YouTube Preps Spotify Rival

Spotify will soon have a new rival in the subscription-music game—and the competition has video. YouTube is readying a subscription service of its own, insiders tell Billboard. It's set to include both free and paid versions. The free one will probably offer unlimited listening, even on mobile devices, with ads. The paid version may cost around $10 a month and allow users to ditch ads and save music to listen offline.

The service may also make it possible to stream entire albums. The main goal here, Billboard notes, is to attract a bigger mobile audience for advertising purposes; a mobile app redesign may arrive at the same time. Exactly when isn't quite clear yet, though YouTube has hinted at a possible release this year. The site already has access to a sizable catalog of music thanks to parent company Google's deals with record labels. (More YouTube stories.)