YouTube is reportedly launching a subscription music service to compete with the social music network Spotify. According to Fortune, the video sharing site will likely give listeners the choice of either playing the songs for free, mixed in with advertisements, or paying a fee to hear the songs ad-free. Google will also build a digital locker at Google Play for Android for purchasing and collecting songs.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
Would you be willing to pay to watch content on YouTube? According to Jason Del Rey of AdAge, the video site is preparing to introduce paid subscriptions on select channels as early as the second quarter of 2013.
Many users are questioning whether Hulu Plus is worth the $9.99 subscription fee and it seems Hulu is asking themselves the same question. Apparently, the online video streaming site is considering cutting the cost of the Hulu Plus subscription service in half.
Over the last year, Social Times has been undergoing quite the transformation: We’ve grown our roster of contributors to 10 talented writers, we’ve made updates to our statistics technology and we’ve welcomed an unprecedented number of new readers. With this continued success, we’ve refined our goals and one of our main goals is to deliver insight and value to our readers. For that reason, I’m proud to introduce Social Times PRO, a new service dedicated to providing readers with insightful research reports on social games, virtual goods and Facebook, but the service also gives you access to all of our Social Times conferences and events. Read more after the jump!
In a Huffington Post/Yahoo! News video interview with Willow Bay, Warren Buffet says that he spends so much time and has so much fun watching videos on YouTube that the video giant “should be charging [him] a lot of money” to use their service. As a response to Buffet’s statement, YouTube’s Director of Product Management Hunter Walk put out a satirical blog post announcing the launch of “YouTube Pro” – a new YouTube subscription offering, available “for a limited time at the low price of $100 million/year.”
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