People who use YouTube as a free music service are going to find their experience increasingly interrupted by ads.

YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen told Bloomberg about plans for a new music service structure that will “frustrate and seduce” non-paying users and “smoke out” people who can afford to pay for a subscription.

This new, still largely mysterious, service will include exclusive videos and playlists, as well as newly produced material such as behind the scenes footage.

“You’re not going to be happy after you are jamming ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and you get an ad right after that,” Cohen stated. “There’s a lot more people in our funnel that we can frustrate and seduce to become subscribers.”

Industry harm

He went on to explain that the company is committed to silencing the concern about the supposed harm YouTube is doing to the industry: “Once we do that, trust me, all that noise will be gone and articles people write about that noise will be gone.”

The new service will be backed by a “significant” marketing campaign.

A company spokesperson added: “Our top priority at YouTube is to deliver a great user experience, and that includes ensuring users do not encounter excessive ad loads. 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.”

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