YouTube Music is the name of the musical service which offers the users to listen to songs and albums posted on YouTube by musicians and rights holders. The application has paid and free versions. The free version works just like a regular YouTube, while the paid one is full-fledged streaming.
YouTube Music is kind of analogous to Google Music but will give you live performances and cover versions of hits that were never released on official albums. Sometimes there are pieces of music that are interesting for their clips rather than their content. Otherwise, almost no other differences, everything is the same as the competitors: playlists, selections, recommendations.
You can also check the recommended YouTube videos, based on the music you like and the content you search for.
The visual identity of the service is fully based on the official YouTube logo, though even this simple concept has already been redesigned several times since the date of the first badge introduced in 2015.
The original YouTube Music logo was created in 2015 and stayed untouched for almost two years. It was the black and red YouTube logo, where the white “Tube” in a narrowed sans-serif typeface was set over the iconic red rectangle. The “Music” in black enlarged capitals was set on the right from the YouTube insignia, executed in a sharp and cool sans-serif typeface. There was also a separate icon used by the service during those two years. A black vinyl disc with the red solid circle in the center, and a white triangle, pointing to the right as the play button. The triangle had a widening gray trace coming to the left from it.
The official YouTube logo was redesigned, thus the Music service got its visual identity refined too. Now it was a red rectangle with the white “play” triangular sign on it, followed by the black narrowed YouTube logotype and the gray “Music” in the same style, set at a small distance from the main part of the badge. For the icon, the service used a solid red circle with the middle part outlined in white and the white triangle placed in the very center of the emblem.
In 2019 the YouTube Music logo was refined again, keeping the previous version almost untouched, and just switching the gray shade of the “Music” part to black. The badge now became more balanced and strict, looking professional and timeless. As for the icon, it remained unchanged.