YouTube Music

Review by eFreeware

Most music apps ask you to pick a service and rebuild your listening world from scratch, and the catalog you get is often the same one everyone else gets. YouTube Music takes a different route: it leans on the breadth of YouTube itself, where live performances, covers and remixes sit alongside the official releases you already know.

YouTube Music comes from Google LLC and is free to install, with ads and optional purchases. It connects you to a wide range of music, with curated playlists, personalized mixes and a library that gathers what you have liked and saved.

What listening looks like day to day

At its core the app is a streaming catalog with a strong editorial layer. The developer lists thousands of curated playlists spanning genres and activities, plus music you may not find on other services, such as live performances, covers and remixes. That combination is the main reason to consider it: you are not choosing between a music service and a video platform, because the two are meant to sit together.

Personalization is the other pillar. The app builds mixes around the artists and styles you return to, and it also offers activity mixes for workouts, relaxation and focus sessions. Your library collects liked and added songs, playlists, artists and albums in one place, so the things you save are easy to find again rather than scattered across screens.

The recent Discover Mix update fits that pattern. It is a personalized playlist that draws on what you listen to most, and the developer says it refreshes with a new set of songs each Wednesday. That weekly rhythm gives the app a reason to be opened even when you are not hunting for something specific.

Discovery, charts and collaborative playlists

Discovery is handled through several named mixes, including Discover Mix and New Release Mix, alongside top charts from around the world. If you prefer to browse by style, the app groups music by genre, with Hip Hop, Pop, Country, Dance & Electronic, Blues, Indie & Alternative, Jazz, Kpop, Latin and Rock among the options. Mood browsing works the same way, covering Chill, Feel Good, Energy Booster, Sleep, Focus, Romance, Workout, Commute and Party.

Playlist building has two modes worth noting. You can create a list and let the app suggest songs to fill it out, or you can collaborate with other listeners to shape a playlist together. That collaborative angle is unusual for a mainstream service and is likely to appeal to groups planning an event or friends who trade recommendations constantly.

Lyrics are available on screen for singing along, which is a small feature but one that matters if you like following a track word by word. The catalog and the mixes are the substance here; lyrics and charts are the supporting cast.

Audio, video and where you can listen

Songs and videos blend into one playback flow. In practice this means a track can carry you through a commute and then show you the video when you are somewhere you can watch. For anyone who already watches live sets and covers on YouTube, keeping that inside the same app is the clearest advantage.

Listening is not limited to a phone. You can play music on desktop, smart speakers, smart TVs, cars, smartwatches and other apps, and a Wear OS tile gives quick access. There is also stated compatibility with Google Maps, Waze and Google Assistant, which matters if your listening happens while driving or while you are asking a voice assistant to queue something up.

The breadth of that list is a genuine selling point, though it also reflects how much of the experience depends on the wider Google ecosystem. If your devices and habits already live there, the app slots in without much friction.

Ads, Premium and the limits that come with them

The free version carries ads, and the developer offers a Music Premium tier as the way past them. Premium also adds background play, access to your music downloads including smart downloads, and the audio-to-video switching that the developer ties to the paid tier. Those are meaningful differences rather than cosmetic ones, because background play and downloads change how the app fits into a day.

Two caveats are worth repeating plainly. Premium is available in select countries, so availability depends on where you are, and even paying members can come across branding or promotions that creators have added. That second point is a fair warning: paying removes the service's ads, not everything a creator has baked into a video.

Free trials, introductory offers and promotional pricing are limited to first-time YouTube Red, Music Premium, YouTube Premium and Google Play Music subscribers. If you have subscribed to any of those before, you should not count on a trial when deciding whether the paid tier is worth it.

The listener this fits best

This app makes most sense for people who already treat YouTube as a music source. If your favorite versions of songs are live recordings, covers or remixes, or if you regularly watch performance videos, having the same catalog available as straight audio is the whole appeal. The personalized mixes and activity playlists then do the work of filling in the gaps around those favorites.

It also suits listeners who want one app across many devices and are comfortable inside Google's ecosystem, since phones, computers, speakers, televisions, cars and watches are among the supported places to listen. The collaborative playlist feature adds a social angle for people who plan listening with others.

The trade-off is that the free experience includes ads, and the features many listeners consider essential, background play and downloads among them, sit behind Premium. That is a straightforward value calculation rather than a hidden trap, but it is the calculation that decides whether the app earns a permanent spot on your home screen.

A streaming app worth keeping if video is part of your listening

YouTube Music is a mature, widely installed app, with more than 5 billion installs and a 4.5 average across roughly 7.8 million ratings since its release in November 2015. Those numbers say less about quality than about reach, but they do confirm that the app is a stable, long-running product rather than an experiment.

My recommendation is simple. If live performances, covers and remixes are part of how you listen, and you want audio and video in one place with personalized mixes doing the discovery work, this is a strong fit. If you mostly want background listening without ads and you are not interested in the video side, the free tier will feel limited and the Premium tier becomes the deciding factor.

For everyone in between, the sensible approach is to start free, see how much the activity mixes and the library actually change your listening, and then judge whether the paid tier's background play and downloads are worth it for you. The app's real strength is that it treats music as something you watch as well as hear, and that is a niche it fills well.

What's new

Change up your routine with the new Discover Mix, a personalized playlist with songs you’ll love based on what you listen to the most. With a new set of songs each Wednesday, there is always more to explore.