Thoughts on YouTube Music

I got a random trial from Google to try out YouTube Music. I was getting a little irritated by Apple Music at the time - I have a gigantic-ass library, and that app was struggling with search, oftentimes saying I didn't have an album unless I manually went to select it from the list. So I thought, "why not?" I'll give it a look, see if it's improved. I've always been bitter that Google Play Music, the perfect Music app, got killed by Google for literally no reason. But maybe it's not as bad!

Readers.

This was a grave mistake.

The first step of my YouTube Music journey was trying to move all my music from Apple Music to YTM. This alone took me about 3 days to get done. Now, this isn't really a con on YTM's end, but it was an interesting exercise. This is because most music-transferring services are simply not equipped to deal with a music library as large as the one I currently have. So I had to try a few different services until I hit one that managed to get it done, for the most part.

The second step was getting my own manually uploaded music onto YTM. The main reason I use Apple Music over any other service (besides the fact that it has a terrible algorithim) is because it makes loading my own personal music into it unbelievably easy. Just drag and drop and there it is, settled in nice and snug with the rest of my albums.

YouTube Music honestly keeps up in this regard. It's the same sort of drag and drop process, and it uploads really quickly. Also, I've found that Apple Music's cloud errors out every time I make an upload, so I have to manually refresh it to catch any tracks that didn't make it all the way into my library. I didn't have a problem with that at all in YTM. I assume this somewhat reflects Google and Apple's own experience with data - the latter is dogshit with iCloud, but the former has a lot of experience with stuff like Google Drive.

This also leads me to my biggest pro towards YTM: there is no expiration date on your library, at least so far. All of my stuff was there, even tracks I dropped in as long ago as 2014 (God I'm old). Apple Music, on the other hand, does delete your library after 3 months from the day your subscription ends. This is absolutely trash, and a big reason of why I'm sure I'll leave Apple Music eventually.

One interesting difference between the two? Apple Music doesn't differentiate your personal uploads from the Apple Music library - at least, not in a way I've been able to tell. YouTube Music puts your uploaded music in a separate library. I don't think there's really a best option between those two. I find YTM takes a lot of clicks to get to your personal uploads (or to anything, really). But I also think it'd be useful to see what music is yours and what isn't, if you ever wanna move your library elsewhere.

Beyond this though, it was all down-hill. YTM is deeply annoying to use because it's a YouTube app that happens to have music on it, not a Music app in its entirety. The YouTube aspect can sometimes be cool for stuff like being able to easily listen to Pool Identity or whatever, but not enough to make me want to switch over. Every time I tried to look for a track I'd get the YouTube version half the time, or a playlist would finish playing and it would start playing a YouTube video. It was very irritating

The interface was hideous too. It was a slog to get anywhere, and I found sorting features to be sorely lacking next to Apple Music. It also didn't have Smart Playlists in the same way that Apple Music does. And you can't add album art to custom playlists either! Unless you want to use generative AI to make one, of course. :)

Nor was there a way to edit metadata, which is another huge plus in Apple Music's favor. Sometimes I want to change album art, or track lists, or artists, just to maintain my library and organize it the way I want. Not possible in YTM. I'm pretty sure it was in Google Play Music though. Thanks Google!

But perhaps the biggest con? As part of the onboarding process, I got asked to add artists that I like so that YTM could give me their algo soup. I abliged, for review purposes. And while the suggestions seemed...fine enough...one thing Google doesn't tell you is that any artist you add gets put on your YouTube Subscriptions list.

Soooo now I have almost 200 new accounts I follow! Which is super cool and great! It's so bad that I had to just make a fresh account to get a usable feed again.

That's where my experiment with YTM ended. It was simply too much of a hassle to be worth it. 6/10 don't think I'll use it again.

But even if I don't use it again, I don't think I'll use Apple Music forever either. That threat of expiration hangs over my head like a Sword of Damocles, and it irritates me. I'd like to maybe try a Plex server, but that's weekend project, if not longer. We'll see! Software is hell.