THE NEWS WRAP: YouTube cues up paid music subscription service for launch

YouTube has confirmed it will launch a paid subscription service that will let users stream high-quality, ad-free music and music videos.

The service, YouTube Music Keys, will launch next week as an invite-only beta. Initial pricing will be set at $US7.99 ($A9.16) per month, discounted from $9.99. That will buy you access to both YouTube Music Keys and Google Play Music.

Google’s ad server suffers global failure

An unusual glitch hit Google’s ad serving tool Doubleclick for Publishers yesterday, causing blank spaces to appear in place of advertisements all over the web, Gigaom reports.

The outage means a loss of revenue for hundreds of publishers and represents a rare failure of a key piece of internet infrastructure.

The failure, which lasted approximately two hours, is likely to have cost Google and publishers millions of dollars.

Microsoft strategy shift

Microsoft is venturing into areas it has long considered enemy territory. In order to expand its horizons in the cloud it’s giving developers new ways to use.NET and Visual Studio to make software not just for Windows but also for Linux, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.

Microsoft corporate vice-president of the developer division, S Somasegar, says it’s the next big step for the Microsoft developer platform.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 2.70 to 17,612.20. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US87 cents.

Follow StartupSmart on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.