YouTube Music Premium review

The days of owning music, be it in physical or digital form, are long gone. There are many viable streaming services out there, but not all are created equally, and certainly not all pay the artists equally. YouTube Music Premium affords access to videos and songs under YouTube’s “music” category. While great improvements have been made since its inception, we’d have to wear nearly opaque rose-tinted glasses to say it’s perfect. We tried YouTube Music for three weeks to get the lowdown.

Editor’s note: this YouTube Music review was updated on May 18, 2023, to address FAQs and ensure that all information is current. 

What is YouTube Music?

YouTube Music is YouTube’s counter to other popular ad-free streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal. YouTube Music offers a vast library of official and unofficial music videos that populate search results alongside audio files.

Previously, subscribing to an artist’s YouTube Music profile automatically subscribed to your regular YouTube account to said channel. However, YouTube has since updated the subscription mechanism to separate YouTube Music subscriptions from YouTube subscriptions. Yes, it’s confusing, as is typical for Google’s myriad overlapping applications.

Like Google Play Music, Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, you can download music and listen to them without using all your data. This is invaluable for anyone with a limited data plan and takes just a few moments. YouTube Music is also directly accessible through Sonos smart speakers.

How to use YouTube Music

The mobile and desktop interfaces are nearly identical. The home screen displays a list of typical categories: favorites, recommended, new, and moods to fit your preferences. From there, you can tab over to search for a specific artist or song, check out a curated video hotlist, and peruse your library.

If you’re listening to a music video, you can switch to audio-only by selecting “song” at the top of the display. Doing so pulls up the audio version, instead of just playing the music video audio sans video. This is great because it eliminates any extraneous dialogue included in a music video that isn’t present in the album edit.

You can create a playlist by tapping the three clustered, vertical dots in the playback control module. This opens a menu of options, including download, add to playlist, add to queue, start radio, and more. If you’re creating a new playlist, title it and choose whether it’s public, private, or unlisted.

You can download a music video, song, or playlist—just make sure your phone has the space for it.

Does YouTube Music allow for collaborative playlists?

YouTube Music lets you create a playlist and add your friends to it (assuming they have an account). Then you can both add songs to the playlist. This is something that Spotify has had for a long time, but it’s good to see YouTube building out the social aspect of the service.

Unlike other streaming platforms, audio adjustments are restrictive. There is an EQ option under settings, but it relies on your phone’s sound quality options. For instance, the Samsung Galaxy S10e allows you to toggle Dolby Atmos and choose between a few dubious EQ presets. You can’t create a custom EQ for YouTube Music though. When the service was first announced there wasn’t any official documentation of sound quality but that has since been added to the YouTube Music help page. You can choose between a few different sound quality settings:

• Low: 48kbps AAC and OPUS (uses the least data)
• Normal: 128kbps AAC and OPUS (default settings)
• High: 256kbps AAC and OPUS (highest quality setting)
• Always high: 256 kbps AAC and OPUS (maintains this even when the connection is poor)

This is the official quality for YouTube Music whether you’re on a mobile network or Wi-Fi. It’s not great seeing how Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music Unlimited, and a handful of others support lossless formats like FLAC or at least a higher bitrate. In an AMA, a Google employee shared that YouTube Music has no intention to exceed 256kbps, citing FLAC streaming as a cost-inefficient option. This is disappointing for the likes of SoundGuys, but if you just want to hear music and don’t care much for its quality, selecting “high” audio quality should be fine.

How much does YouTube Music Premium cost?

Here’s how much YouTube Music Premium charges:

• Individual plan: $9.99/month or $99.99/year.
• Student plan: $4.99/month
• Family plan: $14.99/month

Regardless of your plan, you are charged directly from your Google account. You can use YouTube Music Premium features on a maximum of 10 mobile devices. Once you go beyond that, the oldest authorized device is revoked. You’re capped to four devices per year, presumably to prevent you from sharing it with different friends.

Family subscriptions include up to five additional members. Student memberships must be verified and renewed each year for a maximum of four years, with the bonus of a three-month free trial, rather than a single month with normal plans.

How does YouTube Music pay artists?

YouTube is notorious for shortchanging content creators, and this upsetting trend holds true with YouTube Music. Unfortunately, this is a salient occurrence across the board, regardless of what streaming service you use. YouTube Music just so ranks poorly compared to the other top contenders.

Of course, if you want to support your favorite bands, you can always buy their albums, go to their shows, and buy their merchandise. Any of the above will garner more money for the band than streaming a song here and there.

Music industry website Digital Music News and blog The Trichordist have approximated figures regarding the payout per stream. While YouTube Music Premium isn’t on here, YouTube Red was the precursor to YouTube Premium. Equally confusing is the tiers of payouts depending on whether it’s free YouTube or paid YouTube. This is unlike virtually every other platform, except Amazon.

Source: The Trichordist

Why you should use YouTube Music Premium

YouTube Music Premium has great features for general music listeners. If you’re a music video fanatic, YouTube Music is the best subscription service. Its expanse of unofficial, official, and lyric videos give it the edge over more limited platforms like Tidal. Meanwhile, Spotify has added lyrics, although, their accuracy is unreliable compared to dedicated fans generating lyric-based videos on YouTube.

Really, most people will get more for their money with YouTube Premium, rather than YouTube Music Premium. One upside is the ability to subscribe to different types of channels. Doing so means if a single user uploads much different music, it’s one way to discover new artists. Sure, you can follow artists and monitor what your friend is listening to on other services like Spotify, but it’s more passive. You can’t discount the social aspect of YouTube, which is not really available in quite the same way elsewhere with streaming apps.

Why you shouldn’t use YouTube Music Premium

Aside from that, YouTube Music has some other pitfalls. Its “New Release Mix” and “Your Mixtape” selections fell into one of two camps:

1. they were songs I already had in separate playlists, or
2. they were songs I wouldn’t make the conscious effort to listen to.

I was a bit disappointed. After all, isn’t the algorithm supposed to know everything about us individually and collectively? I guess what I’m saying, YouTube Music, is that I’m hurt you don’t know me better. Oftentimes, the recommendations felt myopic and cyclical. This would likely improve as I continue to use YouTube Music, but that’s what happens within the first few weeks at least.

On the whole, YouTube Music isn’t the best option when it comes to sound quality and falls short with its user interface. If you want something that offers lossless streaming with an intuitive UI, look into the competitively priced Amazon Music Unlimited: it streams FLAC. Alternatively, Deezer supports lossless streaming and has a more attractive UI than Amazon Music Unlimited. That said, YouTube Music is slowly maturing and getting better with time. While it isn’t quite there just yet, it will likely stand as a much stronger competitor to Spotify and Apple Music in the future.

If you’re thinking of getting a YouTube Music Premium subscription, I highly recommend investing an extra $2/mo for YouTube Premium. That way, you can enjoy all that YouTube has to offer ad-free and from anywhere.

How does YouTube Music compare to Spotify?

Both YouTube Music and Spotify offer free, ad-supported versions, but Spotify free offers less control over music playback than YouTube Music free. However, there are definite downsides to free YouTube Music, such as an inability to exit the app and keep the music playing. If you choose to pay for either streaming service, you can play music on-demand, in the background, and over higher bitrate files, though neither has high-fidelity audio.

The most significant differences between the two streaming services are that Spotify offers podcasts. In contrast, YouTube Music offers videos including live performances, covers, or original songs recorded by a band in their basement. You can find a lot of underground music on Spotify because they accept submissions from pretty much everyone. Still, in general, more people upload their music to YouTube than to Spotify. For an in-depth comparison of the two streaming services, check out our YouTube Music vs Spotify article.

Frequently asked questions about YouTube Music

Sometimes our readers have further questions after reading an article, and we collect them and answer them here! Below are our responses to the best questions we’ve been asked.