The arena of musical streaming returns to warm up with Google that tries again, much more decisively than in the past. The Mountain View giant has decided to re-launch its YouTube Music service, turning it from a free app into a streaming platform that wants to compete with rival Spotify and Apple Music.

Starting from May 22nd, the new YouTube Music app will be launched in the United States, South Korea, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, with 14 other countries, including Italy, to follow in the following weeks (here the website, in Italian, according to which “YouTube Music is coming”). The service, mainly musical, will have a free offer with advertising and a premium version, called YouTube Music Premium, for $ 9.99 a month, which in addition to being free of adverts will allow offline downloads, or to let the music go in the background . Who will also want the videos will have the YouTube Premium offer for $ 11.99 a month. While the previous music service, Google Play Music, will be progressively closed.

The most interesting part, however, is the insistence on the ability to customize the streaming experience on the basis of profiling and what Google can know about users. According to Usa Today , the idea is to use the Google Assistant, the artificial intelligence-based digital assistant, to make better recommendations to subscribers. The YouTube manager T. Jay Fowler has in fact described a typical day, in which the user gets up and has a certain type of music, climbs into the car and will have another, arrives at work and will have other customized selections, based on of habits, position and preferences. The discovery of new music is at the heart of Google’s strategy, and also one of the areas where there is probably room to improve the user experience. In a post on the official blog, it is explained that the YouTube Music home screen dynamically adapts to make recommendations depending on the user’s history, where it is and what it is doing. “To the airport? We will recommend some relaxing passages before the flight. Are you entering the gym? We will suggest pieces to speed up the beat “.

YouTube is the first site for online music, but its 1.5 billion monthly visitors mostly use it to listen to songs for free through videos. Now Google seems to want to compete directly with the main music streaming services, Spotify (which was listed on the Stock Exchange in April) and Apple Music, followed by Pandora and Soundcloud.