YouTube Music

Price

• Free tier available
• Music Premium service can be bundled with YouTube Premium

Like Spotify, Amazon and Deezer, Google has a free music streaming tier, YouTube Music. It allows anyone with a Google account to listen to the exhaustive music library, with the freedom to search and play what they like.

The usual caveats apply – listening is ad-supported, audio quality is very limited (to 128kbps in this case), and you aren’t able to download tracks for offline use. Playback requires the app to be open on your device, too.

The paid-for Music Premium service unshackles the listening experience and is priced within the ballpark of rivals – an Individual subscription costs £10.99 / $10.99 per month, which is reduced to £5.49 / $5.49 for students.

A Family subscription, which gives accounts to up to six people (aged 13 and over) in one household, costs £15.99 / $16.99 per month. That compares favourably to Spotify’s asking prices of £12.99 / $11.99, £5.99 / $5.99 and £21.99 / $19.99 respectively, although it is more or less in line with Tidal and Apple Music fees.

Alternatively, Music Premium comes bundled with a YouTube Premium subscription, which also offers ad-free video playback, the ability to download videos for offline access, and background playback on smartphones. It costs £12.99 / $13.99 for an Individual subscription, £19.99 / $22.99 for a Family, and £7.99 / $7.99 for Students.

In the US, you can save 15% on either Individual subscription plan by paying an annual subscription fee of $109.99 (Music Premium) or $139.99 (YouTube Premium) upfront.

A further country-specific quirk is that a two-person subscription (like Spotify Duo) can be taken up in Australia, France, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan.

Platforms

• Universal hardware support
• Google Cast friendly
• No official desktop app

Considering the YouTube Music app is a decade old, its ubiquity in the audio hardware world isn’t surprising. It can be found and downloaded onto smart speakers (including the Sonos Era 100 and Apple HomePod), smart TVs, fitness watches and car infotainment systems.

Being a Google product, YouTube Music naturally plays ball with Google smart devices and the Google Cast feature. Naturally, there are iOS and Android apps and a web player, though perhaps surprising is the absence of an official desktop app.

Catalogue & Curation

• 100m+ podcast and music library
• Unique video integration and user-uploaded content
• No spatial audio or audiobooks

In line with many of its competitors, YouTube offers a 100-million-strong music catalogue bolstered by podcasts. Where it pulls apart from every other streaming library is how it leans in on its ‘YouTube’ heritage by complementing studio music and podcast releases with a rich selection of user-uploaded content, live performances and music videos.

You need look no further than the mobile app home screen’s ‘Samples’ tab to gauge the kind of ‘bonus’ offering YouTube Music delivers over its peers.

Here you’ll find an endless, personalised, scrollable stream of short music video segments, displayed in full screen – a bit like TikTok – and which you can easily save, share or launch the full-length video from. Having just played Of Monsters and Men’s latest EP, Fruit Bat, I launched Samples and was satisfied to be presented with a live performance clip of its eponymous track, followed by clips from other artists I’d played and those closely associated.

The extent of its video-inclusive experiences makes YouTube Music more interactive and less pocketable than every other service out there. Play a song and you can simply toggle whether you want the playback screen to be occupied by the album art, as standard, (preferable if you’re low on data perhaps) or the associated music video.

Music videos are notably present and naturally integrated within AI-powered suggestions across the interface, not shoehorned into one specific section or feeling like an afterthought as they are on other video-featuring services. On more than one occasion did I find myself drawn into hour-long audio compilations and live video performances that popped up on the home screen.

What’s more, you’re frequently encouraged to dive into content – remixes, covers, playlists and videos – created and uploaded by fellow YouTube users. This is where YouTube Music really taps into its music-loving fanbase and offers a meaningful, unique music experience that others do not.

User Experience

• Dense, all-encompassing and choice-heavy
• Colourfully image-led and intuitively laid out

Red on black, blocky, busy and image-heavy – YouTube Music is a recognisable arm of the iconic video service, and should be familiar to anyone who has used a music streaming service before.

The home screen is headed up by shortcuts to the Podcast section and music based on various moods, like ‘work out’, ‘relax’, ‘sleep’ and ‘focus’, while the tabs at the bottom (or the side, on the web player) are jump-tos to Explore (which focuses on new and trending releases), the aforementioned Samples (on the mobile app), and Library (where your ‘liked’ music and playlists sit).

Between those ‘menus’, if you like, be prepared for a seemingly never-ending scroll of choice. Too much choice? Perhaps. While the Apple Music and Tidal home interfaces feel carefully curated and balanced in what they display, YouTube Music’s feels a little more ‘here, have it all’.

You can jump right back into what you’ve been listening to recently (‘Speed Dial’), or tune into AI-powered categorisations such as ‘Similar to’, ‘Your daily discover’ and ‘Fresh finds, old favourites’. There are radio stations and mixes ‘for you’ based on listening habits; chart and trending music, plus what’s popular ‘From the community’ and ‘most commented tracks’; and covers, remixes, music videos.

You’re certainly spoilt for choice, and it may overwhelm fans of the minimalist experience, but it’s all presented in a digestible, well-laid out and aesthetically pleasing, image-led way.

Sound Quality

• Limited to 256kbps
• Rivals sound significantly better

What primarily lets down YouTube Music’s unique community focus and rich, creative, user-inclusive catalogue is its audio quality. While Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz and now even Spotify have stormed ahead with 24-bit hi-res audio streaming, and Deezer at least hits 16-bit ‘CD quality’, YouTube Music Premium streams top out at a lowly 256kbps (in the AAC format).

To put that into perspective, a ‘CD quality’ stream carries a bit rate of 1,411.2kbps. You don’t need to be particularly well-versed in audio geekery to realise that there is a significant distance between those two bitrate figures.

Within the digital audio realm, bitrates are calculated as a digital file’s sampling frequency (the number of times samples of the analogue audio signal are taken per second during its conversion to digital) multiplied by its bit depth (the number of bits used to represent each sample of an audio signal), multiplied finally by two (the number of channels in stereo music).

But all you really need to know is that, generally speaking, the higher the bitrate, the higher the audio quality.

Indeed, YouTube Music’s 128kbps (free tier) and 256kbps (Premium tier) quality is way behind that of the competition, and it shows. Don’t get me wrong, YouTube Music streams are perfectly listenable through the phones, headphones and wireless speakers you’re likely to listen to them through – they are clear, balanced and detailed enough for you to get the gist of a song’s musical intent.

But listen to Spotify (which isn’t even the best-sounding service out there; Tidal and Qobuz are) through anything approaching decent-quality audio hardware, and you quickly realise what you are missing out on.

Clarity and detail levels go up several notches – instruments are more clearly drawn into view, and presented on a soundstage that is notably more open and spacious. There’s a fullness to basslines, an impetus behind driving musical elements, and an attention to dynamic expression that is key in drawing you into music. The whole presentation feels less… compressed.

Essentially, it is the difference between casual, background, easy listening, and more involved listening that tunes you into the artist’s emotion and compels you to tap your feet along.

Such differences are naturally more noticeable through more revealing audio devices, such as the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 wireless headphones and Naim Mu-so Qb. I still just about preferred Spotify streams when listening through the budget JLab JBuds Lux ANC headphones, but the extra quality within the Spotify streams wasn’t as discernible or impactful.

Should you buy it?