Alphabet
’s
GOOGL
division Google has been consistently adding new features to YouTube Music in a bid to strengthen its offerings in the music streaming space.
Reportedly, YouTube Music’s introduction of shortcut features to the Explore tab for promoting albums serves as a testament to the abovementioned fact.
The shortcut capabilities comprise New releases, Charts, and Mood and genres pages.
Further, the music app added an album carousel with a Play button and a background image. Additionally, it provides a title and short description along with the cover art.
Currently, the feature is available to only a few selected Android, iOS and web users.
With the recent capability, Google aims to provide an enhanced music streaming experience to users. This, in turn, is likely to boost the adoption rate of YouTube Music.
Thus, the increasing adoption of YouTube Music is expected to benefit the company’s financial performance in the near term, which will further help it in winning investor confidence.
GOOGL has gained 10.7% versus the
Computer and Technology
sector’s decline of 10.4% in the past year.
Growing YouTube Music Efforts
Apart from the latest move, the company recently added a capability by which users can save queues as playlists. It also rolled out its “Recent Played” and “Turntable” widget to Android users.
Further, it rolled out the background listening feature for YouTube Music in Canada to provide an enhanced music experience to users in the country.
With these recent efforts, Google has positioned itself well to rapidly penetrate the booming global music streaming market.
The market has been witnessing significant growth due to an increase in mobile advertisement spending, use of mobile apps, rise in the number of subscription services and users’ accessibility to local content on music streaming platforms.
According to a
report
by Allied Market Research, the online music streaming industry is expected to reach $24.7 billion by 2027, progressing at a CAGR of 9.8% between 2021 and 2027.
Competitive Scenario
Given this upbeat scenario, not only Google but also other companies like
Amazon
AMZN
,
Apple
AAPL
and
Spotify
SPOT
are making strong efforts to capitalize on the abovementioned prospects.
Amazon is gaining strong momentum in the music streaming market on the back of its expanding global footprint. Recently, itrolled out Amazon Music in Columbia and Chile, by which music fans in both the countries can access its premium music subscription service,Amazon Music Unlimited.
Meanwhile, Apple’s music streaming service, Apple Music, introduced a new subscription tier powered by Siri named Apple Music Voice Plan. With this launch, subscribers can access millions of songs, playlists, personalized mixes, genre stations and Apple Music Radio.
Further, Spotify expanded its podcast publishing and advertising platform, Megaphone, in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy to help local publishers create, distribute as well as monetize their podcast content.
Nevertheless, YouTube Music’s growing efforts toward expanding its features are expected to continue giving tough competition to the abovementioned peers.
Currently, Google’s parent Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
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