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YouTube’s paid subscription service may include background and offline playback

Just about every company under the sun is offering some kind of music streaming service, but no one has really attempted to do the same for music videos. That could soon change, according to Android Police. The site has rummaged through the latest YouTube app for Android and discovered references to its rumoured subscription service, a feature that Billboard reported on last month.

Android Police says that the strings of code allude to several new feature for YouTube, including offline playback for videos, background playback, and the removal of adverts. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a paid service will automatically banish commercials from all videos on the service, but “millions” of videos may no longer show annoying pre-roll ads.

Image credit: jm3

Offline playback may have some limitations too. The discovered code suggests that not every video will be able to downloaded onto mobile devices – YouTube may simply offer the option to publishers. Naturally, you won’t be able to keep saved videos forever: it looks like anything saved for offline viewing will expire after an as of yet undetermined amount of time.

Billboard reported last month that YouTube would launch its service before the end of the year. There’s no indication of what the company hopes to charge for the service, but the standard rate in that part of the industry generally falls around £9.99 a month.

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