The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have remained quiet over rumours that they were working on their own streaming service for the past few months. Yesterday the BBC officially announced their plans to launch “a new music discovery service” which expands on their existing Playlister site.

In the BBC’s British, Bold, Creative report they detail their new service, as well as lots of others, saying:

The rapid growth in digital and online access to music
is responsible for significant change in the UK music
industry and is affecting how audiences use our music
services. We must evolve our music offering so that it
serves new audience needs and habits and allows us
to remain a strong partner and contributor to the UK
creative sector.

To that end, we have developed a digital music
proposal with the music industry, which builds on BBC
Music’s Playlister. It would make the 50,000 tracks the
BBC broadcasts every month available to listen online,
for a limited period. Audiences would be able to
access this music via playlists curated by the BBC, and
they would be able to build their own playlists based
on the music they hear and love on the BBC.

With over 40,000 hours of content a year the BBC is the most significant music broadcaster in the world. To some the introduction of this new product may seem a potential threat to existing services but the BBC makes it clear that it doesn’t intend to rival any streaming counterparts.

In fact the BBC actually want to integrate themselves with other services. BBC director-general Tony Hall said: ” Our music product would be the only one in the market which would be fully open and integrated with other digital providers. Users will be able to transfer playlists between digital music products and access them after BBC availability has expired through third-party provider.”

What this means, essentially, is that is that you will be able to transfer playlists that you like from the BBC’s discovery service and transfer them to streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and so on. As the plan currently is to make playlists available for a limited period on the BBC’s service this means that you can return to the playlists and artists you liked after expiration.

The BBC also says that they are taking into consideration how artists could get paid from their service as well as looking into expanding it’s digital music presence globally. In their report they say:

We want our digital music offer to benefit audiences
and artists. We are working with the industry to
develop this proposal in a way that achieves that
objective, whether it’s by providing the first audience
for an unsigned or undiscovered artist, or by working
to license the product in a way that benefits ar tists
fairly. We may also look at ways to deploy our digital
curation skills globally, showcasing the best UK music
to audiences across the world

This could be a major new step for the BBC into a currently booming industry, the world of digital music streaming, but as of yet no release date has been set and there is no indication as to when their new venture could be released. With the announcement of harsh cuts to all of the BBC’s services in the past few months it’s clear that the BBC will have to find new ways to remain a distinctive part of modern society and a digital, music discovery service could be just the catalyst to do that.