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It may not surprise you that Google is launching something that is not really finished: YouTube Music is now available in the United States and several other countries, but barely qualifies as a streaming music service today. After using the platform for several days, here are the biggest problems we want to fix.
Maybe YouTube Music will one day remove Apple Music and Spotify – and we're ready to admit that Google Play Music launches into YouTube Music to be a tough engineering task, but these current issues could make you think twice about splitting your $ 10 a month for now.
1) The Applications Are Too Basic
YouTube Music seems to be adopting the simplest approach to its applications on the web and mobile, which tends to be the only way to do it. Google approach in general. It's fine if you just want to listen quickly, and do not be too agitated by what you hear, but for serious music lovers, it's too minimal at the moment.
Once you try to go beyond the basics, rearrange playlists, subscribe to artists, save something in your library – it's not always easy to do something (if you can do it). It's a bit of a slightly modified package for features already offered by YouTube.
There is no doubt that this is one of the areas where YouTube Music is going to improve, but for now everything looks rather uninteresting: not just the bits of the service and interact with, but the underlying code just as well.
2) The quality of music varies
One of the strengths of YouTube Music is also one of its weaknesses, at least for the moment. Search for some songs and you get a lot of choice on audio tracks only and full videos: live cuts, unofficial fan tributes, uploads from the artist channel, and more.
That's fine if you're looking for a new version of an old classic, but it's less useful if you're trying to set up a consistent playlist in terms of volume, quality of recording and debit (the default is apparently 128Kbps, with seemingly better fidelity)
YouTube seems to be trying to put together a complete and official library of audio tracks only: here is Cheated Hearts by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, by example. This is probably necessary, but it makes it even more complicated to find the songs you want to add to your playlists.
3) Research is lacking
YouTube Music has a very intelligent natural language search that can show tracks that do not know their real names – try "new song Cardi B 2018" – but scratch under the surface and there are obvious gaps in the search functionality.
Typing names of artists, albums or songs works pretty well, but trying to filter the results or reduce them makes it difficult to search by genre or year, or to restrict your queries to tracks you have already added to your library (so you get results from the entire YouTube Music catalog, all
A similar Spartan search interface tells you if you're using mobile apps or Web interface, as if YouTube Music believed that its default automatic search results were as good as those you would get.Google – and this is definitely not e yet.
4) The lists of reading are messy
The goal of YouTube Music is to combine YouTube with … well, music, but now all the playlists you create in the Music app or l & # 39; # 39; Web interface also appear as playlists on the standard YouTube portal, and you do not have much control over the operation.
It's fair to say that you might want your YouTube Music playlists to be available in the standard YouTube interface. but he must be much better organized than he is right now. Your relaxing and summer mixes are stored right next to your classic cat video compilations and explanatory clips Westworld ; All albums that you have saved to your library in YouTube Music display as playlists saved in YouTube. and the artists you follow in YouTube Music also appear as subscriptions on YouTube.
Although bottom-line plumbing depends on the same YouTube library, music playlists must be clearly delineated. Once this has been sorted, YouTube can add other useful things, like playlist folders.
5) Recommendations need work
We've never found the video component "recommended" YouTube All this is smart, really safe, topics and channels are largely similar to those we have already looked at, but there are many repetitions and not enough ramifications in new related areas.
The recommendations in YouTube Music seem to treat broadly similarly, but to be honest, it's still early. The Your Mixtape playlist is interesting, but it can not compete with the subtlety and breadth of the daily and weekly playlists that Spotify offers. It's also unclear whether regular YouTube videos also influence your recommendations in YouTube Music (and vice versa).
Given the wealth of YouTube's data on user viewing habits, these should improve.
6) The Cross-Platform Game Needs Work
One of the many areas where Spotify excels is the way you can switch from one device to the other. 39; another. Open the smartphone app while Spotify is playing on your laptop, for example, and you are asked if you want to switch to the current playlist on your phone.
YouTube Music also detects when you listen on one device to listen on another, but you can only have one at a time – and our attempts to switch from phone to web and vice versa versa have always been buggy, which kills the mood when you try to rock.
There's nothing like Spotify Connect, which is great for listening on multiple devices. No Chromecast support is available on the web portal, although video and audio tracks can be sent to a Chromecast from mobile apps.
7) Personal Tracks Can not Be Downloaded
It It may be unfair to include this one because YouTube has promised to work around it, but YouTube Music should let us download our existing music libraries so we can stream these songs on demand. This is a Google Play Music feature that has not been transferred yet, but it must be handled if both services merge.
The functionality may not be so important for a streamed generation, but it is crucial for many other people. And by the way, if you do not want to spend $ 10 a month for a streaming service (and many do not), Google Play Music remains the best free way to get your music on an Android device.
To download tracks, you can continue to listen to these obscure b-faces and live versions of songs you have accumulated over the years that may not be in the YouTube Music Library. To give due to YouTube, this option is on the way, so hopefully it's coming sooner rather than later.
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