this nature makes infinitely more sense to me than the alternative of paying for individual digital products (take note of this important potential paradigm shift), the cost still seems far too high. If I were to spend over £100 on music in a year (the annual cost of this subscription), it definitely wouldn't be on mainstream artists, it'd be vinyl or demo tapes from gigs I've been to. It'd be on real products who’s design lured me in, by obscure unknowns who I'd never usually hear about through mainstream channels, it wouldn't be paying a corporation for access to the songs they've bought the rights to.

However, if you're the sort of person who's always waiting on the release of new albums, you'll get more than your money’s worth with Music Key, true music fans will be in their absolute element. These are the sorts of people who may well be spending over £100 a year on digital music already, although unfortunately for Music Key they're possibly already attached to the competition (the two other main players in this scene being Spotify and Deezer). Regardless, for that minority of die-hard's this represents amazing value, and it's you folk I'd wholeheartedly recommend this to. It's just the majority of the people I'd have a harder time convincing, which brings me to my slight downer of a conclusion..

At this cost I can't see the service getting the sign-up's it needs to really turn the tide on anything, and to be honest I'm skeptical that we'll actually see this sub-industry reach its full potential before it's obscured by larger "full entertainment" subscription packages. Google has a very scatter-shot approach to its products, and often gives projects wings that openly conflict with others, in this instance Music Key sitting alongside Google's Music All Access. It seems more likely that the brand is pre-empting this potential "full entertainment" option (access to TV, film, music and more with one subscription) and at the moment are just wanting to get their hand in the game.

This perspective seems supported when you look at what each of the main music streaming platforms bring to the table in terms of use, cost and content. Each of the big three platforms have the same basic functionalities, all cost around £10 a month and all feature libraries of 30-35million songs. There's no one service that's smashing it out of the park and leading the way, as though they're all aware of the market's restrictively niche nature and are huddling close hoping to just survive.

So what would it take for me to sign my life away to a music streaming service? My ideal would be a service which suggests smaller acts based on your listening preferences, which has put serious work behind file compression for the sake of fast streaming (maybe even offer varying quality), is a vision of minimalist beauty, absolutely no adverts, and costs *drumroll* £20 a year. As I say, this is My ideal, this cost isn't ideal for anyone on the other side of the table.

To be honest, those extra features would be nice, but my main gripe is the cost, there's just no way digital music is having over £100 from me a year..well, just yet! As ever it seems the music industry’s profit motive is keeping us from being pals, and so this July when Music Key launches and my trial offer ends, I may grudgingly be raising that Jolly Roger up the mast once again.