Spotify changed my life. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. The ability to discover an endless rabbit hole of songs, both new and old, helped shape who I became close friends with, what clubs I joined, and even what classes I took in college. So when I canceled my subscription last year, it was not a decision made lightly.
For context, I’d been subscribed to Spotify for a little less than a decade, and I was a free user for about a year before that. I had playlists from my early high school years, spanning until after college graduation. The algorithm knew my tastes and still recommended good alternatives. Not to mention, almost all of my friends also used it, making music sharing easy. A few years ago, I also subscribed to YouTube Red, now YouTube Premium. One of the perks of this subscription was the inclusion of YouTube Music. As a student, Spotify still had a worthwhile deal at half-price paired with Hulu. But after graduating, I realized I was paying full price monthly for two music streaming services and only using one.
Ultimately, I told myself that YouTube Music (YT Music) was worth a shot. After all, I’d heard of many improvements since the days of Play Music. So last August, I made the switch. These are my major takeaways.
User Interface
First impressions are everything, and apps are no exception. Fortunately, YT Music’s mobile app is pretty intuitive. If you’ve used any other music streamer, you’ll likely get used to this one quickly. Arguably, the desktop app is worse, but not by much. Truthfully, it is just a browser app with a desktop shortcut. You’ll get the same experience by going to the YT Music website. It also means, though, that no internet connection means no desktop app, unlike Spotify, which will still allow you to browse your library and playlists. As long as you have that internet connection, it works well enough and has the same features as the mobile app. There are minor differences between YT Music and Spotify’s interface, but they feel more like different skins on similar services.
Song Recommendations
At some point, Spotify became pretty mindless for me. While I would curate specific playlists at times, most days I just wanted background music or driving music, and the daily mixes were more than apt for that. If I wanted something new, the Discover Weekly playlist was always a go-to. Thankfully, I didn’t have to sacrifice these conveniences when I made the switch. After learning your tastes for a few days, YT Music has a similarly robust daily mix system as well as a decent discovery system and explore page. The home page will also recommend artists, albums, playlists and singles based on your tastes. In my opinion, YT Music doesn’t do this any better or worse than Spotify.
Queues
Frankly, queuing songs on YT Music is a pain. On Spotify, when you queue a song, it will play after your current song. Any other songs added to the queue are placed in succession. YT Music gives two options for queuing: Play Next and Add to Queue. As you may have guessed, Play Next will play that song after your current song. However, if you add multiple songs to Play Next, it essentially creates a backwards queue. The most recent song you added will be next in line, followed by the next most recent.
This is where the Add to Queue button fits in. While it works more similarly to Spotify’s queue button, it has a major flaw: queued songs are added all the way at the end of a playlist. This means that if you, for example, throw on a daily mix and then queue a song, you’ll have to wait until those 50 songs in the mix have played to hear the song you queued. I cannot express enough how frustrating this has made my experience at times. In most cases, I would add songs to Play Next and manually edit the order in which I wanted the songs to play. While I’ve formed habits to work around the issue, it is still at the top of my list for YT Music to fix.
Libraries
Since I had only ever used Spotify to stream, I had no idea how other platforms would compare as far as their libraries go. What I found was that YT Music had nearly every song that I looked for, just like Spotify, but also more. This is because YT music allows you to listen to any audio from any YouTube video within the app. What this means is that any unreleased songs, any live performances, covers, Tiny Desk Concerts, parodies, and medleys are available to listen to, provided they are on YouTube.
While I expected this to be pretty gimmicky, I was surprised at how often I used it. The best example I have is listening to Frank Ocean’s *Endless*, which is a beautiful album that is famously hard to find on streaming. On top of being able to listen to these files, they can also be added to playlists, and YT Music will occasionally add them to your daily mixes. If that isn’t your vibe, you have an option to turn this off within the settings.
The Search Bar
Of all companies, I really expected Google to have perfected the search feature. But there is a lot to be desired when trying to find specific songs. The search bar seems to highly prioritize auto-complete rather than results. Spotify, on the other hand, does the opposite. If I’m searching for a song on Spotify, I can usually find and play the track without typing out the whole thing.
Recently, I had a craving to listen to the opening track of Black Country, New Road’s debut album. The track is called “Instrumental”, which admittedly is a very broad title. But I’ve listened to the track many times on both YT Music and Spotify. I even have it downloaded on both. Spotify is smart enough to know my saved music and my listening habits to filter out all of the other “Instrumentals” much quicker. If I do the same on YT Music, I’ll have to type the song and the band’s name in because some random tracks that I’ve never heard will appear first instead. The same is true almost anytime I search for a song or artist that isn’t super popular. This is obviously very nitpicky, but over time it really highlights some of things that Spotify has nailed when it comes to the user experience.
Smart Downloads
My favorite feature of YT Music has been smart downloads. Essentially, this allows the app to download a set amount of songs (or a set amount of data) every day based on your listening habits. You have the power to turn this setting on or off whenever you please; you can set exactly how many songs you’ll allow it to download (mine is set to 250), and it’ll only download when you have sufficient battery life and are connected to Wi-Fi.
This is another feature that I assumed would just be a gimmick, but I was surprised to find that there are countless situations where I find myself in a dead cell zone and this feature came in clutch. Now, I can’t imagine streaming without it. I’ve heard rumors that Spotify intends on implementing smart downloads soon, but I’m still giving credit to YT Music.
Multi-device Connection
From personal conversations and from viewing some online discussion, one of the biggest features keeping people on Spotify is the Connect feature. This tool acts almost as a remote control or a link between devices, and it was by far the hardest thing for me to get used to when switching to platforms.
Some circumstances where this feature was perfect are listening to music on your phone and being able to pause/play or queue through your laptop; hosting people and having a tablet connected to a Bluetooth speaker while curating a playlist through your phone; or playing the same track simultaneously on two devices in different rooms. It really is one of the flagship features of Spotify, and it was a luxury that was hard to live without this past year. After switching, I desperately searched online for ways to make YT Music work remotely through multiple devices, but to no avail. This is not by any means a necessary feature to have a good streaming service, but man did it add to the experience.
Playlists
In my opinion, the way YT Music does playlists needs a lot of work. One thing to know before signing up is that it is essentially married to your existing YouTube account. This means that every liked song, every playlist, every search is connected to YouTube. I don’t like this. If you are someone who makes dozens of playlists a year, prepare for all of them to show up on your YouTube homepage. Truthfully, this isn’t even the biggest offense to me. That award goes to the lack of folders.
As someone who appreciates organization, a lack of folders is a huge detriment to my playlisting experience. On Spotify, I had playlists organized by mood, genre, dates, and more. On YT Music, every single playlist is on one long page. If you have any sort of creative name for your playlists, be sure you’ve memorized all of them, because you’ll have to scroll for a bit to find exactly what you’re looking for. I would suggest searching for them, but as mentioned, searching for things on YT Music is not great, and playlists are no exception. I find it hard to understand why playlist folders aren’t a default feature, but I’m still holding on to hope that they’ll be added soon.
As a side note, giving up all the playlists I’ve made on Spotify was a huge hurdle I had when switching platforms. Luckily, there are sites and programs that will help you transfer these playlists, so don’t let that hold you back too much.
Following Artists
Another way YT Music connects to YouTube videos is by following artists. Spotify allows you to follow an artist, much like any social media platform. However, on YT Music, you must subscribe to an artist to constitute a follow. This means that you are also subscribing to them on your YouTube account. This may not bother some, but I tend to like some distinction between the content that I consume on YouTube and that that I consume on the music side.
On top of this, unlike the monthly listeners that Spotify shows, YT Music will show how many subscribers an artist has. To me, these are fundamentally different statistics. On Spotify, you merely have to play a song to be considered a monthly listener, while on YT Music, you have to actively subscribe to someone. Similarly, Spotify tracks have the number of plays listed, while YT Music lists the number of likes. In comparing the same artists on both platforms, I found vast differences in their listening numbers compared to subscriber counts.
Price
Ultimately, there was one reason that I switched to YT Music, and it is the reason that I’ll continue using it, at least for now. That is bang for your buck. Technically, the individual YT Music subscription is the same as Spotify (both at $10.99 after recent price raises).
But for three extra bucks a month, the added benefit of downloadable, background-listenable, ad-free YouTube videos, along with some occasionally good free movies and a few other minor perks is more than enough to keep my subscription. I think it is worth considering primarily if you consider yourself a YouTube person over another video streaming platform (Netflix, Hulu, etc.).
Conclusions
There are a few things that I either glossed over or ignored when comparing these two platforms, but I purposefully chose to focus on the things that I felt directed affected my experience. I don’t feel qualified to speak on the audio quality of each platform (they both sounded just fine to me), nor did I feel it necessary to harp over every difference that the two services have in features or how much each pays per stream. But I hope I covered what the average user would want to know about.
Do I ever miss Spotify? Yes, of course. I spent way too many years on the platform to not miss some of its key features. Generally, I would consider it to be the better streaming service; I even still use it for certain exclusive podcasts. But despite any gripes I may have with YT Music, from a macro perspective, I do believe it’s in a position to viably compete with Spotify. Google has even proven that they are continually trying to make YT Music better, most recently by implementing podcasts. Until I find YouTube Premium to be overrated, I will likely stick with it.
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