Nine YouTube Music Features You Should Use
While YouTube Music isn’t as highly regarded as Spotify or Apple Music , it has its own group of dedicated users – not least because of the wealth of audio you can find on YouTube, as well as YouTube Music’s dedicated library. Of course, this service integrates neatly with other Google services and is available on a variety of devices.
Despite the fairly functional and simple appearance of the YouTube Music apps, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, from the ability to upload your own MP3s to your library to the ability to collaborate on playlists with other people.
Add videos to playlists
YouTube Music gives you something you don’t get with any other music streaming service, which is access to all of YouTube, plus all the music videos, rarities, and live performances that it includes. You can add anything on YouTube to a YouTube Music playlist: for example, on the YouTube website, click the three dots next to a video and then Save .
Search by hashtag
Stuck for something to listen to? Try typing a hashtag into the search field—almost any genre or term you can think of will do. You can also add hashtags to the descriptions of your public playlists on YouTube Music so others can find them: Click or tap the pen icon on any playlist page, then enter hashtags in the description field.
Enable autorun
YouTube Music has an autoplay feature that plays recommended tracks as soon as the current manually selected queue comes to an end. You can turn the autoplay feature on or off from the queue page: click the arrow (bottom right) on the web or click Next on a mobile device.
Download local music files
If you’ve been into digital music long enough and have a collection of MP3s stored somewhere, you can add them to your YouTube Music library—up to 100,000 of them. On the web version of YouTube Music, click your profile picture (top right), then Upload Music and select your files. Supported audio formats include FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG and WMA.
These downloaded files get their own section in your YouTube Music library, and you can play them in the background ad-free and download them to your devices without a Premium subscription. If you have a Premium subscription, you can also stream them to supported smart speakers. However, you cannot share these tracks with other people.
Play it again
If you’re listening to a song that catches your attention but can’t get into your playlists until it ends, it’s easy to dig into YouTube Music’s history. On the web or mobile apps, click or tap your profile picture (top right), then select History . Select something in the list to play it again, although this will clear anything already in the queue.
Collaborate on playlists
If you have a party or trip coming up, or just want to get recommendations from friends and family, you can enable collaboration on a playlist. Click or tap the pen icon in the playlist, and if the playlist is set to public or at least not listed (which is a requirement for collaborative playlists), you can open the Collaborate tab.
This tab allows you to enable or disable collaboration on the playlist, and also provides a sharing link that you can use to invite others to contribute. As a playlist owner, you get the power to remove any songs you don’t like, but there’s an integrated voting system that your peers can use to vote up or down the tracks that appear in the queue.
Fall asleep to the music
If you’ve found easy listening or ambient tunes and want to fall asleep to YouTube Music playlists, you can do so on mobile: On the playback screen, tap the three dots (top right), then select Sleep Timer . You can choose a designated time (from five minutes to an hour) or simply skip to the end of the current song.
Save your mixtape offline
If you’re a YouTube Music Premium subscriber and don’t know what to save for offline listening, choose an app instead: Tap your profile picture (top right), then Settings and Downloads & Storage . From here, you can enable the smart download feature, which stores your favorite music on your phone, and specify how much space will be allocated for it.
Change the music
Unlike Spotify, YouTube Music allows you to run different playlists simultaneously on different devices and even in different browser tabs within the same tab. This means you can listen to your relaxing, lo-fi mix on your desktop computer in your home office, and have an upbeat, energetic disco mix playing on your phone when you get into the car.