Trying Out YouTube Music: A Spotify Diehard's Experience

A week ago, Google launched YouTube Music. It offers its whole collection in sound and video mode, via Red subscriptions or the free, ad-supported version. It looks cool, but will it hold its own against Spotify, Apple Music, etc.?

Despite of Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Tidal and the likes being talked about more, most people actually get their music from YouTube than all of them combined. And this is despite of Youtube being awkward to use for listening to songs, regardless if it's through the app or a browser. Finding official music videos is hard (we've all been there), more so when it comes to albums and playlists.

So now we get Youtube Music, an app that is dedicated to serving music only. It's a no brainer -- if Youtube actually becomes easy to use, then it will dominate the music streaming market even more.

Youtube Music lets you access all the music that are legally authorized on Youtube, plus Google's own stash of around 30 million tracks. You may listen to songs, albums and playlists. You can even start stations using any of them. And, as I've mentioned above, it works with Youtube Red, wherein you can pay $12.99 a month for offline playback and to remove ads. As of this writing, anyone who signs in with their Google account can try the Red version.

Without Red, YouTube Music isn't really very charming. A large chunk of the music will be introduced by ads (yup, those pesky ones) and you can't listen on the background. But the Explore feature is really cool -- it entices you to dig deeper or to take unexpected detours that turn out to be very satisfying.

Now with Red, it's like switching on the beast mode. With its offline playback, background listening, and audio mode, it might just be the behemoth that would match Spotify. Also, Red makes everything ad-free, much like the distraction-free music streamers like Apple Music and Spotify. What's more is that you also get the Google Play Music All Access.

Add all of that up and you get something that is really tempting my monthly music allowance. But actually making the jump would likely be a post for another day, so please check back regularly.