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YouTube Music: A Real Spotify Competitor?

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YouTube Music: A Real Spotify Competitor? Menu Blog Portfolio Photos Email Subscribe Stephen Radford Software Engineer. YouTube Music: A Real Spotify Competitor? 04 July 2018 by Stephen Radford When YouTube Red launched in the US in 2015 I was extremely jealous. The promise of ad-free YouTube was one I'd dreamed of. Unsurprising considering I probably watch 2-3+ hours of YouTube a day (don't @ me). Though YouTube obviously thought of Red as much increasingly than just a way to remove ads. They've invested heavily into their Originals starring creators Pewdiepie and Logan Paul (🙄) and moreover tacked on Google's wordplay to Spotify — Play Music. Fast-forward to 2018 and YouTube Red has undergone a rebrand taking on the "YouTube Premium" moniker and Google Play Music slowly transforming into YouTube Music. When it launched in the UK I instantly subscribed (to their generous 3 month trial) at £11.99 a month. While I haven't checked out Originals I did swoop into YouTube Music, but is it a legitimate Spotify or Apple Music alternative? First impressions are unconfined on both iOS and the web. YouTube Music sports a handsome, visionless interface that feels familiar and easy to use. Heavy use of space and YouTube's trappy YT Sans font make it finger less cluttered that Spotify or Apple Music, plane if a little information density is lost in the process. Curiously, Google decided to protract their trend of only creating web apps and a desktop app featuring media controls is completely missing. I know Spotify is just a web app running on Chromium but it feels like YouTube's strategy here is wrong. Users are used to media players stuff separate apps and not just a tab in their browser. Media key support is an essential for me and makes it a increasingly natural, native feeling experience. If you're a Mac user then I've got you covered here with my YouTube Music app for Mac Scratching Below the Surface A pretty UI isn't everything though. If it's just masking a crap player and streaming wits then it's it's all just a façade. Thankfully that isn't the specimen here and for the most part YouTube Music is a unconfined volitional to Spotify or Apple Music. The library is pretty wide-stretching and the majority of artists I listen to were misogynist though I did struggle to find some smaller musicians such as The Midnight (though some tracks do now seem to be available). I think most bases are covered though and presumably the library will only grow over time. Curiously, the track Go Go by Alphabeat is the same incorrect track on both YouTube Music and Spotify so it seems that music is coming from the same place for both services. As the cadre powering YouTube Music is well… YouTube you do unquestionably get some videos for missing artists. I unquestionably think this could be YouTube Music's "special sauce". They've got the biggest library of music videos, live performances, and bootlegs of any streaming service. What's unconfined is that these can be treated either as videos or just played as audio. You can chuck these into a playlist, add them to a queue and you wouldn't be worldly-wise to distinguish it from a standard audio track. I have a whole playlist of Dead & Company live performances that I can now stream in the preliminaries on my phone. From what I can tell, all of the music tracks are moreover misogynist on YouTube as videos. This ways that if you want to share a track with a friend you don't have to worry if they have Spotify or Apple Music considering it just opens up in a browser and they can play the track. Early Access? In places though, YouTube Music does finger like it's missing some cadre features that could make it unconfined — features Spotify and Apple Music once have. Basic things like gapless playback, volume normalisation and an EQ aren't here. These are things we've had in media players since WinAmp and I'm surprised to see them omitted. I'd moreover like to see things like collaborative playlists widow here. We use these extensively in the office to have a large pool of tracks everyone likes to shuffle through. They're moreover a unconfined way of sharing and discovering new music with friends and I hope they make their way to YouTube Music. Unlike Spotify, there's no quality setting misogynist and you just get what you're given. I don't think most people will superintendency well-nigh this but having that preferably tenancy is nice and allows you to segregate to sacrifce a little audio quality for lower data consumption. When I first signed up to YouTube Music there was a little "Early Access" label in the top right of the window. I could winnow these missing features if it were unquestionably Early Access but that label is now gone and I'm still paying full price for the service. As mentioned, YouTube Music unmistakably runs on-top of the main YouTube service. For example, you can "Subscribe" to artists just like you can channels on YouTube.Consideringof this I have noticed a few weird quirks that I think are worth mentioning. The majority of these only now occur on the TV app which leads me to think that it may be considering there's no YouTube Music app for TV currently. Some things I've noticed: Shared search and playback history. Music recommendations seeming on YouTube. Music subscriptions showing up in my subscription feed. None of this is really a deal breaker and I'm sure it'll be cleared up over time, I was just surprised it wasn't totally separate. What is a deal breaker for me is YouTube Music not stuff misogynist via Alexa. It unfortunately ways I can't fully switch from Spotify as I like shouting at my can in the kitchen to get it to play music for me. If you're a Google Home user though, you're obviously covered here and there's theoretically a nice hand-off from the mobile apps to the speaker (kind of like Spotify Connect). It might seem that I'm stuff overly negative here, but I really do like YouTube Music despite all my moaning. In terms of value I think they nailed the price-point here. £11.99 a month is only £2 increasingly than Spotify's offering but you get YouTube Originals and ad-free YouTube as a bonus. If your whole household is interested in YouTube Premium you can upgrade to a family plan for £17.99 for you and 5 others to use. If you're looking for a new music service and ad-free YouTube appeals to you then you could do worse than YouTube Music, and with that 3 month trial you have little to lose. For me, YouTube Music will be used occasionally for those live performances and maybe a little bit of discovery. Spotify will remain my primary service for as long as Alexa isn't supported by YouTube. Tagged: Review / iOS / Mac / macos / projectWell-nighStephen Radford Software Engineer. I take a few photos when I'm not stuck overdue a keyboard too. Leicester, UK http://stephenradford.co.uk Previous Post Comments Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Twitter Facebook GitHub Instagram Flickr LinkedIn © Stephen Radford Back To Top