ON A SUNNY OCTOBER morning in Los Angeles, a few hundred YouTube staffers, video personalities and media types are gathered at the company’s massive 41,000-square-foot West Coast outpost, which, in a simpler age, served as Howard Hughes Airport. The indulgent trappings of a web 3.0 business are all here: free campus bikes, arcade games, photo booth and a massive 36-screen monitor by which YouTube will introduce its newest product, YouTube Red. The $9.99-permonth subscription service features original video programming, ad-free audio and video, offline playback, continuous streaming, song recommendations and access to the Google Play Music subscription service.
The presentation is led by chief business officer Robert Kyncl, 45, now in charge of both YouTube and Google Play, who declares YouTube Music is about “artists and fans connecting through songs.”…