Alphabet (GOOGL) Aids Google Services With YouTube Music Efforts
Alphabet GOOGL shares have rallied 33.7% in the year-to-date period, outperforming the Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s growth of 29.1%. It is benefiting from strength in the Google Services segment, which is mainly driven by Search, YouTube and Android.
The company is continuously expanding YouTube’s capabilities to strengthen Google Services segment..
Per a 9to5Google report, Alphabet recently added a “Mark as played” feature to YouTube Music, allowing podcasters to mark an episode as played or unplayed, with confirmation messages appearing in the overflow menu.
Google also added an official sound search feature to YouTube Music, allowing users to query over 100 million official songs by sound while also testing AI-generated conversational radio for U.S. Premium subscribers.
Alphabet partnered with Garmin GRMN in a bid to boost YouTube Music’s adoption rate by expanding its reach to more platforms.
The YouTube Music app is now available on Garmin IQ Connect smartwatches. The app experience is similar to Wear OS watches, with users able to search their library for music and podcasts and a slick playing page with physical buttons for play, pause, and skip.
Growing YouTube Music efforts will enable Alphabet to capitalize on the solid growth opportunity present in the music streaming market, which, per a Grand View Research report, is expected to witness a CAGR of 14.4% between 2023 and 2030.
Moreover, it would also aid Alphabet in narrowing down its gap from Spotify SPOT and Amazon AMZN.
Per a Statista report, Spotify maintained its dominant position in the music streaming space in 2023 with a market share of 32%.
Amazon, on the other hand, is making continuous efforts to strengthen its foothold in the music streaming market with Amazon Music. It recently introduced Maestro, an AI playlist generator, in Amazon Music, enabling users to create any and all playlists, with the feature currently in beta for select U.S. customers.
Alphabet Inc. Price and Consensus
Alphabet Inc. price-consensus-chart | Alphabet Inc. Quote
Expanding Google Services Aids Prospects
Google rolled-out an updated version of YouTube’s "Erase Song" tool which allows content creators to remove copyrighted songs from videos without affecting other audio.
The company also introduced new features like Jump Ahead and Shorts Picture-in-Picture for YouTube Premium subscribers.
In addition to YouTube, Alphabet is making concerted efforts to enhance its search and Android capabilities in a bid to further boost the Google Services segment.
Alphabet bolstered its search capabilities with the addition of a “Listen to this page” text-to-speech feature on Google Chrome, enabling users to hear texts on web pages. This new feature will support several languages including Arabic, Bengali, English, French, Chinese, German, Hindi and Portuguese, to name a few.
Google’s launch of Circle to Search allows users to now circle what they see on their Android screens, ask a question about an image or object in a video, and get an AI overview with Lens.
It also strengthened Android features with its latest user interface (UI) redesign for one of its Android apps, Google Messages.
The company announced a feature on Google Maps that shows entrances for buildings to some select users, addressing the issue of navigating to specific building portions on the map.
Conclusion
Alphabet’s strength in the Google Services segment is expected to drive its overall financial performance. Its robust cloud division and growing momentum across autonomous driving space, and deepening focus on the wearables category, are other positives. Generative AI strength is expected to boost the company’s long-term prospects.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2024 total revenues stands at $291.26 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 13.6%.
The consensus mark for 2024 earnings is pegged at $7.61 per share, indicating a 31.2% rise from the year-ago figure. The figure has been revised upward by 0.1% in the past 7 days.
Alphabet currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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