This morning security analyst Graham Cluley reported a phishing email which claimed to originate from YouTube Music Key. The phishing email threatened to start charging the recipient for the Music Key service after their 6-month trial period had expired and contained links for Subscription Cancellation and Account Management, surely taking users to a fake website phishing for their information or downloading malicious software to their computer. The phishing emails had an inadvertent effect as neither Mr. Cluley nor your humble blogger were aware that YouTube was rolling out a new subscription music service. 

While the emails are fake, YouTube Music Key is a real service that was rolled out in beta version at the end of 2014. It offered a subscription model for the large contingent of YouTube users who utilize the service for streaming music videos and listening to their favorite songs. The beta version of the subscription service was free for the first 6 months and offered ad-free music video playback, the option to download YouTube music content to play offline, and background listening on the YouTube app if hidden behind other apps or with the device screen turned off. As Cluley was not aware of the music service, it does not appear that the phishing emails are being targeted at existing users of the streaming service whose 6 month subscriptions are concluding. 

Earlier this summer the New York Post reported that music industry executives were unhappy with YouTube’s current business model for monetizing music content. The free roll-out of YouTube Music Key's subscription service could not have helped this situation. While the article claims that music industry execs were threatening to remove their content, the argument could be made that YouTube’s dominance as a media distribution platform (1 billion plus registered users, billions of daily views) would make severing a relationship with the streaming giant difficult to fathom. Most of the successful streaming services today, including Pandora and Spotify, offer a free tier for subscription services and monetize their content through advertising revenue.