When Google’s developers, or any developers for that matter, create applications, they’re faced with deadlines. Not every feature they want to include in a point releases can be included, so cuts are made. The code that’s responsible for said new features that have been cut sometimes stays in the app, however, and Android Police tore down the latest version of YouTube and found quite a few interesting things.
First, support for offline videos is coming. This is something that’s been known for a while now. Google even published an official statement saying the feature was coming. But now there’s code to prove it’s there. Second, and this is the big one, there’s references to something called “Music Pass”. Forget about piracy in terms of downloading MP3 files for a second, most young people these days listen to the songs they want via YouTube. So why not create a service that gives people a legal means of playing those videos? The only problem I see with this “Music Pass” service is that Google already has a subscription music service called “Play Music All Access”. What does “Music Pass” do differently, if anything at all? So when can we expect to see these features come to the official YouTube app? Your guess is as good as mine. Both of these features step on the toes of people who produce content, so there are probably negotiations taking place behind closed doors right now so no one gets angry whenever the update does get pushed out.
