Peter Kafka, writing for re/code:

YouTube, which spent the first 10 years of its life as a free service, is getting ready to start selling tickets.

Google’s video site appears to be finalizing launch plans for its long-in-the-making subscription service, and industry sources say they’ve been told to expect a launch near the end of October.

A blast email from YouTube to content owners, telling them they have to agree to new terms by Oct. 22 or their “videos will no longer be available for public display or monetization in the United States,” helps support that timeline.

And:

Note that we’re referring to a single service, not multiple ones. Sources say that’s because YouTube intends to bundle two different services into one offering: An update of its music service, which it launched in beta as YouTube Music Key last fall, and another service, yet to launch, that will give users the ability to watch anything on YouTube without seeing ads.

Video industry sources say Google has told them it intends to charge $10 a month for the combined offering.

Looks like Google’s YouTube arm is pursuing the ecosystem strategy, which Apple has built its entire business around. Come for the videos, stay for the music. Or vice versa.

The sense I get is that YouTube is using ad-free YouTube viewing as a sweetener to get people to sign up for its music service. Sounds like an accounting nightmare to me.